Switching between Lightroom & photoshop

[alang1657914]

I am a newbie to both Lightroom & photoshop, so let me thank you all for any help & advice you might offer.

I am taking images of my jewelery which I produce. The problem I am having is the massive files that photoshop is producing. Basically for each design I am taking anything between 6 & 10 shots, taken at different focal points (stacking) I am not shooting raw in order to keep the file size down, I am shooting in standard JPEG, each JPEG is approx 1.5mgb, so for 10 shots (1 x design) 15mgb select them all in Lightroom, then open in layers in Photoshop, auto align, auto blend, flatten image & control "S" which takes back into Lightroom.

All good so far. The only problem is that Photoshop is storing a massive PSD file on my C drive anything from 150gig to a whopping 550gigs??

All of this to ultimately save a 250kb JPEG for the web?

Surely I am missing something here? this can't be right?

[dj_paige]

PSD files with lots of layers are indeed very big. There's no issue saving it for the web, if you get 250kb, that's fine, there's no problem.

[ManiacJoe]

If you don't ever want to edit the PSD file again, you can flatten the 10 layers down to one layer and get a much smaller file saved to disk. However, after doing that, you cannot "undo" it.

[alang1657914]

Thanks for the reply guys. I am basically working in Lightroom not photoshop, I am only taking it into photoshop to stitch the layers together. I have been flattening the images & taking it back into Lightroom to edit, which does work.

I simply go control "S" & it opens in Lightroom

I was just wondering if there was a way when I hit control "S" it automatically opens, as it does now& saves as JPEG not a PSD file? so Lightroom can still see it, but as a JPEG & not as a PSD file?

[D Fosse · Accepted solution]

The jpeg file format does not support layers, so if you want to retain layers for further editing later, it has to be PSD or TIFF.

Jpeg uses aggressive data compression to reduce file size. This compression is destructive, cumulative and non-reversible. For this reason you should not resave jpegs if it can be avoided - work in PSD/TIFF and keep those as master files, then save out jpeg copies as final end products if and when you need the reduced file size.

Once you open a jpeg into Photoshop, it is decompressed back to its former file size, but not the former quality. Artifacts are added, and some information lost. It may be imperceptible the first time, but it's there. The main purpose of jpeg is to reduce file size for web and electronic delivery of files.

IOW - you're looking at this from the wrong end. Jpeg is not the "standard", it's an exception that comes at a steep price.

[ManiacJoe]

You can simulate a JPG by merging all the layers and converting the image to 8-bit color.

I recommend not doing either of these things.

[alang1657914]

thanks guys I think I pretty much get the just the big picture now, I understand that a jpeg is really only for the web/emails etc I I get the concept of saving the master PSD file.

You have all been most helpfull thank you