Photoshop: Camera raw filter gone? Workflow help needed

[jonasl34552734]

Hello

I'm a 3D artist at a big engineering consultancy company based in Sweden, I make marketing renders and explanatory animations for some of our customers. Whenever I need to create a photo real image of a customers product I'd shade and light its CAD geometry in 3Ds Max and save an .EXR in 32bit colour bit depth and throw that into Photoshop, make it into a smart object and apply Camera Raw filter to make it pop. Camera raw is huge for me. On top of that i'd apply adjustment layers until the customer is happy but I always enjoyed being able to go back and edit the Camera Raw settings, and also to copy the same filter settings over to a new PS document with an EXR of for example another product rendered in the same light setup in 3Ds Max.

Right now it seems Adobe has removed the ability to apply Camera Raw to a smart object?

What is the point of this?

If anyone has an idea of how I could change my workflow to adopt to this new Photoshop functionality I'm happy to learn, I might have missed something here?

Thanks alot for your input!

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Right now it seems Adobe has removed the ability to apply Camera Raw to a smart object?

In 32bit images, not on Smart Objects in general. (edited)

[jonasl34552734]

Thank you for your input c.pfaffenbichler ​!

But I obviously want the powerful tool that Camera Raw is, to be able to work on the whole 32bit bit depth.

Any idea why they made this change? I've been using this method for 2 years. Now I cant even modify my old files, I dont see the point

[c.pfaffenbichler]

When you make

marketing renders and explanatory animations

you might be wasting resources by editing the images in 32bit.

With some probability they will ultimately be output/presented on systems that can not make real use of that additional bit depth anyway.

[jonasl34552734]

yes  I deliver them in 8bit and while some end up on high end marketing events, most end up on some salespersons laptop from 2008. But I want to take the 32bit render and have all that light information with me into Photoshop to tweak it in camera raw. The difference of just taking a 8bit render, and taking the same render but in 32bit and letting camera raw do its magic before saving it as a 8bit file is huge.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

There’s still 16bit … I know that’s little consolation.

Have you tested if the Filter still works as you are used to in CC 2015?

[davescm · Accepted solution]

I've just played around with this and I think I may have a method that works. Be interested to see if you can try it and confirm with your own images.

With your 32 bit image open in Photoshop - save it as a flattened TIFF (with 32 bit floating checked).

Import that TIFF to Lightroom

In Lightroom use menu Library >  Convert Photo to DNG

Then menu Photo > Edit in > Open as Smart object in Photoshop. This opens a 16 bit image with a smart object.

In Photoshop - double click the Smart object and Camera Raw opens on what appears to be the full 32 bit image.

Appreciate your feedback on this

Dave

[jonasl34552734]

Yes there you have it davescm, was just trying a similar method based on "Method 4" above but yours include fewer steps than what I found, thank you for that!

I can even go down to 8bit in Photoshop, apply an Exposure adjustment layer, drag the slider and see what I can do. Start crying. Then double click the smart object-icon and all the full dynamic range is there if I adjust the exposure in the camera raw settings instead. This is actually an improvement from before because not all handy functions are available in a 32bit Photoshop document (selective color just to name a favourite).

I now have what I came here for, thanks again!

However I noticed there is an "Adobe Community Professional" tag under your profile picture so I'm gonna leave you with some feedback on further improvements. I don't have a clue about how you communicate to Adobe but having dealt with Autodesk and Adobe before, I think you might just have a lot more influence than I will ever have on the development of the software we all use.

This method currently includes a lot of file type conversions,

[3D software]->EXR->[Photoshop]->TIFF->[Lightroom]->DNG->[Photoshop]->PSD(my working file)->CustomerOutput.

Thats OK, no data is destroyed in these conversions. But they are time consuming and will be hard to automate I'm afraid.

If Adobe would let Photoshop itself stand for the conversion to DNG (or whatever behind-the-scenes-format they find produce the least amounts of bugs and problems but still allow 32bit data inside the smart object) the ideal situation for me would be to have something like:

[3D software]->EXR->[Photoshop]->PSD(my working file)->CustomerOutput

So I would open an 32bit EXR in Photoshop, right-click the layer, select "Convert to Camera Raw smart object" and Photoshop would convert it to a DNG or whatever behind the scenes, saving me the time of going through Lightroom. And even if I went down to 16 or 8bit PSD document from here, all the 32bit data would be inside that smart object.

That would be ideal! Thank you one thrid time for taking your time to help me out.

Have a nice week!

Jonas

[davescm]

Hi Jonas

I wish I did have more influence on the future development .

I have put in a feature request here : Convert 32 bit image to "DNG" Smart Object in Photoshop | Photoshop Family Customer Community   

You may wish to add your own comments

Dave

[davescm]

Hi

Adobe removed the ability to apply camera raw directly to 32 bit documents to "prevent unexpected visual mismatches between Camera Raw and Photoshop"

This may help you with Adobe's thinking on this, it also suggests some workarounds for specific situations:

Command 'Camera Raw filter' not available in Merge to HDR Pro

Dave

[jonasl34552734]

Thank you davescm !

I've read the link you gave me, but I'm not entirely sure I understand Adobes thinking here. It seems like they had a problem with a tool called "Merge to HDR Pro" which sews photos of different exposure into a HDR 32bit photo. But my camera is in 3Ds Max (vray) and I always have a perfectly fine 32bit image to start with.

"In Adobe Camera Raw 9.10, directly applying the Camera Raw Filter to a 32-bit Photoshop document has now been disabled to prevent unexpected visual mismatches between Camera Raw and Photoshop. The Camera Raw plug-in always processes a 32-bit source image or Smart Object to a 8-bit/16-bit result."

OK fine, I deliver 8bit images to my customers. My display cant even show all the information in the 32 bit file. But I still want to be able to keep the original 32 bit image data, and the settings I did in Camera Raw so that I can adjust it or copy it one year later when my customer updates its product. I don't know Photoshops inner workings, but since I have in numerous projects worked with 32bit smart objects with camera raw filter applied, with the ability to go back into the filter and change the sliders, it seems to me that it did not need to eat a 32 bit file and spit out a 16/8bit file before?

I'm trying to understand Adobes thinking. Do they have a bug in their code which they cant fix so they removed the whole option of applying camera raw to a 32 bit smart object? Since I never experienced any bugs it would seem like a better solution to keep the system as it was, but to warn the user that if you work with camera raw on 32 bit smart objects the program might crash / "create visual mismatches".

Adobes suggested workarounds:

Method 1: this burns the settings in camera raw into the file, so I cant use this, I need to be able to go back.

Method 2: this is about photo merging so it does not apply to my case

Method 3: this is about photo merging so it does not apply to my case

Method 4: If I understand this correctly, I should be able to open my renders in lightroom and somehow get a 32bit ouput from here which I will be able to open in Photoshop to maintain editability. I will try this!

Method 5: Not sure I understand this either, but it seems to lead back to Method 1 which burns the settings of Camera Raw into the 32bit file and hands me a 16- or 8bit data, hence removing the option to go back and fully edit the 32bit data.

OK so there is progress but there are also still questions, I'll let you know if I can get Method 4 working. I can live with including Lightroom to my workflow as long as I can still archive my camera raw settings and the 32bit data.

Thank you again for your help