I’ve been struggling to find an efficient Lightroom–Photoshop workflow and, as I documented here recently, I’ve experienced a good deal of frustration. The main problem is that, as of Photoshop CS6, there is no way to have a non-destructive workflow between PS and Lightroom. Even with Lightroom 5 you can’t make adjustments in Lightroom, edit the file with Photoshop and then return to Lightroom and be able to make further refinements to the original edits. You can apply new adjustments to a TIF file saved in Photoshop but you cannot go back and tweak your original LR adjustments.
Because of this limitation I’ve been searching for the most convenient and least destructive workflow but not having much success. However, at an Adobe CreateNOW event yesterday, I learned that there is cause for hope! I saw a demonstration in which a photo was adjusted in Lightroom and then those same adjustments were edited further in the new Camera Raw filter within Photoshop. It also looks like it will be possible to then continue editing the file in Lightroom after saving in Photoshop. What I saw yesterday was just a quick demonstration and it’s not yet clear exactly what will be possible. The new version of Photoshop CC is expected to be released on June 17 so I won’t be able to test it until then. But, it’s looking like substantial improvements are just around the corner. As soon as I have a chance to try out the new version of Photoshop I’ll report my findings here.