7. Exporting from Lightroom

Photograph: Sylvia @ Nevs Models. Makeup by Camilla Pascucci. Hair by Nathalie Foster. Clothes styling: Harriet Cotterill © Martin Evening 2011
Hasselblad H4D | 210 mm | 100 ISO | f13.0 @ 1/125th

How to export files from Lightroom and work in harmony with Photoshop

The best way to understand the Lightroom/Photoshop relationship is to think of Lightroom as a program for managing and processing lots of images contained in a catalog and to think of Photoshop as the program where you are more likely to spend your time retouching individual photographs one at a time.

Although there is a fair amount of overlap between Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom, it is clear that Photoshop will continue to remain the program of choice for serious retouching and layered image editing. The question then is, what is the most efficient way to work between these two programs? In this chapter I will show you some of the various ways you can take photographs from Lightroom and edit them in Photoshop, as well as how to use the Export module to process single images or batches of photographs. I will also show you how to use the post-processing section of the Export module to integrate complex Photoshop routines as part of the export process.