Hello all Photoshop gurus out there. Here's a difficult one for you. I am a retoucher myself and after having tried to solve this problem for a year I'm still closer to an answer. I've decided that there might be someone brighter at the forums.
To understand my question I think you'll need to know our workflow. We are a retouching agency in Sweden. When we receive work from our clients most of the time they send their images with layers, adjustments and filters attached to them. Our clients either use Photoshop CS5 or Photoshop CS6 when building up their images. They transfer their images to us as tiff-files, but also as RAW-files with the settings attached. When we get the images we start from the beginning with the RAW-files to be absolutely sure of a nondestructive workflow. The settings attached to the RAW-images that came with the client automatically get active and we open the image with the same resolution as the tiff-image (usually 350 ppi). We then open the tiff-file with the adjustments and smart objects with filters attached to it. We than have the two images side by side. We make sure the two images look the same with only the background layer lit. They always do. After having ensured that, we get into trouble.
The following three problems occur.
1. If we for example have a smart object with shadow/highlight attached to it brought to us with our clients tiff-file. When we open the tiff everything looks great but when we double click the shadow/highlight text in the smart object to read the settings, all the settings disappear and change to our standard settings.
2. If the settings by chance doesn't disappear and we make the exact same adjustment to our shadow/highlight settings as in the tiff-image brought to us, we still don't get anywhere close to the same result. We know the shadow/highlight filter depend on image content. So we always make sure the content is the same in both images.
3. Sometimes the TIFF is at a lower resolution than the image we make out of the RAW. If that's the case we recount the radiuses of the shadow/highlight filter in the tiff to fit with the new image size we've created out of the RAW. One example could be that we receive the tiff at 150 ppi so if we want the Shadow/highlight filter to give us the same result in our 350 ppi image, we multiply the radius with 2.33. Quite often this fails to give us an equal result.
Why does these problems occur and what can we do to prevent this from happening?
To understand my question I think you'll need to know our workflow. We are a retouching agency in Sweden. When we receive work from our clients most of the time they send their images with layers, adjustments and filters attached to them. Our clients either use Photoshop CS5 or Photoshop CS6 when building up their images. They transfer their images to us as tiff-files, but also as RAW-files with the settings attached. When we get the images we start from the beginning with the RAW-files to be absolutely sure of a nondestructive workflow. The settings attached to the RAW-images that came with the client automatically get active and we open the image with the same resolution as the tiff-image (usually 350 ppi). We then open the tiff-file with the adjustments and smart objects with filters attached to it. We than have the two images side by side. We make sure the two images look the same with only the background layer lit. They always do. After having ensured that, we get into trouble.
The following three problems occur.
1. If we for example have a smart object with shadow/highlight attached to it brought to us with our clients tiff-file. When we open the tiff everything looks great but when we double click the shadow/highlight text in the smart object to read the settings, all the settings disappear and change to our standard settings.
2. If the settings by chance doesn't disappear and we make the exact same adjustment to our shadow/highlight settings as in the tiff-image brought to us, we still don't get anywhere close to the same result. We know the shadow/highlight filter depend on image content. So we always make sure the content is the same in both images.
3. Sometimes the TIFF is at a lower resolution than the image we make out of the RAW. If that's the case we recount the radiuses of the shadow/highlight filter in the tiff to fit with the new image size we've created out of the RAW. One example could be that we receive the tiff at 150 ppi so if we want the Shadow/highlight filter to give us the same result in our 350 ppi image, we multiply the radius with 2.33. Quite often this fails to give us an equal result.
Why does these problems occur and what can we do to prevent this from happening?