Toggling between Adobe camera RAW and PM changes not visible in PM

[louisemurray]

I am running Photo Mechanic version 4.6.5 and I run Mac OS X 10.5.8 on my Intel-based Mac.

My workflow involves primary edit in PM, image adjustment in ADobe camera RAW from Bridge CS4 then keywording, captioning in PM.  Why are my image adjustments made in Bridge not being reflected in PM?
Sure that I have just done something stupid, but appreciate the help anyway
Louise

[Hayo Baan]

Louise,

You're not really missing anything here; Adobe simply does not update the embedded JPG of the raw file so PM (nor any other application) is able to see them (bridge actually uses ACR/its cache to show you the results of your edits, something that no other application is capable of).

This is one of the problems I have with Adobe's approach to raw (they never alter it), and the way it forces you into their approach (and one of the many reasons I use Nikon's Capture NX2 for my raw editing).

Not all hope is lost though; if you do not mind the dng format, converting your raw files to dng will help; Adobe does update the embedded jpg for dng files (if you tell it to).

Hope this helps,
    Hayo

[louisemurray]

Hello Hayo,
Thanks for a very clear answer.  I am not familiar with the drawbacks, if any, of the DNG format.  If there are none, I'd be happy to consider converting the RAWS to DNG.  Can they then be converted to Tifs and subsequently to JPGS without loss of quality?  I take it that  then I have to make a change to camera raw or PS preferences to elect the continuous update of embedded jpegs.

Another question, if I were to swap to Nikon software, would all changes made in there be visible in PM?
Appreciate you time in answering
Louise

[Hayo Baan]

A DNG file is a raw file, Adobe just recoded your original into their format. As such you lose no information when converting it later to e.g. a tiff or jpeg file. If you really want to, you can actually also embed the original raw file into the raw file, that way you could keep one file and still have the ability to revert back to the original raw file if you'd ever wanted to. People who have completely adopted a DNG workflow usually don't bother with this though; it dramatically adds to the file size (and from their perspective for no gain at all).

If you were to switch to e.g. Nikon Capture NX2 for your raw editing, your edits will be visible in PM, without having to do anything; Capture updates the embedded jpg when saving files. I actually love this feature as the embedded jpg is actually of a very high quality, allowing you to use it for almost everything (even printing). PM's ability to use these embedded jpgs comes in mighty handy here :-)

Hope this helps you make a decision for your workflow,
    Hayo