# CS6 HDR Pro merge psd result not readable



## schlotz (Feb 13, 2013)

No doubt I'm doing something wrong.  Grab three raws in LR 4.3, right click and edit in CS6 via Merge to HDR Pro.  CS6 comes up, completes, I hit OK in the 32bit screen, then select SAVE.  a psd file is created, and shows up back in LR as a black file indicating there is an error.  Only thing that seems to work is save as TIFF.  Then I have to import the tiff when back in LR.  Can someone point me to what I'm doing wrong here?

Thanks,
Matt


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Feb 13, 2013)

Matt,

My guess would be that you aren't saving the PSD with "Maximize Compatibility". That's a setting in PS's preferences:




Hal


----------



## schlotz (Feb 15, 2013)

Well, I thought you might have had it Hal but turns out not so.  I had not set the maximize toggle to always but even after I did, the results were the same.  Blank photo showing in LR and if you try to bring it up in development mode it indicates the file uses an unsupported bit depth.


----------



## Bryan Conner (Feb 15, 2013)

Lightroom can only read 32 bit Tiffs.  32bit PSDs are not compatible.

See link below:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS695d4d7583c2a17a-48a4b5ca1372880e241-8000.html


----------



## schlotz (Feb 15, 2013)

Bingo.  Odd why LR can deal with a tiff 32bit file and not adobe's own psd.  Thanks for getting this cleared up Bryan!


----------



## Bryan Conner (Feb 16, 2013)

schlotz said:


> Bingo.  Odd why LR can deal with a tiff 32bit file and not adobe's own psd.  Thanks for getting this cleared up Bryan!



Adobe owns the copyright to the TIFF specifications, so you could consider TIFF to be Adobe's own too.  But, as to why Adobe chose TIFF and not PSD for 32 bit files, 
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS42D207D7-B290-4baa-A896-AB71965BF24B.html  has the following statement concerning the TIFF file format: "The TIFF format provides greater compression and industry compatibility than Photoshop format (PSD), and is the recommended format for exchanging files between Lightroom and Photoshop. In Lightroom, you can export TIFF image files with a bit depth of 8 bits or 16 bits per channel."


----------



## johngpt (Feb 24, 2013)

Bryan Conner said:


> Adobe owns the copyright to the TIFF specifications, so you could consider TIFF to be Adobe's own too.  But, as to why Adobe chose TIFF and not PSD for 32 bit files,
> http://help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/WS42D207D7-B290-4baa-A896-AB71965BF24B.html  has the following statement concerning the TIFF file format: "The TIFF format provides greater compression and industry compatibility than Photoshop format (PSD), and is the recommended format for exchanging files between Lightroom and Photoshop. In Lightroom, you can export TIFF image files with a bit depth of 8 bits or 16 bits per channel."



Bryan, thanks so much for this information. I had always assumed that by exporting to Ps as PSD, I was enhancing the ability of Lr and Ps to work with one another. If I export to Ps for further editing with the file as TIFF, would I need to set Ps preference for saving the TIFF to something specific, such as "no compression?"


----------



## Bryan Conner (Feb 24, 2013)

I always use LZW compression.  No compression would work of course, but the file size would be much larger normally.


----------



## johngpt (Feb 25, 2013)

Again, thank you for the information.


----------

