# 32 bit .tif display problem



## Michael D. (May 20, 2014)

Maybe someone can enlighten me.  I have been fooling around with HDR files in Photoshop and found you have to make 32 bit .tif files if you want them to be viewable in Lightroom.  I create the .tif files using the ProPhotoRGB profile.

However in LR the pictures look pretty bad - highlights are blown out and colors are over-saturated.

If I convert the image to 16 bits in Photoshop and then save as a 16 bit .tif it shows up in LR exactly like I see it in Photoshop.

Thinking it might have to do with my process of creating an HDR file, I simply opened a raw file in Photoshop and saved it as a 16 bit .tif.  Viewing it in LR it matched what I was seeing in Photoshop.

I then took that same raw file, converted it to a 32 bit file in Photoshop and then saved it as a .tif file and once again the LR view no longer matched what I was seeing in Photoshop - the highlights are blown out and colors are over-saturated, so it clearly had nothing to do with my HDR processing.

Can anyone explain why the 32 bit .tif files are not matching what I see in Photoshop?

Thanks--

Michael


----------



## Victoria Bampton (May 20, 2014)

Any chance of screenshots Michael?


----------



## Michael D. (May 21, 2014)

Hi Victoria,

The 16 bit image on the left looks identical in Lightroom and Photoshop.  The 32 bit image on the right looks wrong in Lightroom - you can see the blown out areas and exaggerated colors.  Yet that same 32 bit image looks correct in Photoshop.
If you have time, do a quick experiment.  Load any image into Photoshop.   If it's not 16 bit, then change it to 16 bit.  Then save as a 16 bit tif file using the ProPhotoRGB profile.  Then take the image in Photoshop and make it a 32 bit image, save as a 32 bit tif and then compare them in Lightroom.  I'd be curious to see if you are getting the same results as me.






Thanks--

Michael


----------



## Michael D. (Jun 4, 2014)

If anyone is interested... yes, Lightroom does process and display 32bit files differently than Photoshop. 

I was given this info by jao vdl at Adobe's LR forum:

"32-bit files HAVE to be modified by a tone curve in order to display  them. This is different from tiff and jpeg files which have a tone curve  built in. Lightroom simply uses its standard ACR engine to do this.  i.e. it treats it just like any raw file. The only equivalent that  Photoshop has is ACR but that is not a display engine. Photoshop uses a  simple tone curve with a simple exposure compensation (the one you can  call up in the popup below the image). "


----------



## Victoria Bampton (Jun 4, 2014)

Ah, that's the bit I missed.  I thought you were doing the conversion in ACR when opening it in Photoshop.


----------

