# Edit in Photoshop Merge to HDR, Open as Layers Not working again



## hedystafford (Nov 14, 2011)

I have LR3 ACR 6.5 and CS4 ACR 5.7. I posted this same query a year ago and never received any response. A year ago it was files from my Panasonic Lumix FZ28 which would not open in layers, or merge to HDR in Photoshop. Single files would open, and files from my Nikon D300 opened just fine as always. 
Then the problem seemed to resolve itself and I reckoned I'd just been half asleep or something. 

Now the same exact thing is happening with my new Lumix FZ150. Files from a Lumix FZ45 which I tried and sent back are also not working. This applies to both .RW2 and .JPeg files. Files from the D300 continue to work fine, as do images from a Panasonic G2 and from the FZ28.
Anybody out there who can offer any suggestions - I have just spent a weekend in the high contrast dazzling light of Rome and have about 300 bracketed shots to merge........


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## Chris_M (Nov 14, 2011)

Shouldn't ACR for Photoshop be the SAME version as in Lightroom?

Anyways, a while back I installed Win7 Pro x64 on my rebuilt desktop computer,
and the first time I went to render a HDR in photoshop, it wouldn't work either.

What worked for me, (luckily photoshop was one of the first programs I installed) was simply formatting the drive and starting again,
this time I left Photoshops' installation folder at the default setting (something like program files/blah/blah/blah), after that, it worked again.

One thing I CAN tell you for sure, if you Google the problem, there will be several things you can try, I remember that from when I had the problem.
Just try one after the other until it's fixed.


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## hedystafford (Nov 14, 2011)

Hi Chris I appreciate your response. Adobe say:- 
The merge-to-HDR feature in Lightroom (3) requires that you have one of the following combinations of Photoshop and Camera Raw installed on your computer:

Photoshop CS3 10.0.1 and Camera Raw 4.6 or later
Photoshop CS4 and Camera Raw 5.7 or later
Photoshop CS5 and Camera Raw 6.2

and as I've explained, the merge to HDR and open as layers only fails to work on the files of two brand new Panasonic cameras. It works on files from my Nikon D300, my Panasonic FZ28 , a Panasonic G2, and even on a Fuji HS10 I tried in store!
So I think it isn't something to do with where files are located - otherwise nothing would work, surely? I will try googling it, but I suspect this could be to do with a Panasonic/Adobe liaison issue?


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## Chris_M (Nov 14, 2011)

Odd, on the couple of occasions that my PS had a lower ACR version than Lightroom, I always got a prompt that I should update ACR.

Perhaps one of the gurus can shed some light on this...


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## hedystafford (Nov 15, 2011)

I would be so grateful if a guru could bring their expertise to this problem. As for the ACR update prompt, I also get that every time I edit in Photoshop from Lightroom, but I check Open anyway and the file types that work still work, (ie they will open as layers or merge to HDR) whereas the .RW2 ones from the FZ150 don't. I get no further error message, just an empty Photoshop page - or occasionally (but not always) a timer watch icon which is not ticking and which stays like that for as long as I'm happy to leave it on the screen.


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## hedystafford (Nov 15, 2011)

OK. It looks like you were on the right track all along, Chris. Although the Raw file for the FZ150 and the FZ28 is the same ie .RW2, it seems that ACR 5.7 in Photoshop CS4 would still need the update for the camera, which has only been aded to ACR 6.5. So I've re-imported the files in DNG, rather than RAW format, and they will now open as layers. However I still have a problem with merging to HDR. When I save the merged HDR image it appears back in Lightroom as a blank square cell with a "File is unsupported or damaged" message. This I will investigate, as it's a different thing I'm doing wrong, I think!


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## Chris_M (Nov 15, 2011)

It always makes good sense to keep something like ACR up-to-date, you never know when it brings new bells 'n' whistles.

About the Photoshop HDR merge problem.
I really must apologize, it's been so long since I had the problem, that I have completely forgotton the exact steps I took.
All I can tell you is I spent quite some time sifting through Google,
_including reading through many almost identical posts in multiple forums_,
before I got a *working* solution, the whole project took me about a half to three-quarters of a day.

As I recall, I also tried several different search terms based around "HDR, Merge & Photoshop" as keywords (script may have been one also).
I just did a quick search on Google, but didn't find anything useful on the first page, and I do not have time to go any further than that, sorry.

PS.
Just a thought, have you tried simply re-installing,
or even better, un-installing and THEN re-installing (not forgetting to reboot between those steps) Photoshop?


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## Victoria Bampton (Nov 15, 2011)

Sorry you didn't get an answer a year ago Hedy - you're welcome to bump a thread if it gets missed.

So just to clarify this, when you use the Edit in PS features, LR passes the raw files plus the settings over to the ACR plug-in hosted by PS, and that opens the files directly into PS (or HDR, Layers, etc.)

If you try to pass a new camera raw file to an earlier version of ACR, it won't know what to do with it and will often fail silently - nothing happens.  If you convert to DNG, which all versions can understand, then it works.

Also, if you try to pass settings that the earlier version of ACR doesn't understand - for example, lens corrections back to a CS4 ACR version - those settings won't be applied, resulting in a different appearance.

The ideal solution is to keep matching PS/ACR and LR versions.  Alternatives include not using settings/raw file formats that the earlier version can't understand, not using settings that the older version can't understand, or using LR to render image files (i.e. TIFF/PSD/JPEG) and opening those into PS.

So how are we doing?  Have I missed any questions?


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## hedystafford (Nov 25, 2011)

Thanks Victoria. I understand now what was going wrong, and have successfully opened as layers and merged to HDR after converting to .dng. Sorry for delay in replying.


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