# LR cannot do RAW to external editor (Portrait Pro) ?



## Opa (Apr 14, 2017)

Am I correct that to edit these as RAW in PP that I need to load them directly from the file and that I cannot do RAW as an 'Edit In' pseudo plugin from LR?  EG, from LR my best option is ProPhoto 16 bit (which looses a ton of image quality)?

Thanks,


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## Tony Jay (Apr 15, 2017)

What version do you have?
The basic version does not do raw files.

The issue is one for Portrait Pro not really for Adobe or Lightroom.

Tony Jay


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## Opa (Apr 15, 2017)

The full version does RAW. The problem seems to be that LR can't pass a RAW to it forcing me to exit LR, find the file, load manually, save, import in to LR. 

PITA.


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## Johan Elzenga (Apr 15, 2017)

Lightroom cannot send raw files to a plugin. Some plugin makers (DxO) have found a workaround. They ignore the tiff that is sent by Lightroom, but use the name of the tiff to find the raw file and open that instead. You will have to ask the author of PP to use the same method.


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## Opa (Apr 15, 2017)

Thanks for confirming that Johan and for the tip. I'll pass it on. It'd be nice if LR would simply pass the RAW.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 15, 2017)

My OpenDirectly plugin might help.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Apr 16, 2017)

I'm curious (having an older version I don't think those raw) is there an advantage to taking raw directly into Portrait Professional as opposed to 16 bit TIFF?  PP is going to give you a TIFF back anyway.


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## Opa (Apr 16, 2017)

Quite possibly not. I've not used plugins very often and generally tend to keep editing to a minimum and almost always within a single app, either Lightroom or Affinity. My hope is that Portrait Pro can speed things up and perhaps improve output quality but so far I'm not impressed.

I'm playing with different workflows. The best quality thus far does seem to be to have LR produce a 16 bit sRGB TIFF to pass to PP. PP does weird things with ProPhotoRGB and really struggles with NEF RAW. Still playing though.

BTW, I did play with OpenDirectly a bit. Cool app. Wish it could pass a post edit RAW though.

PP tends to leave a much more unnatural or plastic look. Their defaults are quite horrid (though cool what they do though). I finally figured out that the best option is to tell it to do NOTHING and then to use a very tiny bit of correction here and there. I've not yet been able to produce results that are the same or better as I do manually with LR or Affinity (with an occasional dip in to NIK for a very tiny bit of skin softening to finish things off).


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