So yes, at this point, the two really are the same code wrapped in somewhat different packages, but that still doesn't mean Camera Raw and Lightroom are the same thing. Ever since the days of Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom 2 this has pretty much been the case. Both releases were announced on April 7, 2014, as was the release of the related DNG Converter 8.4 standalone application. As I write this, the current version of Camera Raw is 8.4. ACR 4 supported Photoshop CS3 so considering only the version numbers of the products involved and the dates of each should tell you that Lightroom and Camera Raw initially lived completely separate lives.īut once the code base for Camera Raw and Lightroom did merge, the two became inseparable. On July 29, 2008, Adobe officially released Lightroom 2 and Adobe Camera Raw 4.5 which had been developed together by Adobe Labs. Version 2 of Lightroom was introduced in 2008 and was the point at which Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw became joined at the hip. The genesis of Lightroom on the other hand started when Adobe bought Pixmantic in 2006, creators of the Rawshooter Essentials raw converter. Its features were limited by today's standards, but it was convenient to have it integrated with Photoshop and really did to a great job on most images.
After creating the very first version of Photoshop together with his brother John in 1988 before it was bought by Adobe, Thomas Knoll was as much up to the challenge of creating a raw plugin for Photoshop as anyone. So for close to five years, Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw couldn't have been the same thing since there was no Lightroom yet.Įarly versions of Adobe Camera Raw were based on code developed by Thomas Knoll. The first release of Lightroom wouldn't hit the scene until early 2007. Back in the days of Photoshop 7, Adobe released a plugin called Adobe Camera Raw. There once was a time when Lightroom didn't exist and all of us used Photoshop with proprietary raw converters unique to the camera brand we used.
These days, the release of every update to Adobe Lightroom is accompanied by an updated release of Adobe Camera Raw. After all, aren't ACR and Lightroom really the same thing under the covers? Well, yes. Users with a well-established workflow involving Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop may be feeling they have little need for Lightroom. Or B: get it to see that I have installed Camera Raw 8.1.Aren't Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Really the Same Thing? and nothing's changed.Ī: make Photoshop update it from the program like it should (do you have any tips as to what my browser settings SHOULD be, seeing as Adobe is arrogant enough to claim mine are wrong but not helpful enough to suggest how) When I check in PS what versions of ACR it's using, it says 7.4. When I open a raw file with Photoshop, it opens in Camera Raw 7.4.
Adobe doesn't provide instructions on how to make PS see the new version of Camera Raw.
but still Photoshop only SEES Camera Raw 7.4. I went to the Adobe website and after way more searching than should ever have to be done (side note: their web developers need to read a book called "Don't make me think - a guide to web usability") anyway, I found the camera raw and DNG coverter 8.1. It doesn't think to tell you maybe what the browser settings should BE (good going Adobe) - I turned off my Firewall and tried again but same story. Now, HERE IS THE THING - I look in Photoshop and go to "Update", and it says it can't connect because maybe my "browser settings are incorrect". So to do it I have to edit as a TIFF saved by Lr, which isn't ideal because it gives me more copies of the image and blah blah blah - I just want it to do it properly. The radial filter that is in LR5 doesn't turn out at all once it opens in PS (that's if I say "open anyway"), and there might be some other quality issues too, not sure. Only when I send my photos over to Photoshop CS6, it says that the camera raw is not up to date and so some things might not be rendered properly - and it's true. So, I just upgraded to Lightroom 5 - great.