I find it interesting that few or any mentioned the photographs they process. I would think it makes a difference. Many photograph flying things birds and airplanes. I do not. I mostly photograph stationary well lit things. Landscape, street scape, interesting buildings and the dreaded vacation pictures. I have the time to compose, focus and expose carefully.

My Adobe ( LrC&Ps), FOMO struck and I bought the Topaz stuff but it didn’t float by boat, workflow after thoughtless Import often looks like

Tinker with white balance - I shoot with auto balance to capture the cameras opinion to start with AS SHOT. For me WB is the most consequential color adjustment. I usually grab the slider and wave it around to see what moods it creates but I usually wind up with something near as shot.

Straighten and crop - Quickly crop to hide distractions without regard to aspect ratio. A common mistake I make is cropping too tight in camera which is not reparable. I thought this crop might focus the new Auto Tone adjustments but I couldn’t confirm this with experiments.

Tone Adjustment - starting with Auto Tone first adjust Exposure then Black and White, Highlights, Shadows, … often skipping contrast (confuses me). I’m stlll trying to learn curves but…


Selective tone adjust - pull out shadow areas, suppress blown out highlights and tone down destrastions.


(Whenever I see the need) dehaze clarity and/or texture. Same with color adjustments.

Sharpening and Noise - I do these together a yin and yang thing. I am typically pleased when this is not needed.

When I am happy with all the above I edit in Photoshop for distraction removal,Power lines, ugly signs, people. I am having good luck trying generative AI in Ps also. I always return PSD file to LrC for safekeeping and eventual export.

I am not a software engineer either. In the development process in worked in I was a System Engineer I wrote the specifications the software engineers design, code and test to. A big difference to our customers anyway.

Neither do I have inside information on the workings of any raw editors other than the considerable information revealed in The Lightroom Queen’s FAQ book and poking around with the user files LrC creates particularly the sidecar files.

Let’s establish a common understanding about what is happening. Since the individual sensor elements are color blind there is a mosaic of red, green and blue filters immediately in front of the sensor array such that the raw data must be de-mosaic processed to recover the color data. This process is not reversible so you cannot save your edits in the same file type. Rather than save the full resultant file after each edit Adobe saves the setting you used. With Lightroom it saves the edit settings in the catalog database. With Ps or Bridge it saves the settings in a sidecar file. It also records the actions in the in the History display.

Since as you noted actions are not commutative ACR automatically applies them in the appropriate (optimal) order. So it starts all over applying the edits in the proper order before showing you the preview. The original raw image is cached in memory to make the editing seem seamless. To answer the OP’s original question order does not matter. Use whatever seems comfortable to you. I repeat my suggestion of leaving the longer operations to last to save time in every do over.

I should have added that it is faster to wait to do the more compute intensive operations such as sharpen/noise reduction and lens correction until the end to save time during editing.

Well ACR (and I assume all raw editors) rebuild the image from scratch after each change to create the preview you see on the screen. The changes are applied in the optimal order so the order in which you apply them does’t matter. By the way, the previews are created only to the resolution and color space required for the monitor to save time and space. In Lightroom the previews are stored with the catalog and when it is exported or sent to Photoshop they are rendered to the resolution and color space specified which is why the export of a number of images takes such a large amount of processing time.

Your eye is really good at adapting both color balance and brightness to surrounding lighting. I find matching a print to is viewing light to be hit or miss mostly miss.

Well I sure am glad we have resolved that issue. May I ask if that hindered understanding the concept? I shall continue to call my meters that assist in the computation exposure meters. But I fear I it sounds awkward “setting the photograph”.

Nobody has accused me of drawing or being artistically inclined and I find my tablet essential and much less frustrating than a mouse.

I bought an Wacom Intuos a few years ago to cure the frustration of trying to simply throw a lasso over something with a mouse. Perhaps, if I were younger? I got the small one because it takes up less room on my cluttered desk. I was concerned that the eye-hand-screen coordination would be difficult but especially at my age but that was a non issue. The setup of the Wacom is quite flexible and can be program specific. But I started with the way it came out of the box intending to eventually optimize the setup but I haven’t found time yet. Eventually to me is if I can’t find a better distraction before I die it will happen. The shakiness that I thought was an unavoidable consequence of aging has diminished. In fact, I thought I would only use the pen for Ps mostly but it turns out it has totally replaced the mouse in my world. In that regard maybe a larger Wacom would be a better choice but I just hate to think I was wrong.

Just for the heck of it you might want to take a peak at https://www.pugetsystems.com/. They build to order custom purpose built workstations that include designs for photography. This may prove to be a useful reference.

The important advantages to the removal of the mirror include not only the IBIS stabilization but the ability to have the rear on the lens closer to the sensor plane and larger flange diameter. Both contribute to simpler, higher performance and lower cost. (Don’t count on lower prices.) I don’t know much about lens design but with the mirror in the way the design must include sort of a telescope to cram the image through a small hole to a sensor far away. All that makes larger aperture prime lenses practical although a f/1.2 lens is much larger than a f/4 lens of the same focal length.

This is the easiest place to apply processing you ALWAYS perform. I see two downsides. Sometimes particularly in the case of very wide angle lenses the result is not desirable. Also I think of the lens correction along with noise reduction and sharpening as relatively processor intensive finishing operations that are best left until after culling and selection.

Ah, the plot thickens!

I have never seriously used ACR in Ps. I played with it to verify that it did everything the Develop module did and vice versa. My history with Adobe started in early 2007 when I retired from my day job and a friend gave me a gift certificate to the local camera store which I used to buy Nikon NX 2? to explore raw post processing. I learned that raw is worthwhile and Nikon is a camera company not a software company. So I eventually sprung for “Photoshop Lightroom 3.0” mostly for the database but also for raw Post. Ps was seriously beyond my budget until the subscription plan emerged. So when really necessary I conned another friends wife who was proficient with Ps to do work for me. So I almost never go directly to ACR in Ps. Furthermore I have opened a smart object in Ps a couple of times so I had never noticed ACR as a plug in. And for no good reason I put a brute of a GPU in my last computer I had built.

That is the basis of my observations . Nevertheless good to know. Thanks.

True. It is my understanding that your filed return is encrypted in the format required by the IRS before it is transmitted to Intuit and forwarded to the IRS so your data cannot be exploited.

On the other hand Intuit, and the others I assume, has been criticized for deceptive practices for hiding free filing agreements with IRS from eligible individuals. And for extensive lobbying (legal bribery?) against report less filing. So individuals who are not self employed have to collect W2s and 1099s to report income to compare it with the same data already reported by payers so they can threaten you if you make a mistake.

Is there a happy ending to anything?

Yes, it does check for updates first every time it opens and it finds them until all settles down which is sometimes after you have filed.

Did anybody ever notice that the first thing a CD does is download the actual current program? Not only tax prep software but all software of any value. Why? Of course, the first reason is they want your unique key before activation of the program. It is called theft prevention. And CDs are way too slow and small to load the full program in a reasonable time. And the IRS doesn’t actually approve the programs until long after those boxes and CDs are entered into the supply chain. Oh, I haven’t owned a computer with a built in disk drive in many moons. However, I do know approximately where my $10 dollar USB drive is stored.