Today’s Question: When in Lightroom Classic, I make adjustments to a RAW file, such as Lens Calibration, then send the image with adjustments into Photoshop, apply some adjustments, and return to Lightroom as a TIFF file. When I look at Lens Calibration for the new file, the boxes are unchecked. Does this mean I need to re-check those boxes, or are the adjustments baked into the returning TIFF file?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The adjustments appear to “reset” in this context because those adjustments were applied to the image that was sent to Photoshop. There is no need to re-apply those adjustments after the derivative image is returned from Photoshop.
More Detail: When you send a raw capture from Lightroom Classic to Photoshop, that raw capture is processed to create a new TIFF or PSD file (depending on the setting established in Preferences). All adjustments you applied in Lightroom’s Develop module for the raw capture are applied to the new TIFF or PSD file. For this reason, when you go to the Develop module for the TIFF/PSD image, the adjustments will have reset to their default values.
Because the adjustments have been applied to the TIFF/PSD image, there is no need to re-apply any of the adjustments. You can, of course, apply additional adjustments above and beyond what you had already applied in Lightroom before sending the image to Photoshop.
As for the Lens Corrections adjustments specifically, you would generally not want to apply those adjustments a second time to the derivative image. Doing so will apply an additional adjustment, which means the adjustment is going beyond the intended purpose of compensating for the behavior of the lens used to capture the image.
Of course, if you apply the adjustment again and like the result, that’s perfectly fine. But in general I would not apply Lens Corrections adjustments more than once to an image, including for a derivative image that has previously had the adjustments applied to it.