Digital Camera World » Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe Camera Raw: 8 tools that will save your raw files

jmeyer — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 23:01:23 +0000

Adobe Camera Raw is a powerful plug-in with which you can accomplish just about any of your photo editing needs. In this latest Raw Tuesday guide to editing raw files we’ll highlight 8 of the most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw for the uninitiated and explain how they can rescue an image.

The Adobe Camera Raw interface can be daunting, especially if you’re figuring out where to start and which tools to use first.

As a rule of thumb it’s best to start working clockwise around the interface, starting with the tools in the top options bar to crop and compose before moving onto the main adjustments under the Basic tab.

Here’s a few of the most common Adobe Camera Raw adjustments.

Your most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw: 1-2

01 White Balance tool
Click into an area of neutral grey within the image to set the white balance. In this image the rocks in the foreground seem like a good point to use.

02 Straighten tool
If you think your picture is a tad askew, click on the horizon on the left of the image and drag the cursor across to the right to quickly level your landscapes.

PAGE 1: Your most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw – 1-2
PAGE 2: Your most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw – 3-4
PAGE 3: Your most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw – 5-6
PAGE 4: Your most important tools in Adobe Camera Raw – 7-8

Exposure Problems: how to make selective adjustments with older software

jmeyer — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:36:33 +0000

Not everyone has the latest photo editing software. But everyone from time to time wants to correct exposure problems. This quick tutorial shows you a really simple technique for how to make selective adjustments using older versions of Camera Raw.

Adobe Camera Raw’s clever Adjustment Brush does an amazing job of enabling you to selectively dodge or burn (lighten or darken) the tones of your raw format files.

However, this extremely cool little tool is only available in Photoshop CS4 onwards. This means that if you have an older copy of Photoshop CS or are using Photoshop Elements’ more basic Camera Raw editor then you’ll need to try using an alternative technique.

In order to get the best results, and keep artefacts to a minimum, here we’re going to use the Camera Raw editor’s sliders to create two versions of our shot.

We will then show you how to combine the relevant areas in the standard Camera Raw editor using layers, masks and brush strokes. Finally, we’ll demonstrate how to make further selective adjustments to the image.

The easy way to correct exposure problems in older versions of Camera Raw

01 Create a background version
Open your start image in your Camera Raw editor. Use the techniques covered in step 1 to crop the shot. Set Recovery to 30 to remove clipped highlights and push Blacks up to 10 for darker shadows. Click Open Image. This version of the shot features correctly-exposed background details.

02 Tweak the tones
Go to File>Open Recent>selective_before.dng. The start image will open with the crop and tone tweaks you made in the previous step. Push Exposure up to +0.20, drag Fill Light to 50 to lighten the backlit face and push Contrast to +49. Drag Clarity to -21 to smooth the blotchy skin and set Vibrance to +36.

03 Combine the images
Click Open Image to take the second version into the standard editor. Choose Select>All then Edit>Copy. Go to the darker version and choose Edit> Paste. Layer 1 exposes the scene to reveal the backlit boy, while the Background layer is exposed for the rest of the scene. Choose Layer>Layer Mask>Hide All.

04 Make selective adjustments
Grab the Brush tool. Choose a soft round tip from the Brush Preset picker and set Size to 300. Click on the black layer mask, set the foreground colour to white and spray the white brush over the boy to selectively lighten him while leaving the background on the layer below unaltered.

Batch Processing: how to edit multiple photos in Adobe Camera Raw

jmeyer — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 01:00:24 +0000

Want to speed up your digital workflow? Learning the simple art of batch processing and how to edit multiple photos in Adobe Camera Raw will save you time when fine tuning your raw files. In our latest Raw Tuesday tutorial on editing raw format files we show you exactly how it’s done.

Adobe Camera Raw is the best place to begin editing your raw format files. The tidy interface and intuitive tools help to make editing raw files a simple task. With options to tweak colour, apply sharpening and correct distortion, you can perform the kind of tasks photographers need to make to improve their images.

As well as a powerful raw editor, Adobe Camera Raw can also be a great time-saver. By opening several files at once you can make universal edits to the whole group.

This can be handy if, for example, you need to change the white balance on a batch of images or save them as JPEGs. It’s ideal for making speedy changes to a set of images that has been shot under similar conditions, like at a wedding.

Here we’ll show you how to use Adobe Camera Raw for a typical batch-process task. We’ll apply a couple of crucial edits before converting to low-resolution JPEGs for printing. These techniques are guaranteed to save you time, leaving you more time to take photos!

Batch processing step-by-step

01 Open raw files
Open Adobe Bridge, then navigate to the five batch.NEF files. Select the first file, then hold shift and click on the last one to select them all. Right-click and choose ‘Open in Camera Raw’. JPEG and TIFF files can be opened into Adobe Camera Raw in the same way.

02 Click Select All
Click through the images and choose one that’s most typical, then click the ‘Select All’ button at the top right of the interface. Now any changes you make using the panels to the right of the screen will be applied universally Adobe Camera Rawoss the whole set.

03 Set Camera Calibration
Go to the Camera Calibration tab and click on the Mode: drop-down. Choose ‘Camera D2X Mode 3’ from the list. It’s always worth experimenting with the different presets in this drop-down list, as the default ‘Adobe Standard’ doesn’t always give the best results.

04 Apply Basic Tweaks
Click on the Basic Panel, then adjust the sliders to set Exposure +0.15, Contrast +5, Shadows +6, Clarity +5 and Vibrance +10. Hold down Alt and drag the Whites slider to about +16, until you just begin to see pixels being clipped to white.

05 Choose Output options
Click the blue link at the bottom centre of the interface to access Workflow Options. We want to prepare the images for printing at around 6×4 inches, so click the size drop-down and choose the smallest option: 1024×1539. Set resolution to 300 pixels/inch and click OK.

06 Save as JPEGs
Double-click the Zoom tool to zoom to 100%, then click the Detail Panel. Set Sharpening Amount 45, Radius 1.4, Masking 30. Click the Save Images button. Choose a destination, select naming options, then set Format: JPEG, Quality 12 and hit OK. Finally, click Done.

Apply settings with Bridge
If you decide, after editing a raw file, that you want to apply the same effect to similar images, right-click the thumbnail of the edited raw file in Adobe Bridge and choose Develop Settings> Copy Settings. Select the images, right-click and pick Develop Settings> Paste settings, then choose which settings you want to paste.

Muted Colors: the perfect desaturation technique for Adobe Camera Raw

jmeyer — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 02:00:50 +0000

Find out how to make ‘on trend’ portraits with muted colors. In our latest photo editing tutorial we show you how to use Adobe Camera Raw to get creative with desaturation to make portraits with a touch of class.

Anyone who travelled to far-flung places over the summer will have come home with lots of colorful travel photos. Now the evenings are drawing in, it’s the perfect time to get creative.

Photoshop makes it very easy to increase colors and make your images ‘pop’, but it’s a look that has become passé through overuse. So why not go the other way instead and see what muted colors can add?

A muted color palette with carefully enhanced tones can lend your images a contemporary look that feels both fresh and retro.

Our original shot

Increasingly photographers are choosing to make the majority of their tonal edits using Adobe Camera Raw. In fact, to get the look we’re after here we’ll work exclusively in Adobe Camera Raw, without even opening the file in the main Photoshop interface.

Adobe’s powerful raw plug-in is the easiest and most intuitive place to begin editing your raw format files. It has several tools for making selective adjustments to different areas of your image, and every change you make is reversible.

It’s this control over every part of the process that makes Adobe Camera Raw (and the near-identical Develop Module in Photoshop Lightroom) such a useful image editor. The more you use it the more you’ll realise that opening files into the main Photoshop interface is often unnecessary.

Here, we’ll show you how to use Adobe Camera Raw to get creative with color saturation, selectively altering tones for understated beauty in your portrait photography.

How to achieve creative, muted colors in Adobe Camera Raw, steps 1-9

01 Open in Adobe Camera Raw
Open Adobe Bridge and click on your start image. Right-click the file and go to Open in Camera Raw to open the file into the Adobe Camera Raw interface. You don’t need to have Photoshop open. This works with JPEGs and TIFFs, as well as raw files.

02 Camera calibration
Click on the Camera Profile panel, then go to the Camera Profile drop-down and choose Camera Neutral. Move on to the colour sliders: set Shadows to -12, Red Primary Hue to +21, Saturation to -15, Green Primary Hue to +60 and Blue Primary Hue to -20.

03 Back to Basics
Click the Basic panel icon, then use the sliders to adjust the tones. Set Temperature to 4950, Exposure to +0.45, Highlights to -30 and Shadows to +15. Hold down Alt while dragging Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Whites or Blacks to check for clipped pixels.

04 Tweak colour saturation
Move to the Vibrance and Saturation sliders at the bottom of the Basic panel. First drag Saturation back to about -17 to dull down the overall colour saturation. Next drag Vibrance up to about +35 to make some of the muted colours slightly more intense.

05 Boost the contrast
Click the Tone Curve Panel icon, then select the Point tab. Make a subtle ‘S’ shape to increase the contrast: click halfway up the line, drag up to lighten the midtones and highlights, then click and drag a second point in the lower left to darken the shadow tones.

06 Lower red saturation
Grab the Targeted Adjustment tool from the toolbar at the top of the interface, then right-click within the image and choose Saturation. Click and drag down on the red sign to target and lower the saturation of the reds. Stop when the Reds slider gets to about -22.

07 Drop the blues
Use the Targeted Adjustment tool to reduce the Blues and Aquas. Click and drag down over the shirt to lower the blues to about -61 and Aquas to about -17. Click on the Hue tab in the HSL Greyscale panel and set Greens to +43 and Aquas to +43.

08 Paint over the skin
Grab the Adjustment Brush, then click on the girl’s skin to set a pin. In the settings on the right, check Show Mask, then paint over the rest of the skin. You can set a conspicuous mask colour such as the green here by clicking the colour box next to Show Mask.

09 Lighten the skin
When you’re happy with your painted mask, uncheck Show Mask, then use the sliders to change the tones in the painted area. Set Shadows to +16, Clarity to -10 and Saturation to -15, then double-click all the other sliders to reset them to their defaults.

PAGE 1: How to achieve creative, muted colors in Adobe Camera Raw, steps 1-9
PAGE 2: How to achieve creative, muted colors in Adobe Camera Raw, steps 10-18

3 selective adjustment tools your raw files can’t live without

jmeyer — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 02:00:35 +0000

In the latest post of our Raw Tuesday series on editing raw format images we show you how to make selective adjustments to your raw format files with three key selective adjustment tools in Adobe Camera Raw.

Since the days of dodging and burning in the darkroom, making selective adjustments to different areas of your image has always been an essential skill for photographers.

Before Photoshop CS4, adjustments made in Adobe Camera Raw were limited in that you could only apply them to the entire image. But with the introduction of the Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush, Adobe Camera Raw suddenly became a whole lot more useful.

In Adobe Camera Raw version 7 (which comes as standard with Photoshop CS6) the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter tools have been improved with extra options to adjust white balance, making it easy to selectively correct white balance and warm or cool an image.

The tools have been used here to cool down the sky and add warmth to the land, and to tease out details in the foreground. We’ve also used the Targeted Adjustment tool to boost the saturation of the orange colours in the sky.

On the next few pages we’ll show how to use each of the Graduated Filter, Adjustment Brush and Targeted Adjustment tools, as well as how to use them to get a more accurate white balance.

PAGE 1: Overview of selective adjustment tools
PAGE 2: Graduated Filter
PAGE 3: Adjustment Brush
PAGE 4: Targeted Adjustments
PAGE 5: Using selective adjustment tools for accurate white balance

Black and white photo effects: how Camera Raw can make pro-quality mono

jmeyer — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 02:00:18 +0000

Adobe introduced dedicated options for converting colour shots into black and white photography back in Photoshop CS3, but you can create eye-catching black and white photo effects in any version of Adobe Camera Raw by desaturating a colour image and then working the sliders in the Basic tab. In our latest Raw Tuesday post on using the raw format, discover how to work these sliders in a different way to produce pleasing black and white photo effects.

Be prepared to boost contrast further by increasing Exposure to brighten the highlights and increasing Blacks to deepen shadows – you can get away with a greater degree of clipping in mono shots and even use it for creative effects.

Photoshop CS3 saw the introduction of the HSL/Grayscale tab to ACR. The HSL controls enable you to alter the Hue (the actual colour value), Saturation (colour intensity) and Luminance (lightness) of a colour range, such as Reds, Oranges, Magentas and so on.

If you click the Convert to Grayscale box at the top of the HSL/Grayscale tab, you’ll see the same set of colour sliders as in HSL mode, but in Grayscale mode they control the mix of information from the red, green and blue channels in the black and white image.

Our image as it originally appeared

You’ll be familiar with this process if you’ve used Photoshop’s Channel Mixer for grayscale conversions, the Black and White dialog in CS3/CS4, or Elements’ Convert to Black and White: by lightening or darkening particular shades of grey, you can change the appearance and feel of the mono image dramatically.

Once you’ve fine-tuned the mono effect, make final adjustments with the Basic sliders.

PAGE 1: Using the Camera Raw basic tab
PAGE 2: Custom black and white photo effects for portraits
PAGE 3: Custom black and white photo effects for landscapes
PAGE 4: Custom black and white photo effects for coastal shots
PAGE 5: Common questions about black and white photo effects in Adobe Camera Raw

4 Camera Raw tools for image correction you have to start using

jmeyer — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 01:00:56 +0000

In our latest Raw Tuesday post on using the raw format, find out what tools Adobe Camera Raw offers for image correction. Discover the 4 best tools to fix capture-related flaws, including red-eye, noise and dust spots.

Adobe Camera Raw can’t prevent photo flaws caused by your lens or camera, such as dust spots or colour fringing. Nor can it preclude the sorts of defects almost always inherent in digital capture, such as noise or general ‘softness’.

Successive versions of Camera Raw have, however, added new tools and options designed to tackle image flaws like these, all of which take advantage of the extra image data contained in RAW files and Camera Raw’s ability to edit this non-destructively. Here are four of the software’s most powerful tools for image correction.

The Straighten Tool

You can level and crop a tilted image in a single operation. If you have an image that isn’t level but contains a line that you know should be horizontal, you can level the image by clicking and dragging with the Straighten Tool along that line.

It will also work with a vertical line. Engage [Caps Lock] to turn the cursor into crosshairs for greater precision. A crop box rotated to the angle of the line appears; it will have the aspect ratio selected in the Crop Tool’s options menu.

Under Photoshop CS4 or Elements 7 and above, as with the Crop Tool, you can press [Enter] to apply the correction.

In other versions it won’t be applied until you open the image in Photoshop/Elements, so you may find it easier to level the shot there, particularly if it suffers from further flaws such as perspective distortion.

PAGE 1: Camera Raw Straighten Tool
PAGE 2: Noise reduction in Camera Raw
PAGE 3: Removing dust spots in Camera Raw
PAGE 4: Sharpening in Camera Raw

Raw Editing: what you need to know about white balance correction

jmeyer — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 01:00:43 +0000

In our latest Raw Tuesday post on using the raw format, find out the subtleties of white balance correction and how to neutralise colour casts.

White balance settings are necessary because ‘white’ light isn’t plain white at all. Different light sources and lighting conditions have different colour temperatures: indoor lighting is warmer (more orange) than daylight, though daylight itself is warmer at dawn, turns cooler (more blue) in the course of the day, and becomes warmer again towards sunset.

Your brain compensates automatically, so that you perceive colours as pretty consistent; and your camera’s Auto White Balance setting is designed to do the same.

However, it can get it wrong, overcompensating when you don’t want it to and coming up with unusual hues in mixed lighting.

You might be lucky: your camera’s Auto (or preset, for that matter) WB setting may have been spot-on, so your image appears perfectly neutral when you open it in Adobe Camera Raw with the default As Shot setting applied.

However, considering that Auto settings aren’t infallible and camera presets are generic, you’re likely to have to make some minor tweaks at the very least.

Go to the White Balance menu in the Basic tab, and try the Auto setting first; if that doesn’t do the trick, try the preset you think best represents the lighting conditions under which the shot was taken.

The presets (not available if the shot isn’t a raw file) correspond to settings found on most cameras, and have the same effect on the image as choosing that setting in-camera would have done.

Flicking between As Shot, Auto and the presets will give you a fair idea of what works, and you can fine-tune with the Temperature (blue/yellow) and Tint (green/magenta) sliders.

Alternatively, you can click on a suitable tone with the White Balance Tool.

PAGE 1: What you need to know about raw white balance correction
PAGE 2: How to fix a colour cast
PAGE 3: Common questions about white balance correction

Raw Tuesday: how to rescue a raw file in Adobe Camera Raw

jmeyer — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 01:00:44 +0000

Even though our Raw Tuesday series is concerned with using the raw format, we must acknowledge that JPEGs do have their advantages – the file sizes are smaller, and shots are ‘ready to go’ straight from the camera.

But if you’re serious about photography you should set your camera to shoot Raw. And perhaps the biggest reason why should do this is, in addition to getting the best possible quality, shooting raw files gives you an invaluable safety net when the scene in front of you presents exposure problems.

Our start image

In our landscape photo above, the foreground is slightly overexposed, and consequently the sky looks washed out and lacking in detail. Luckily there’s a lot more tonal information hidden in Raw files than you might think; the trick is knowing how to tease it out, and if you have

Photoshop CS, then you’ve got one of the most powerful Raw converters available: Adobe Camera Raw.

As well as sliders for adjusting exposure, contrast and colour, ACR under CS4 and newer includes additional tools, including the Graduated Filter and Spot Removal tools.

The way Camera Raw is set up, with easily accessible panels and tools, makes it easy to quickly apply multiple edits.

And while you may not get the full range of creative tools that are available in Photoshop, you do get all the tools a photographer needs to optimise exposure and colour.

Our final image

Adobe Camera Raw is the ideal place to begin your photo editing – and you may even find you don’t need to open an image in the main Photoshop interface at all.

On the next page we’ll show you step-by-step how to rescue highlight detail and balance your exposure in any shot using Adobe Camera Raw. Follow these simple steps and stop wasting pictures once and for all!

NEXT PAGE: step-by-step how to rescue highlight detail in raw files

Raw Tuesday: how to combine multiple raw files for a perfect exposure

jmeyer — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 02:00:33 +0000

In our latest Raw Tuesday post on using the raw format we address one of the more common technique questions we hear, namely how to make an image from multiple raw conversions.

So why would you want to combine multiple raw conversions in one image? There are two main reasons why you might do this, and both will help you to get a well-exposed shot in difficult lighting conditions.

The first is to combine two different conversions, adjusting the exposure of the second to deal with high-contrast lighting – see our image, below.

Our final version

The effect is similar to using  a graduated Neutral Density (ND grad) lens filter to darken the top half of your image, but you have much more control over the transition between the two exposures.

Our original shot

You can also combine two raw conversions saved with different white balance settings, which allows you to warm up or cool down different areas, rather than the image as a whole.

Combine raw files for a perfect exposure

01 Duplicate your image
To save time when making your adjustments it’s best to create a duplicate of your raw file. This way you can make individual adjustments to each file, rather than opening and adjusting the same image twice.

02 Open in Adobe Camera Raw
Select both raw files by holding the Ctrl button and clicking on both, and then open them in ACR. This should be the default action, but you can also right-click and choose the Open in Camera Raw option.

03 Adjust your images
Now you can make the different adjustments for each image. For our shot we chose a cooler white balance for the first image, which we used for the sky, and a warmer one  for the foreground in the second image.

04 Adjust the exposure 
For the second image, where we wanted  to bring out detail in the rocks, we used the Exposure slider to lighten the image a little,  then used the Fill Light adjustment to lighten  the rocks and sea.

05 Layer your shots
Now select both images and open them in the Edit window. Select the light image (Ctrl+A) and copy (Ctrl+C) and paste it (Ctrl+V) onto the dark one. Make sure the top layer is selected by clicking on it, then click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.

06 Mask out the sky
Using a soft round brush, make sure that the foreground colour is set to black and the Opacity is set to around 25%. Paint over the sky to mask out the lighter image and reveal the darker sky below, and any other areas you want to darken. Remember, don’t get carried away…

Read the rest of our Raw Tuesday series