Any time you open a RAW file in Photoshop, by using either the File --> Open command or by double-clicking the image thumbnail in Bridge, the image is automatically displayed in the Camera Raw dialog box. You can also choose to edit TIFF and JPEG images in Camera Raw as described in the previous section. You cannot access any of the traditional Photoshop tools or menus while the Camera Raw plug-in workspace is active. The Camera Raw dialog now contains eight control panels, each one featuring different adjustment options. Click one of the eight menu tabs to display a panel. Each menu tab is labeled with a descriptive icon.
Camera Raw Tools and Settings
As you can see, the Camera Raw plug-in workspace contains many options for optimizing RAW, TIFF, and JPEG images. Before we start optimizing print images with Camera Raw, let’s first take a close look at the dialog box and its various controls:
- Image Preview and Navigation Tools The Camera Raw interface contains its own preview window and its own set of navigational controls, including a Zoom tool, a Zoom Level menu, a Hand tool, a clockwise rotation tool, and a counterclockwise rotation tool. The preview window takes up the entire left side of the dialog, and the tools are positioned just above it in the upper left. You can access the Zoom tool by pressing Z on the keyboard or by clicking the Zoom tool icon. It works like the traditional Photoshop Zoom tool; you zoom in by clicking anywhere in the image preview area and zoom out by Option/Alt+clicking. You can also zoom in or out by using the + or – zoom level buttons located underneath the image preview at the bottom left of the dialog. Or if you prefer, you can also choose a zoom level preset from the menu to the right of the + or – buttons. You may find it easier to use the traditional zoom commands of F+ or – (Mac) or Ctrl+ or – (Win); you can also use them in the RAW workspace environment. Finally, the F/Ctrl and Option/Alt keys will temporarily change the current tool to the Zoom In and Zoom Out tools, respectively.
The Hand tool allows you to reposition a zoomed image in the window by clicking and dragging in the preview area. To access the tool, click the Hand icon or press H. You can also press and hold the spacebar to temporarily access the Hand tool while you have one of the other tools accessed, just as you can when editing images in the Photoshop workspace. The Camera Raw workspace also offers two Rotate tools: one for rotating an image 90° clockwise and one for rotating 90° counterclockwise. You can change image orientation by using either of these Rotate tools. When you exit the Camera Raw interface, the image’s current orientation is saved along with the file and is displayed exactly the same way when reopened.
- White Balance Tool The White Balance eyedropper works much like the middle eyedropper located in the Levels and Curves dialog boxes. Click in the image preview area to set a 50% (or neutral) gray point. This allows Photoshop to determine the proper Temperature and Tint settings to accommodate for removing all of the color in the area where you clicked. When using the White Balance eyedropper, you should always click in an area of the image that should be gray and not contain any color.
- Color Sampler Tool You can use the Color Sampler eyedropper along with the RGB values displayed below the histogram just as you would the Color Sampler tool and Info palette in Photoshop. Use the Color Sampler to mark reference points in the image. You can use these reference points when making tonal adjustments with Tonal Curves, or Color adjustments with the HSL controls.
- Crop and Straighten Tools Click and drag with the Crop tool to determine how much of the image will appear when opening it in Photoshop. By clicking and holding the Crop tool icon, you can access a pop-up menu and choose from a list of preset width/height ratios. Choose Custom to enter precise width and height values. To fix a crooked image, click and drag a straight line with the Straighten tool across any area that should be perfectly horizontal or vertical. Letting up on the mouse displays a cropping rectangle, which shows you how the image will appear when opening it in Photoshop.
- Retouch Tool The Retouch tool allows you to make quick touch-up repairs directly in Camera Raw. Although this tool is no substitute for the much more sophisticated retouch tools available in Photoshop, it can be used to quickly remove small, unwanted spots or blemishes present in any RAW files, TIFFS, or JPEGs that can be edited in Camera Raw. You might consider using this tool to quickly clean up images prior to creating a photo contact sheet through Bridge. By doing so, you can quickly clean up any small noticeable blemishes that would otherwise appear in the thumbnails. However, all other print image retouching processes should be done in Photoshop and not in Camera Raw. To use the Retouch tool, select it from the toolbar at the top of the window. Then, from the Type drop-down list, choose whether to Heal or Clone. Healing is generally a softer, much less noticeable retouching technique, and is best used for removing spots and blemishes. Choose a brush radius setting and click once over the center of the spot with the tool. Camera Raw samples from the nearest available image area and applies the retouching. Once retouching is applied, two circles are displayed over the image area: a red circle to indicate the retouched area and a green circle to indicate the sampled area. You can hide and show these circles by toggling the Show Overlay control. If you didn’t quite get the Radius setting right on your first try with the Retouch tool, click the Clear All button to remove all applied retouching. You can then reset the Radius setting and try again. Another much easier way to go about this is to marquee over the retouch area. To do so, center the crosshair cursor over the spot and drag out.
- Red Eye Removal Tool The Red Eye Removal tool in Camera Raw works exactly like the Red Eye Removal tool in the Photoshop workspace. Set the preferred Pupil Size and Darken Amount values and click anywhere near the red pupil. Photoshop automatically locates the red color, removes it, and darkens the area. The Darken Amount setting determines how dark the pupil will become when clicking with the tool. If the tool makes the pupil appear solid black, choose Edit ➢Undo (F/Ctrl+Z), lower the Darken Amount percentage, and click again. Higher Pupil Size settings tend to hide detail in the pupil. To retain detail when removing redeye, choose Pupil Size settings that are between 10–30%. Never use the default 50% or above.
- Preferences Toggle For graphic designers and production artists, I recommend leaving the Camera Raw preferences set to their defaults. There’s really nothing here you can change that will make your workflow any better or faster. However, if you’re interested in experimenting with some of these options, such as the Apply Auto Tone Adjustments feature, click the Preferences toggle button to open the Camera Raw Preferences dialog box and change the settings. I prefer to apply auto tone adjustments manually to images as needed, rather than to every image I open in Camera Raw.
- Workflow Options Workflow options control how much information is delivered to Photoshop when the image is opened. At the bottom of the Camera Raw dialog box, underneath the image preview, there is a single line of blue, underlined text that describes the currently chosen workflow option settings. To access the Workflow Options dialog box and change these settings, click the workflow summary text.
- Space From this menu, choose a working color space in Camera Raw (the range of colors your image is capable of using). For consistency when editing print images, always choose the same working RGB color space that is chosen in Photoshop’s Color Settings dialog box.
- Depth This menu allows you to choose whether to edit the image data in 8 bits/channel or 16 bits/channel.
- Size and Resolution These settings determine the size of your image when printed at 100%. The size setting in the list that does not have a + or – symbol displayed after it indicates the image size that the camera captured. Any other settings that are chosen cause Photoshop to scale the image up (+) or down (–) through a process called interpolation. Scaling an image up or down affects its resolution, and ultimately its print quality. The downside to resizing an image in Camera Raw is that the Workflow Options dialog box does not automatically adjust the resolution setting as it does in the Image Size dialog in Photoshop when the Resample Image option is disabled. Therefore, you must manually calculate and change the resolution setting in Camera Raw before opening the image in Photoshop. I recommend leaving the Size Menu setting at what the camera captured and the Resolution setting at its default 240ppi. You’re better off letting Photoshop do the resampling calculations by using the Image Size dialog after the image is opened.
- Open In Photoshop As Smart Objects Enabling this option allows you to create a new document containing the source file as a placed smart object. Photoshop applies the same dimensions to the smart object as what is contained in the source file. Smart objects can be used to retain access to the adjustments made in Camera Raw even after the image is opened in Photoshop. Also, if you plan to apply smart filters to the image, you should enable this option, as they can be applied only to smart objects.
- Histogram and Show Clipping The Camera Raw workspace also contains its own histogram, positioned in the upper right of the dialog. It is similar to working with the Histogram palette when all color channels are made visible. The Camera Raw histogram maps out all of the tonal values for the Red, Green, and Blue channels of the image once rendered. Notice that the histogram also displays cyan, magenta, and yellow. These colors represent the places where primary colors overlap. Magenta represents the overlap of red and blue without green; cyan represents the overlap of green and blue without red; and yellow represents the overlap of red and green without blue. The white area of the histogram represents luminosity levels in the image. The histogram changes to reflect adjustments made to the image by using the white balance and tonal controls.
Keep an eye on the histogram as you make your adjustments. In theory, a well-distributed histogram indicates an ideally exposed image. Clumps of color positioned to the far left or far right indicate that the image is either too dark or too light, respectively. If any one color is dominant, this indicates a color shift in that direction, which may or may not need to be adjusted, depending on the type of image you are working with.
You can use the Highlight and Shadow clipping controls along with the histogram to help locate areas of the image that contain what is known as clipping—pixel values that are too bright or too dark to be represented when the image is opened in Photoshop. When the Clipping Warning options are enabled, the plug-in displays any areas containing highlights with no pixels (aka blowout) in red, and any shadow areas containing pure black (aka blocked shadows) in blue. After you’ve identified clipped areas of an image, you can correct them by using the tonal controls.
- Image Settings applies the settings from the previous conversion of the image that you are currently working with. If the image has never been converted, this is the same as choosing Camera Raw Defaults.
- Camera Raw Defaults applies the default settings that you’ve created. If you haven’t created your own default settings, choosing this option applies the exposure, white balance, and sharpness settings as they were shot by the camera.
- Previous Conversion applies the settings from the previous Camera Raw image converted.
- Custom Settings is automatically selected any time you move the white balance or tonal control sliders. You can save your custom settings as a new Camera Raw default by clicking the arrow to the right of the Settings menu and choosing Save New Camera Raw Defaults. To revert to the original camera settings, choose Reset Camera Raw defaults.
Camera Raw Tools and Settings
As you can see, the Camera Raw plug-in workspace contains many options for optimizing RAW, TIFF, and JPEG images. Before we start optimizing print images with Camera Raw, let’s first take a close look at the dialog box and its various controls:
- Image Preview and Navigation Tools The Camera Raw interface contains its own preview window and its own set of navigational controls, including a Zoom tool, a Zoom Level menu, a Hand tool, a clockwise rotation tool, and a counterclockwise rotation tool. The preview window takes up the entire left side of the dialog, and the tools are positioned just above it in the upper left. You can access the Zoom tool by pressing Z on the keyboard or by clicking the Zoom tool icon. It works like the traditional Photoshop Zoom tool; you zoom in by clicking anywhere in the image preview area and zoom out by Option/Alt+clicking. You can also zoom in or out by using the + or – zoom level buttons located underneath the image preview at the bottom left of the dialog. Or if you prefer, you can also choose a zoom level preset from the menu to the right of the + or – buttons. You may find it easier to use the traditional zoom commands of F+ or – (Mac) or Ctrl+ or – (Win); you can also use them in the RAW workspace environment. Finally, the F/Ctrl and Option/Alt keys will temporarily change the current tool to the Zoom In and Zoom Out tools, respectively.
The Hand tool allows you to reposition a zoomed image in the window by clicking and dragging in the preview area. To access the tool, click the Hand icon or press H. You can also press and hold the spacebar to temporarily access the Hand tool while you have one of the other tools accessed, just as you can when editing images in the Photoshop workspace. The Camera Raw workspace also offers two Rotate tools: one for rotating an image 90° clockwise and one for rotating 90° counterclockwise. You can change image orientation by using either of these Rotate tools. When you exit the Camera Raw interface, the image’s current orientation is saved along with the file and is displayed exactly the same way when reopened.
- White Balance Tool The White Balance eyedropper works much like the middle eyedropper located in the Levels and Curves dialog boxes. Click in the image preview area to set a 50% (or neutral) gray point. This allows Photoshop to determine the proper Temperature and Tint settings to accommodate for removing all of the color in the area where you clicked. When using the White Balance eyedropper, you should always click in an area of the image that should be gray and not contain any color.
- Color Sampler Tool You can use the Color Sampler eyedropper along with the RGB values displayed below the histogram just as you would the Color Sampler tool and Info palette in Photoshop. Use the Color Sampler to mark reference points in the image. You can use these reference points when making tonal adjustments with Tonal Curves, or Color adjustments with the HSL controls.
- Crop and Straighten Tools Click and drag with the Crop tool to determine how much of the image will appear when opening it in Photoshop. By clicking and holding the Crop tool icon, you can access a pop-up menu and choose from a list of preset width/height ratios. Choose Custom to enter precise width and height values. To fix a crooked image, click and drag a straight line with the Straighten tool across any area that should be perfectly horizontal or vertical. Letting up on the mouse displays a cropping rectangle, which shows you how the image will appear when opening it in Photoshop.
- Retouch Tool The Retouch tool allows you to make quick touch-up repairs directly in Camera Raw. Although this tool is no substitute for the much more sophisticated retouch tools available in Photoshop, it can be used to quickly remove small, unwanted spots or blemishes present in any RAW files, TIFFS, or JPEGs that can be edited in Camera Raw. You might consider using this tool to quickly clean up images prior to creating a photo contact sheet through Bridge. By doing so, you can quickly clean up any small noticeable blemishes that would otherwise appear in the thumbnails. However, all other print image retouching processes should be done in Photoshop and not in Camera Raw. To use the Retouch tool, select it from the toolbar at the top of the window. Then, from the Type drop-down list, choose whether to Heal or Clone. Healing is generally a softer, much less noticeable retouching technique, and is best used for removing spots and blemishes. Choose a brush radius setting and click once over the center of the spot with the tool. Camera Raw samples from the nearest available image area and applies the retouching. Once retouching is applied, two circles are displayed over the image area: a red circle to indicate the retouched area and a green circle to indicate the sampled area. You can hide and show these circles by toggling the Show Overlay control. If you didn’t quite get the Radius setting right on your first try with the Retouch tool, click the Clear All button to remove all applied retouching. You can then reset the Radius setting and try again. Another much easier way to go about this is to marquee over the retouch area. To do so, center the crosshair cursor over the spot and drag out.
- Red Eye Removal Tool The Red Eye Removal tool in Camera Raw works exactly like the Red Eye Removal tool in the Photoshop workspace. Set the preferred Pupil Size and Darken Amount values and click anywhere near the red pupil. Photoshop automatically locates the red color, removes it, and darkens the area. The Darken Amount setting determines how dark the pupil will become when clicking with the tool. If the tool makes the pupil appear solid black, choose Edit ➢Undo (F/Ctrl+Z), lower the Darken Amount percentage, and click again. Higher Pupil Size settings tend to hide detail in the pupil. To retain detail when removing redeye, choose Pupil Size settings that are between 10–30%. Never use the default 50% or above.
- Preferences Toggle For graphic designers and production artists, I recommend leaving the Camera Raw preferences set to their defaults. There’s really nothing here you can change that will make your workflow any better or faster. However, if you’re interested in experimenting with some of these options, such as the Apply Auto Tone Adjustments feature, click the Preferences toggle button to open the Camera Raw Preferences dialog box and change the settings. I prefer to apply auto tone adjustments manually to images as needed, rather than to every image I open in Camera Raw.
- Workflow Options Workflow options control how much information is delivered to Photoshop when the image is opened. At the bottom of the Camera Raw dialog box, underneath the image preview, there is a single line of blue, underlined text that describes the currently chosen workflow option settings. To access the Workflow Options dialog box and change these settings, click the workflow summary text.
- Space From this menu, choose a working color space in Camera Raw (the range of colors your image is capable of using). For consistency when editing print images, always choose the same working RGB color space that is chosen in Photoshop’s Color Settings dialog box.
- Depth This menu allows you to choose whether to edit the image data in 8 bits/channel or 16 bits/channel.
- Size and Resolution These settings determine the size of your image when printed at 100%. The size setting in the list that does not have a + or – symbol displayed after it indicates the image size that the camera captured. Any other settings that are chosen cause Photoshop to scale the image up (+) or down (–) through a process called interpolation. Scaling an image up or down affects its resolution, and ultimately its print quality. The downside to resizing an image in Camera Raw is that the Workflow Options dialog box does not automatically adjust the resolution setting as it does in the Image Size dialog in Photoshop when the Resample Image option is disabled. Therefore, you must manually calculate and change the resolution setting in Camera Raw before opening the image in Photoshop. I recommend leaving the Size Menu setting at what the camera captured and the Resolution setting at its default 240ppi. You’re better off letting Photoshop do the resampling calculations by using the Image Size dialog after the image is opened.
- Open In Photoshop As Smart Objects Enabling this option allows you to create a new document containing the source file as a placed smart object. Photoshop applies the same dimensions to the smart object as what is contained in the source file. Smart objects can be used to retain access to the adjustments made in Camera Raw even after the image is opened in Photoshop. Also, if you plan to apply smart filters to the image, you should enable this option, as they can be applied only to smart objects.
- Histogram and Show Clipping The Camera Raw workspace also contains its own histogram, positioned in the upper right of the dialog. It is similar to working with the Histogram palette when all color channels are made visible. The Camera Raw histogram maps out all of the tonal values for the Red, Green, and Blue channels of the image once rendered. Notice that the histogram also displays cyan, magenta, and yellow. These colors represent the places where primary colors overlap. Magenta represents the overlap of red and blue without green; cyan represents the overlap of green and blue without red; and yellow represents the overlap of red and green without blue. The white area of the histogram represents luminosity levels in the image. The histogram changes to reflect adjustments made to the image by using the white balance and tonal controls.
Keep an eye on the histogram as you make your adjustments. In theory, a well-distributed histogram indicates an ideally exposed image. Clumps of color positioned to the far left or far right indicate that the image is either too dark or too light, respectively. If any one color is dominant, this indicates a color shift in that direction, which may or may not need to be adjusted, depending on the type of image you are working with.
You can use the Highlight and Shadow clipping controls along with the histogram to help locate areas of the image that contain what is known as clipping—pixel values that are too bright or too dark to be represented when the image is opened in Photoshop. When the Clipping Warning options are enabled, the plug-in displays any areas containing highlights with no pixels (aka blowout) in red, and any shadow areas containing pure black (aka blocked shadows) in blue. After you’ve identified clipped areas of an image, you can correct them by using the tonal controls.
- Image Settings applies the settings from the previous conversion of the image that you are currently working with. If the image has never been converted, this is the same as choosing Camera Raw Defaults.
- Camera Raw Defaults applies the default settings that you’ve created. If you haven’t created your own default settings, choosing this option applies the exposure, white balance, and sharpness settings as they were shot by the camera.
- Previous Conversion applies the settings from the previous Camera Raw image converted.
- Custom Settings is automatically selected any time you move the white balance or tonal control sliders. You can save your custom settings as a new Camera Raw default by clicking the arrow to the right of the Settings menu and choosing Save New Camera Raw Defaults. To revert to the original camera settings, choose Reset Camera Raw defaults.
Using the Camera Raw Dialog Box in Photoshop
![Using the Camera Raw Dialog Box in Photoshop]()
Reviewed by Pepen2710
on
8:39:00 PM
Rating:
No comments:
Post a Comment