Working with RAW Images and Camera Raw in Photoshop

By default the Camera Raw 4.0 plug-in is installed with Photoshop CS3. In order to work with RAW files in Photoshop, the images must be saved in the RAW format when photographed or converted to the DNG format. All professional-level digital cameras,  as well as most prosumer and many higher-end consumer cameras, allow you to save images in a native RAW file format (as well as in JPEG or TIFF format). If you’re shooting your own photos to be used in print layouts, be sure to check your user guide to find out whether your camera has this option. If so, you can usually choose it from the camera’s setup menu.

When you shoot in JPEG format (or TIFF), the camera does some processing as it saves the image, including adding compression. RAW files are actually made up of unprocessed data just as it is captured by the camera’s image sensor. Shooting in RAW format allows you to capture a wider range of colors and acquire much more accurate image detail, and editing them in Camera Raw is nondestructive. The downside is that the file size of a RAW image is much larger than a JPEG or TIFF because of all the extra  information that is stored in the file. To accommodate this, photographers may need to purchase a media card with increased storage capacity, or invest in an extra hard disk.

Different cameras produce different types of RAW files, with different file extensions. For example, a RAW image captured by an Olympus digital camera has the .orf file extension, whereas a RAW image captured by a Nikon camera has the .nef extension. There are also RAW formats for Canon (.crw), Minolta (.mrw), and Fuji (.raf). The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in can recognize most of these RAW file formats. For a current list of supported cameras and file types, along with installation instructions for the plug-in, refer to Adobe’s website (www.adobe.com/support) and search for supported cameras.

Whenever you open a RAW file in the plug-in workspace, it always displays the most recently applied settings for that image. Any adjustments made with the plug-in are stored in the RAW file (provided it is saved in the DNG format) along with the image’s original camera settings. This means that no matter what adjustments you’ve made when using the plug-in, you can always revert to the original “as shot” settings at any time. This is true for all RAW formats, including DNG. If no settings have been applied yet to the image, the “as shot” settings are displayed in the Camera Raw dialog box when the image is opened.

RAW files cannot be placed in a layout application such as Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. They must be opened in the Photoshop workspace through Camera Raw and saved in a file format that the layout application can output after the image is placed. The best file formats to use for CMYK output from a layout application are TIFF, EPS, or, PSD. Note that InDesign allows you to place layered PSD files including layer comps and allows you to control their visibility from within the layout application via Object Layer Options. You can place PSD files into QuarkXPress layouts and control their layer visibility only if the free the third-party PSD Import Xtensions software plug-in is installed. The plug-in comes installed with QuarkXPress 7, and a version for XPress 6.5 is available for download at www.quark.com.

After making your edits, you can click Done to save the Camera Raw adjustments and close the file; click Save Image to save it in a different file format; or click Open to open the image in the Photoshop workspace.