By Jack Davis
Camera Raw 7.3 is now available as a final release through the update mechanism in Photoshop CS6. The goal of this release is to provide additional camera raw support, lens profile support and address bugs that were introduced in previous releases of Camera Raw. This course provides in-depth training on Camera Raw 7, the Photoshop CS6 component that enables photographers to open and manipulate raw format images. Raw images are minimally processed in the camera; they're effectively the exact data recorded by the camera's sensor. Free camera raw 6.7.1 download software at UpdateStar - The camera raw functionality in Adobe Photoshop software provides fast and easy access to the raw image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras. Free photoshop camera raw plug-in 7.1.0.354 download software at UpdateStar - The camera raw functionality in Adobe Photoshop software provides fast and easy access to the raw image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras.
A New Supercharged Engine – Again!
Once more Adobe couldn't leave well enough alone (thankfully), and they've taken the brand new 2012 processing engine that powers the new Lightroom 4 and incorporated it into our beloved Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). This technological leap not only extends the capabilities of this invaluable image processing engine, but also dramatically increases the potential quality of the final results. Even though the way you work in the new ACR is significantly different in terms of how the sliders work in its foundational Basic panel, once you get used to it, you'll find that it is completely indispensable for getting more than you ever thought possible out of your photographs!
Adobe achieved this quantum leap, especially as it relates to pulling out every drop of tonal detail in your image, by completely rewriting their raw 'demosaicing' engine, just as they did in 2010. And fortunately, as in the past, ACR also processes JPEG's and TIF's beautifully. What you will be able to pull out in terms of tone, color and detail is going to astound you, but to access this new power you're going to have to re-learn some of the ways you may have optimized your images in ACR in the past. And if you are new to working in ACR you'll actually find version 7 is actually a lot more intuitive than previous versions. Let's take a look at some of those differences.
Before and Afters of the power of the new Basic Panel's possibilities. NO targeted dodging & burning was needed! ©BrookeChristl.com
A New Basic Way of Sculpting
Even though ACR 6 (the previous version) was incredibly powerful, the way the Basic panel (where the majority of your image enhancing takes place) was organized did not lead to the most intuitive way of working. Looking here on the far left are the default sliders and settings for ACR 6. The sliders already had default settings applied, and whether a slider lightened or darkened your image when moving it depended on the specific slider. And which portion of the tonal range was being adjusted by which slider (and how far the sliders could be 'pushed' before artifacts were introduced) was a quandary for many.
ACR 6's default sliders and settings. The new ACR 7's options and VERY intuitive default 0's. And the final settings for Brooke's Trash The Dress photo above.
If you open an image in the new ACR 7 that you have previously worked on in an older version, you will find a little 'exclamation' icon in the lower right-hand corner of the main image window that's warning you that it's using an older version of the processing engine (as mentioned, the last version was created in 2010). When this icon is visible you'll notice that all the sliders within the Basic panel are the same as they were in ACR 6, and their order and how they work will be the same. As an aside, this is actually a feature, because if you have a particular effect that you liked to produce in previous versions of Adobe Camera Raw, you can still work that way even though those older sliders are technically no longer part of the ACR 7 processing engine. Additionally, if you use Presets that are based upon these older sliders, you can still use them as well because 7.0 allows for the older processing engine to co-exist within the software. That being said, you're probably going to be updating and fine-tuning a lot of your favorite presets to take advantage of the new capabilities of the 2012 processor. Once you click on the Exclamation icon (it's actually a button), or go over to the Camera Calibration tab and select the 2012 process, you'll find that all the Basic sliders now default to zero smack dab in the middle of the slider bar, and all of them now work exactly the same way – meaning moving a slider to the left will always darken your image, moving it to the right will always lighten your image. But the magic behind each one of the sliders has actually changed significantly.
Let's discuss what each slider in 7.0 does now.
Exposure
Exposure used to be much more of a highlight or white point slider within previous versions of ACR and could blow out or muddy-up your highlights if you weren't careful. Now, Exposure is what you might typically think it is: it's affecting the basic middle-tone brightness of your image, thus you can use it as the starting point for the manipulation of your images. You no longer need to worry if the highlights or shadows in your images seem compromised, they are still there and are happily waiting for your touch in the sliders below!
Contrast
In previous versions of ACR, you also had to be careful of the Contrast slider because of the possibility of clipping information in the shadows and highlights in your image. Como descargar acrobat. Contrast still primarily manipulates the middle-tones in a photograph, but you will find that it's more forgiving than in the past, especially in the transition areas between the mid-tones and the highlights and shadows. But even with that forgiveness, for many images I recommend that you wait until later in your workflow process to adjust Contrast. In other words, use it once you've fine-tuned all your other options toadd that extra little bit of punch or to soften harsh tones.
Highlights and Shadows
You may suspect that the new Highlights and Shadows sliders are the same as the old Recovery and Fill Light sliders in the previous ACR, but nothing could be further from the truth. First, the Highlights and Shadow sliders are incredibly powerful in terms of what they're able to resuscitate in an image! The tonal range, even in a single image, can now often be beautifully extended to produce what used to require three or more separate images to create in an HDR (High Dynamic Range) composite (a god-send in once-in-a-lifetime action situations such as Brooke Christl's Trash the Dress image)! Second, you'll also notice that because the sliders now begin in the center of the bar, not only can you bring back or darken Highlight detail, but you may also safely increase the neighboring Whites for punch as well! Same goes for working with the Shadows slider: you can brighten up a lot of information in the shadows but you can also take this three-quarter portion of the total range and bring it down, without plugging up your blacks, which is exciting! The Blacks and Whites sliders also operate on these same principals. In earlier ACR versions, even though you had a Black slider, you were only able to darken your darkest darks, you could never lighten the amount of base blacks like you can do now with ACR 7.
To over-simplify these controls, these six sliders can be thought of as neighboring pairs: Exposure and Contrast control your middle-tone areas. Highlights and Shadows control your three-quarter and quarter tones. The Whites and Blacks sliders fine-tune the furthest extremes of your photograph's range. If you think of these as three associated adjustments pairs, I think you'll find it easier to wrap your head around the new sliders.
But wait… there's more…
Clarity: Power, but still with a caution
Even though the Clarity slider has the same name as in previous versions of ACR, it has been completely rewritten and now does a significantly better job of increasing apparent detail in an image without bringing in the 'haloing' artifacts possible in previous versions. But because this edge contrast can be so significant, you might be lulled into a false sense of security and actually add too much contrast to these edges. Even though you won't get the halos as you once did, you can still potentially plug up edge detail in certain images. So remember to zoom in and check your image when using excessive Clarity, you may find yourself adding a little bit more Shadow brightness, or a reduction in Contrast to compensate.
You can see in Brooke's wedding dress shot that she significantly underexposed the image (wouldn't you underexpose it if you only had ONE chance of getting THE shot of a bright shiny wedding dress and it's inhabitant as they were about to meet Poseidon? ;). But even with this seeming lack of detail you will notice I was able to bring up the Exposure for the overall brightness of the image, then bring back in significant Highlight detail into the dress, once I had set the correct exposure. I was also able to pull out a huge amount of Shadow detail, taking it all the way up to 100% , without artifacts! I actually took the Whites UP in this file to add that satin sheen, yet maintain the Highlight detail! This is an amazing ability to fine-tune the entire tonal range of an image without the necessity of hand dodging & burning (we'll get to Localized adjustments in a minute). Also, to bring in all the details in the water and dress the Clarity was set all the way up to 100%, without any artifact creation whatsoever, which would have been impossible in previous versions of ACR.
New Capabilities and Quality
Still not convinced? You say you could make shadows lighter and highlights darker in previous versions of ACR so what's the big deal? The big deal is QUALITY! Take a look at this quick shot I took of a vintage motorcycle.
©Jack H. Davis / WowCreativeArts.com
In previous versions of ACR if you were to significantly darken the highlight information and bring up the shadow detail you could get significant artifacting at that transition between highlights and shadows, as in the fringing of the trees around the motorcycle seat. In the current ACR 7, there is no such artifacting and the detail throughout the image is crisper and cleaner than I would have ever imagined from a single shot!
A single shot 'HDR'? Yup! And with the taming of the edge artifacts that used to happen where highlights and shadows collide, there is finally peace in the previously Dramatic Range!
Actually, this image is something I've used in the past to teach how to combine five bracketed shots together to create one HDR image. Using ACR 7 you can definitely pull off exposures that could have only been achieved with multi-shot High Dynamic Range combinations in the past – talk about a time-saver!
The Pen (OK… the Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter) is Mightier than the Sword!
If you were making a wish list for the Adobe Tooth Fairy (Russell Brown, are you listening?), and you had all these phenomenal capabilities added to the Basic panel, what would be the one additional characteristic that would make your creative darkroom dreams complete? Of course, you would want those capabilities added to ACR's targeted Adjustment Brush and Graduated Filter! And that's exactly what Adobe has done with the improvements in ACR 7, and more!
Not only have they added our new best friends of Shadows, Highlight and Clarity, they have also given us something that we've never had before: the ability to adjust localized color temperature using a brush or gradient! Even though you could do something similar to this before by adding the opposite color cast using the little color swatch in the Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush panels, it's not the same as actually using a temperature and tint slider to fine-tune and balance different color casts within an image. In this second Brooke Crystal wedding image we have a very warm interior artificial light balanced out with the cooler external sunlight by simply dragging out a Gradient Filter slider from the left to the right, with a tap toward the blue of the Temperature slider. And because Shadow resuscitation can now be put inside a brush or gradient as well, Adobe has also graciously added Noise Reduction to their localized adjustment tools, an incredibly useful feature when pulling out shadow detail that don't want to come willingly!
A little cool temperature Graduated Filter balances out a challenging lighting situation in a snap! ©BrookeChristl.com
Curves Unleashed
Curves, one of the basic adjustments in Photoshop for the last hundred years, has been available in ACR for a while, with both Point Curves as well as the powerful Parametric Curves. But prior to ACR 7, we were unable to access the foundational Red, Green and Blue channels independently, but now you can. The benefit is that for the first time you can use separate Red, Green and Blue curves to fine-tune color casts and tonal information, but you can also use them for an immeasurable amount of special-effects enhancing to an image. Before ACR 7.0, this was really only possible in Photoshop. In this shot by Hal and Victoria Schmitt of LightWorkshops.com, we're able to not only improve the tonal range of this portrait but also add a Cross Processing effect by shaping the total range of each one of the Red, Green and Blue channels independently of each other, allowing for a beautifully expressive enhancement, with absolute quality and control.
©Hal and Victoria Schmitt /LightWorkshops.com
Another long-time use for curves has been for converting images to black-and-white, one of the advanced features in Photoshop we've used for ages. Now with the combination of targeted Curves and the already phenomenal Hue, Saturation and Luminance panel, we have the ability to further fine tune black-and-white images in ways never before possible, such as in this portrait of this beautiful little girl also by Hal and Victoria Schmitt. Red hair goes white, red cloak goes black – with no dodging and burnng – figure THAT one out! 😉
Chromatic Aberrations Be Gone
Chromatic Aberrations are the annoying colorful edge artifacts seen in contrasting highlights left by the minor misalignment of different color channels in images taken with certain wide-angle lens (see the museum skylight shot). Chromatic Aberration removal was built into ACR before, but needed a special profile for the specific lens to do the job well. What the mad scientists at Adobe figured out was that they were able to do a better job of removing these edge color artifacts using their own algorithms rather than relying on the profiles. Specifically, using the Remove Chromatic Aberration option (within the Profile tab within the Lens Correction panel) in concert with the Defringe > Highlight Edges option (within the Manual tab of the same Lens Correction panel) allows you to virtually get rid of any sort of edge artifacting that you could possibly come across, all with a couple little clicks!
So there is a quick overview of just some of the improvements in the new Adobe Camera Raw 7. Now all the jaw-dropping and deadline-saving projects that you can DO with all that power, well, that would take an entire DVD to demonstrate (yes, that's a shameless plug for my new Adobe Camera Raw 7 Enhancing and Lightroom 4 Enhancing titles from PhotoshopCafe.com and WowCreativeArts.com)!
About the Author
Jack Davis
Jack Davis is one of the world's leading experts on Photoshop and Lightroom, as well as himself being an award-winning photographer. Jack is coauthor of a dozen different creative titles including the bestselling (a million copies+ in 12 languages) guide to Photoshop, The Photoshop Wow! Book, and How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography. For over 20 years Jack has been an internationally renowned spokesperson on digital imagery, and routinely teaching at conferences and workshops around the world. Davis is part of the 'Dream Team' at the Photoshop World Conferences and was one of the first inductees into the Photoshop Hall of Fame for his lifetime contributions to the industry. Jack has an MA and MFA in Digital Imagery, and when he's not in his studio in San Diego, he's usually somewhere in Polynesia, iPhone and Big Boy camera in hand, capturing the local color.
For more about Jack, his training material and teaching schedule (including his immanent Workflow Tour with SandyPucTours.com) go to WowCreativeArts.com.
Adobe Camera Raw 7 Enhancing DVD
Jack Davis – Coming Soon!
With Photoshop CS6's new ACR 7, Adobe has introduced tools that have the power to completely change the way we shape our photography. Instead of working one image at a time, one step at a time, now the vast majority of our photographic finishing can be done quickly, elegantly and nondestructively in one place! – without even opening Photoshop! This includes such universal tasks as dodging & burning, skin softening or even targeted white balancing and blurring! That's what Adobe Camera Raw 7's new processing engine and tools have brought with them to yield a dramatically streamlined workflow. You will have to see all these life-saving techniques in action to understand just how powerful they are, and how much easier they are gonna make you work! If you're a Lightroom user Jack hasn't left you out; there is a Lightroom 4 Enhancing title available from Jack soon as well. Also look for Jack's Expressive Painting in Photoshop CS5/CS6 and Photoshop
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In this tutorial for Photoshop CS6 users, we'll take a tour of the Camera Raw interface and learn where all of the various tools, panels and other features are located, so you can begin processing your raw, JPEG or even TIFF images in Adobe Camera Raw with all of the simplicity, freedom and flexibility it offers. Once we're familiar with Camera Raw's interface, we can then begin looking in much more detail at how to process, correct and retouch our images as we'll do in the next tutorials.
Updating Photoshop CS6 To Camera Raw 8
One important note before we begin. Photoshop CS6 originally shipped with Camera Raw 7, but Adobe has released a free update for CS6 users to the new Camera Raw 8 (or more specifically, 8.1 at the time I'm writing this). If you're using Photoshop CS6 and haven't yet updated to Camera Raw 8, you can do so by going up to the Help menu (in Photoshop) in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen and choosing Updates from the list. This will open the Adobe Application Manager where you can view, select and download all the updates currently available, including updates for Camera Raw:
However (and this is a big 'however'), there's a catch. The version of Camera Raw 8 that Adobe has made available to Photoshop CS6 users is mainly to fix various bugs from Camera Raw 7 and make Camera Raw compatible with both high resolution displays and the latest digital cameras and lenses. While that's great, the CS6 version of Camera Raw 8 is missing the new features available exclusively to Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) subscribers, like the new Radial Filter, the improved Spot Healing brush, and the new Upright options for easy perspective correction. Also, Photoshop CS6 itself is missing the new Camera Raw filter that's been added to Photoshop CC. So, that's just something to keep in mind. If you want the brand new features in Camera Raw 8, you'll need to upgrade to Photoshop CC by subscribing to the Adobe Creative Cloud. I'll be covering these new features in separate tutorials but for this tutorial, we're going to look specifically at the version of Camera Raw 8 that's available with Photoshop CS6.
Opening Camera Raw
To open Camera Raw, we first need to select an image, either a raw file, JPEG or TIFF, and the best way to do that is with Adobe Bridge. I already have Photoshop CS6 open on my screen, so to access Adobe Bridge, I'll go up to the File menu in Photoshop's Menu Bar and choose Browse in Bridge:
This will open Adobe Bridge if it isn't open already. Click on the Folders tab in the upper left corner to open the Folders panel and navigate to wherever the folder is on your computer that holds the image you want to open. Here, I've navigated to a folder on my desktop containing a few photos captured as raw files. Click once (don't double-click, just single-click) on the image to select the one you want to open in Camera Raw:
With the photo selected, click the Open in Camera Raw icon at the top of the screen:
This opens the image in Camera Raw and presents us with the Camera Raw dialog box, with the photo visible in the main preview area in the center:
Toggle Fullscreen Mode On And Off
The first thing you'll most likely want to do when the Camera Raw dialog box appears is click the Fullscreen icon at the top (just to the left of the histogram in the top right corner). This will expand the Camera Raw dialog box to fullscreen, giving you a much larger preview area and more room to work. If you want to switch back to the more compact mode, simply click the Fullscreen icon again. You can also toggle Fullscreen mode on and off by pressing the letter F on your keyboard:
The Toolbar
Along the top of the dialog box is the Toolbar where we find Camera Raw's various editing tools, many of which are the same as, or at least similar to, tools and commands we'd find in Photoshop itself, like the Zoom and Hand Tools for navigating around the image, the Crop Tool, the Spot Removal Tool, and options at the far right of the Toolbar for rotating the image clockwise or counterclockwise. The name of a tool will appear if you hover your mouse cursor over its icon:
The Camera Raw Preferences
While most of the icons in the Toolbar represent actual editing tools, one of them is different. It opens the Camera Raw Preferences. It's the third icon from the right:
Clicking on it opens the Camera Raw Preferences dialog box where we can set various options for how Camera Raw works. For the most part, the default Preferences work fine so once you've looked them over, go ahead and click OK to close out of the dialog box. We'll cover the Preferences in more detail in another tutorial:
Navigating Around The Image In The Preview Area
The first tool on the far left of the Toolbar is the Zoom Tool, and just like Photoshop's Zoom Tool, it can be used to zoom in and out of the image. Click on its icon to select it, then click on an area of the photo you want to zoom in on, clicking repeatedly to zoom in further. To zoom back out, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key on your keyboard while clicking. To instantly zoom the image in to the 100% zoom level (known as the 'Actual Pixels' view), double-click on the Zoom Tool's icon in the Toolbar (to instantly zoom back out to fit the entire image into the preview area, double-click the Hand Tool directly to the right of the Zoom Tool):
We can also zoom in and out using the zoom options in the lower left corner of the dialog box (just below the preview area). Zuma revenge heroic frog. Click the small '+' and '-' icons to zoom in or out, or click directly on the box showing the current zoom level to pop open a list of preset zoom levels to choose from:
We can zoom in and out of the preview area from the keyboard as well. Press Ctrl+plus sign (+) (Win) / Command+plus sign (+) (Mac) to zoom in, or Ctrl+minus sign (-) (Win) / Command+minus sign (-) (Mac) to zoom out. Pressing Ctrl+0 (Win) / Command+0 (Mac) will instantly fit the image to the preview area, while Ctrl+Alt+0 (Win) / Command+Option+0 (Mac) will jump to the 100% zoom level.
To move the image around inside the preview area when you're zoomed in, select the Hand Tool by clicking on its icon in the Toolbar (second icon from the left), then click and drag the image. You can also select the Hand Tool temporarily by pressing and holding the spacebar on your keyboard, just like you can in Photoshop:
The Histogram
In the top right corner of the Camera Raw dialog box is the Histogram, which lets us keep a constant eye on the overall tonal range of the image as we're working. It represents the range of possible brightness values beginning with pure black on the far left and gradually increasing in brightness to pure white on the far right. The higher the 'mountain', as many people call it, appears over a certain brightness level, the more pixels we have in the image at that same level. The most important use for the Histogram is making sure we're not clipping any of our shadows to pure black, or our highlights to pure white, and we'll learn more about how that works in another tutorial:
The Panels
Directly below the Histogram on the right hand side of the Camera Raw dialog box is where we find the various panels. Just as Photoshop itself uses panels to perform different tasks, Camera Raw also uses panels. The difference here, and one of the nice advantages with Camera Raw, is that Camera Raw doesn't have anywhere near as many panels as Photoshop does. That's because Camera Raw has been streamlined specifically for image editing, while Photoshop does image editing plus a whole lot more. This means there's a lot less to learn with Camera Raw, and Camera Raw's panels are conveniently nested together in one spot, making it easy to switch from one panel to another simply by clicking on the various tabs along the top:
The Basic Panel
The panels are arranged in a logical order based on a standard image editing workflow (another nice feature of Camera Raw), and the Basic panel is the one that opens by default since it's usually the first panel we'll want to use. In fact, with this one panel alone, you can accomplish most of your editing work. At the top are controls for setting the white balance and color temperature, followed by a group of sliders for adjusting the overall exposure and contrast, highlights and shadows, and setting the main white and black points. At the bottom of the Basic panel, we can increase or decrease contrast in the midtones with the Clarity slider (which can dramatically sharpen or soften an image), and finally, we can control color saturation with the Vibrance and Saturation sliders. If there's one panel in Camera Raw you'll use more than any others, it's this one:
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The Tone Curve Panel
If we click on the second tab from the left, we open the Tone Curve panel. Once we've made the image look as good as possible with the sliders in the initial Basic panel, we can use the Tone Curve panel to make more fine-tuned adjustments to the brightness and contrast using curves. It's similar to the Curves adjustment in Photoshop, but Camera Raw's Tone Curve panel offers easier, more intuitive controls (like its simple Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows sliders) that can be less intimidating for beginners. As with all the panels in Camera Raw, I'll be covering the Tone Curve panel in more detail in another tutorial:
The Detail Panel
The third panel from the left is the Detail panel. The top half is where we do all of our image sharpening, while the bottom half lets us reduce any luminance or color noise. These first three panels (Basic, Tone Curve and Detail) are the ones you'll use with nearly all your images:
The HSL / Grayscale Panel
Next up as we move through the panels from left to right is the HSL / Grayscale panel. From here, we can make adjustments to the hue, saturation and/or luminance (brightness) of individual colors in the image using the eight color sliders (click on the Hue, Saturation or Luminance tabs above the sliders to change what it is the sliders are affecting). Also, if we select the Convert to Grayscale option at the top, we can use the same color sliders to create highly customized black and white versions of our color images, just like we can using Photoshop's Black & White adjustment. Dragging a color slider to the left will darken any areas that originally contained that color, while dragging the slider to the right will lighten those same areas. To switch back to the full color version of your image, simply uncheck the Convert to Grayscale option. Nothing we do while in Camera Raw is permanent, so we can make as many changes as we want to our image with no loss of image quality:
The Split Toning Panel
Next, we have the Split Toning panel, an easy way to add a custom split toning effect to any image, whether it's a color photo or black and white. There's separate Hue and Saturation controls for the highlights and shadows, as well as a Balance slider to adjust the brightness level where the transition between the two colors occurs:
The Lens Correction Panel
Camera Raw's Lens Correction panel is where we can fix lens distortion problems in the image (in other words, distortion caused by the camera lens itself) as well as perspective distortion created by the angle at which we snapped the photo (looking up at a tall building, for example, causes it to appear to be leaning backwards). The Profile tab lets Camera Raw automatically choose a lens correction profile specifically for the make and model of your lens (information it gathers from the Exif data embedded in your image). The Color tab is used to correct chromatic aberration and other color distortion problems, while the Manual tab is for correcting perspective distortion, as well as lens vignetting. Again, we'll cover more about this panel (and all the others) later:
The Effects Panel
To the right of the Lens Correction panel is the Effects panel. Now, if you're thinking 'Yes! This is where we create awesome photo effects!', well, sadly, no. While there's no limit to the amazing photo effects you can create with Photoshop itself, Camera Raw is a much more refined image editing environment, and there's really only two types of effects we can add with the Effects panel - film grain and vignetting. For me, I use vignetting often to darken the edges around my photos, and Camera Raw's Post Crop Vignetting options make adding a vignette quick and easy:
The Camera Calibration Panel
Most people will never have a use for the main purpose of the Camera Calibration panel, which is to give us a way to compensate for problems in the way our camera captures color. We have separate Hue and Saturation sliders for each of the three primary colors of light (red, green and blue) as well as a Tint slider for adjusting shadows. However, if you've been noticing a color cast problem with your camera, you'd be much better off running some tests and repairing or replacing the camera if needed, rather than trying to compensate for the issue here.
There's also a Process option at the top of the panel which allows us to switch from Camera Raw's most recent image processing engine (2012 in this case) to the older 2010 or 2003 engines. Other than for the sake of comparison, you probably won't find much use for this option, either.
However, one option that can actually be useful is Camera Profile. Many digital cameras offer various Picture Styles to choose from that may give better results depending on your subject (with common styles being Portrait, Landscape, Faithful, Neutral, and Standard). If you're capturing your images as raw files, though, these in-camera Picture Styles make no difference because they only apply to images captured as JPEGs, but we can select these same styles from the Camera Profile option to simulate the effect with our raw images:
The Presets And Snapshots Panels
The final two panels in Camera Raw are the Presets and Snapshots panels. The Presets panel allows us to save the settings we've used with one image as a preset that we can instantly apply to other images simply by choosing the preset from the list. It's a bit like creating actions in Photoshop but much, much simpler. The Snapshots panel is similar to the snapshot feature in Photoshop's History panel. At any time while we're working on an image in Camera Raw, we can save a snapshot of our work, which will save all of our settings up to that point. We can then instantly revert back to that point at any time if we need to just by choosing the snapshot. Both of these panels are empty by default (until we actually save a preset or snapshot) so I won't bother with screenshots, but you can easily switch to them yourself to check them out by clicking on their tabs (Presets is the second panel from the right, Snapshots is the very last panel on the right).
Switching Panels From The Keyboard
Every panel in Camera Raw, with the exception of the Snapshots panel on the far right, can be easily selected from the keyboard. Simply hold down your Ctrl+Alt (Win) / Command+Option (Mac) keys and press a number key. Press 1 for the Basic panel, 2 for Tone Curve, 3 for Detail, 4 for HSL / Grayscale, 5 for Split Toning, 6 for Lens Correction, 7 for FX, and 8 for the Presets panel.
The Preview Option
As you're working on an image, it often helps to see a 'before and after' comparison, and Camera Raw's Preview option, found just to the left of the Fullscreen icon at the top, allows us to toggle the preview on and off so we can switch between what the image looked like originally and how it looks after our changes. You can check and uncheck the option by clicking inside its checkbox, but a faster and easier way to toggle the preview on and off is by simply pressing the letter P on your keyboard:
Note, though, that the Preview option is panel-specific, meaning it only affects the currently active panel. For example, if you make changes in the Basic panel, then switch to the Tone Curve panel and toggle the preview off, nothing will happen because all of your changes were made in the Basic panel, not the Tone Curve panel. You would need to switch back to the Basic panel to see the 'before and after' comparison of those changes. To toggle the preview on and off for all the panels at once, first switch to either the Presets or Snapshots panels, then press the letter P on your keyboard.
The Workflow Options
In the bottom center of the dialog box is what looks like a link you'd see on a website. This link actually takes you to the Camera Raw Workflow Options. The link itself displays your current workflow settings, including the color space, the bit depth, the pixel dimensions of the image, and the current print resolution:
Clicking the link opens the Workflow Options dialog box where we can make changes to the color space and bit depth, resize the image if needed, set some basic sharpening options, and choose whether or not the image should open as a Smart Object if / when we open it in Photoshop. Like everything else we've looked at, these options need their own tutorial to cover them properly, but for now, at least we know where to find them:
Saving The Image Directly From Camera Raw
Because Camera Raw is such a complete image editing environment, you'll often find that you can do everything you need to do to an image directly in Camera Raw itself, without ever having to open it in Photoshop. That's why Adobe gave Camera Raw the ability to save out the final image as a JPEG or other file type. You'll find the Save Image button in the bottom left corner of the dialog box. Clicking this button will open the Save Options dialog box where we can choose the file format for the saved image, rename the image if needed, choose a location to save it to, and more:
Opening The Image In Photoshop
Of course, there will also be times when, after you've done everything you can in Camera Raw, the image will still need to be opened in Photoshop for further editing. When you're ready to send the image to Photoshop, click the Open Image button in the lower right corner of the dialog box:
Closing Out Of Camera Raw
If you're done working on your image, or just need a break, and don't need to save out the image to some other file format or open it in Photoshop, you can save your work and close out of Camera Raw by clicking the Done button in the lower right corner. The next time you open the image in Camera Raw, it will open with all of your settings applied:
Camera Raw 7.1 For Mac
Cancel And Reset
If you want to close out of Camera Raw without saving your work, click the Cancel button:
To reset the panels back to the way they were when you opened Camera Raw, clearing away any work you've done to the image since then but leaving the image and Camera Raw open on your screen, press and hold the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key on your keyboard. This will change the Cancel button to Reset. Then, click the Reset button.
Camera Raw 7
And there we have it! That's our whirlwind tour of the Camera Raw interface, and specifically the new Camera Raw 8 interface, in Photoshop CS6! Check out our Photo Retouching section for more Photoshop image editing tutorials!
