Settings in Camera Raw 4.2 Plugin

Try it

Right-click on this link,download and save this Camera Raw negative file, and open in Adobe Bridge: 07kids010307.NEF

Adobe Bridge provides previews of Camera Raw images.

Right-click image or click File>Open in Camera Raw. Bridge will always open this image in the Camera Raw plugin, because it needs preprocessing before being opened in Photoshop.

 

Upper Left Toolbar

• Zoom, hand tools
• White balance eyedropper to select neutral gray or white to set white balance
  • click on area in image that is neutral gray
  • the White Balance setting changes to custom
  • White balance refers to the color temperature of the type of light in which the photo was taken -- if your photos have a color cast, such as blue or red, that can be from the white balance setting.
  • Many cameras let you set the white balance to a specific type of light or to Auto, which lets camera determine light.
  • Some types of white balance settings:
    • daylight
    • cloudy
    • fluorescent
    • Tungsten
    • Flash
• Color sampler to determine RGB values of area
• Crop tool to crop image to be opened in Photoshop -- original image not affected
• Straighten tool -- drag vertical or horizontal line along image that needs straightening & Camera Raw straightens it
• Retouch or clone tool to fix areas
  • Heal matches the texture, lighting, and shading of the sampled area to the selected area
  • Clone applies the sampled area of the image to the selected area
  • drag the Radius slider in to toolbar to specify the size of the area that the Retouch tool affects
  • Click the Retouch tool on the part of the photo to retouch
    • A red and white dashed circle appears over the selected area.
    • The green and white dashed circle designates the sampled area of the photo used to clone or heal
    • drag inside the green and white circle to move it to another area of the image to specify the sampled area, .
    • drag inside the red and white circle to specify the selected area being cloned or healed,
    • To adjust the size of the circles,
      • move the pointer over the edge of either circle until it changes to a double-pointing arrow,
      • then drag to make both circles larger or smaller
• Red-eye removal --select eye and darken or enlarge pupil size
• Camera Raw preferences
  • Can save adjustments to photo in a separate xmp file and reapply them to another photo
• Rotate images counter-clockwise or clockwise
• Management controls: Preview Checkbox shows image with adjustments when checked. To compare with original image, uncheck
• Toggle full screen mode expands image to fill entire screen. Toggle back & forth by pressing F key

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Lower links at bottom of window

• zoom tool
• save image button lets you save original image and changes you make in Camera Raw plugin in a DNG (digital negative) file
  • can save xmp data inside the DNG file
• Middle of bottom window shows Workflow Options: Click on them to modify
  • Color space for image set by camera or previous processing
  • color bit level: 8 bits or 16 bits --
    • 16 bits preserves more detail, but requires much larger file sizes
    • not all Photoshop adjustments work in 16-bit mode so may have to readjust to 8-bit to apply those
  • Size: file dimensions.
    • resizing (resampling) image up or down works better in Camera Raw plugin
  • Resolution that will be used to print image
  • Smart objects -- used with vector information from program such as Adobe Illustrator
• Save image saves the file in whatever format you set.
  • can set default file name, file type & location
  • file name can include date photo taken
• Open image button opens image in Photoshop
• Done button closes image when you are finished

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Tab Options

• Histogram at top shows histogram as it changes, with 3 layers of color that represent the red, green, and blue color channels.
  • White appears when all three channels overlap
  • red, blue & green by themselves indicate that there are no pixels with the other two colors in that value range
  • yellow, magenta, and cyan appear when two of the RGB channels overlap
    • yellow equals the red + green channels
    • magenta equals the red + blue channels
    • cyan equals the green + blue channels)
• Histogram changes with adjustments
  • Darkest pixels are at the left of the histogram
  • lightest pixels are at the right of the histogram
  • mid-range pixels are in the middle
• Goal is to have pixels across entire histogram
• up arrows at top right and left of histogram show clipping
  • Left arrow: blue highlight shows shadow clipping of areas that are too dark to show detail
  • Right arrow: Red areas show highlight clipping of areas that are blown out & too bright
  • To see pixels that are being clipped, press <Alt> key while dragging the Exposure, Recovery, or Black sliders
• RGB shows RGB codes for area under mouse
• f stop shows aperture of camera
• number of seconds lens was open
• ISO setting - Higher ISO is for less light, yields grainier image
• lens settings

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Basic Panel Controls

Usually adjust image in order in which tabs occur.

In Camera Raw, you can use the crop tool to eliminate areas of the image that you do not want to use.

• The negative retains the areas you crop so you can always get them back
• The image you open for editing, printing, and/or compression in Photoshop will not contain the cropped area.

White Balance selections

• Different kinds of light require different white balance
• digital cameras can be set to specific type of white balance (e.g., sunlight, cloudy, etc.)
• white balance set to auto in camera adjusts to type of light in environment when photo take
• If the image is in Camera Raw format, the dropdown list has more options than if the image is a jpeg.
• Try the different white balance settings, to see what white balance does in the camera.
  • with some of the white balance settings, you may see spots of red or blue, where clipping occurs
  • The clipping occurs because the colors are out of range, and there is no detail unless you adjust the Recovery slider to see if you can get any of the detail back.
  • The red areas are the light areas of clipping
  • The blue areas are the dark areas of clipping

Selections in drop-down list

• As Shot -- white balance set by camera
• Auto - seems to try to balance out color range
• Daylight - sunny day - usually raises temperature / tint toward red
• Cloudy
• Shade
• Tungsten - artificial light -- gives blue cast if photo shop elsewhere
• Fluorescent - artificial light - gives different color cast
• Flash -- if image shot with flash
• Custom:
  • if you used white balance eyedropper, white balance will be set to custom and the number will not be zero
  • Move temperature slider right to increase color temperature , to left to cool temperature
  • Move tint slider to right to make image more magenta, to left to make it green

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Adjusting Tone in Camera Raw

Auto adjustment

• Photoshop's correction of the image that adjusts the image tonal sliders below it
• You can start with Auto setting and then adjust from there or make your own adjustments from the image as shot.
• To see Auto adjustment for each slider
  • hold down shift key
  • click twice on the slider

Default adjustment

• sets all of the tonal sliders to zero

Exposure slider

• adjust overall brightness and darkness of the image, with changes visible in preview window & histogram
• Greatest effect in high values
• values are in increments equivalent to f-stops in camera
• An adjustment of +1.50 or -1.50 is similar to adjusting the aperture 1‑1/2 stops up or down in the camera.
• Be careful moving slider to right to increase exposure, because you can blow out the detail

Recovery slider

• if one of color channels is clipped or"blown out" at the highlights end (as apparent by red area when right arrow is selected)
• Hold down <alt> key and move slider to see where clipping starts.
• moving slider to the right attempts to recover blown out area from image in other color channels -- can often recover a lot of blown out areas if there is information in two of the color channels

Fill Light slider

• attempts to reconstruct detail in areas that are clipped at the shadow end of the curve
• click on up arrow at top of histogram to see
• does not brighten blacks, but the shadow areas

Blacks slider

• Increases the number of tones represented as black in the final image, emphasizing tones in shadow areas of image
• sometimes creates impression of increased contrast in the image.
• similar to sliding black point in levels -- look at the change in the histogram

Brightness

• adjusts the darkness & lightness of the image by clipping off (compressing them) the darkest & lightest areas
• better to adjust brightness AFTER adjusting Exposure, Recovery, & Blacks

Contrast

• changes contrast of the midtones of the image.
• Should be used to adjust the midtones after setting Exposure, Shadows, & Brightness sliders

Clarity

• Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast
• similar to large-radius unsharp mask
• it is best to zoom in to 100% or greater when using this effect.
• To maximize the effect, increase the setting until halos are visible near the edge details of the image
  • then reduce the setting slightly

Vibrance

• Adjusts saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation
• changes the saturation of all lower-saturated colors with less effect on the higher-saturated colors.
• prevents skin tones from becoming oversaturated --red and splotchy

Saturation

• Adjusts saturation of ALL colors from -100 (monochrome) to +100 (double saturation)
• Saturation of individual colors can be adjusted in HSL/Grayscale tab - better choice.

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Tone Curve Tab

• Work with curves within Camera Raw to make adjustments to basic tonal adjustments on first tab
• Should be applied after adjustments in basic tab
• Has two tabs and you can adjust both:
  • Parametric -- drag sliders to right to move the curve up (lighter) or to the left, to move the curve down down (darker)
    • highlights
    • lights
    • darks
    • shadows
  • Point curves - predefined points
    • If you hold down the control key and hover over a point on the photo, you will see the area of the curve that will affect the brightness of that value. If you click on a point, it will add the point to the curve. Then you can pull the point up to make it lighter or down to make it darker

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Detail Tab

Sharpening

• Sharpening is best done in Photoshop after other adjustments, if opening image in Photoshop

Noise Reduction

• Luminance - reduces noise caused by differences in brightness, when you use high ISO settings in low light. Should zoom image to 100% to be see what you are doing.
• Color - reduces noise caused by variations in chroma
• If opening image in Photoshop, better to use noise reduction tools in Photoshop.

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HSL/Grayscale Tab

Grayscale

• Checkbox to convert to grayscale
• Can then adjust image by adjusting the contribution of each color range to the grayscale image
• You can also change the image to grayscale by sliding all the saturation sliders to the extreme left (-100). You can they adjust some of them to the right to attain a different effect.

Hue tab

• adjust 8 different hues individually (more than in Photoshop)
• changes the color of the hue
• If you want the blues to become blue-violet, adjust the blue slider to the right, in the direction of blue-violet

Saturation

• Adjust saturation of 8 different colors (more than in Photoshop)
• If you want the sky to be much bluer than in the original photograph, try dragging the blue slider to the right. If there is blue in the sky, it should become bluer.
• Reduce saturation of any color, by dragging its slider to the left.

Luminance

• Adjust brightness of each of 8 colors0
• If you want a blue sky to be darker, drag the blue slider to the left
• If you want some color to be lighter, drag its slider to the right.

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Split Toning Tab

• Color grayscale image with two different colors
• Balance control determines the influence of the highlight and shadow controls
  • Positive values increase the influence of the Shadow controls
  • negative values increase the influence of the Highlight control
• Try it!
  • Change the image to grayscale in the HSL/Grayscale tab as above
  • Click the Split Toning tab and adjust the colors of the Shadow and Highlight colors
  • Adjust the amount of saturation of each
  • Adjust the balance

Highlights

• define hue of highlight areas of image
• define saturation of that hue
• preserve black areas as black and white areas as white

Shadows

• define hue of dark areas of image
• define saturation of that hue

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Lens Correction Tab

Chromatic Aberration

• problem caused by overload of oversaturated pixels that overflow their excess photons onto adjacent pixels, producing a purple fringe around backlit objects
• Lens correction filter in Photoshop has additional settings

Vignetting

• darkening of corners of image because lens could not provide even coverage of entire image area
• also can be fixed by lens correction filter in Photoshop

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Camera Calibration Tab

• make adjustments here to compensate for calibration that consistently occurs in camera
• can be saved as a preset to make workflow more efficient

Presets Tab

• Save settings in Camera Raw for reuse
• Load presets that have been saved

Finished with Camera Raw Adjustments?

• Click Save button to save a digital negative (DMG) file that includes your original negative (unchanged) plus the adjustments you made to the image.
• Click Open Image top open the altered version of your photo in Photoshop for further editing, re-sizing, and / or compression.

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