Camera Raw 4.0 is has definitely been upgraded quite a bit.
First of all, you can now edit .jpg and tif formats in Camera Raw! This in itself could cut down on many photographer's work load by half. Multi-Imaging processing can be done and Camera Raw's unique color adjustment approach can really be utilized. To open up an image in Camera Raw, while in Bridge CS3, go to File>Open in Camera Raw...
| The tabs |
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•The tabs on the right hand side of the screen stand for (from left to right): Basic, Tone Curve, HSL/Grayscale, Split Toning, Details, Lens Correction, Camera Calibration, and Presets.
Basic Tab
•Here you can adjust your white balance and adjust your temperature and tint settings. Be sure to notice that the sliders are now colorized! This takes some of the guess work out of adjusting colors in Camera Raw.
•Below that you have the Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks (taking the place of shadows,) Brightness, and Contrast sliders. The Auto checkbox has now been replace with the Auto toggle. You probably aren't familiar with Fill Light and Recovery, and that's because they're new options. These are based on controls associated with the shadow highlight filter inside of Photoshop. They allow you to compensate for Flash. You can either recovery vary hot highlights by dimming them down using the Recovery option or Fill in shadows by brightening them up with Fill Light. These are great options but be aware that they do tend to flatten out your image and adjust color overall so do not overuse them.
•Use the Exposure slider to adjust the luminosity of the image. Moving the slider to the right makes the image appear as if it had been given more exposure at the time of capture. To the right, less exposure. Remember, if you press the Alt/Option key down while moving the slider, you get a preview indicating when clipping in the shadows or highlights will occur!
•The blacks slider is the same thing as the shadows slider in CS2. It will make the Shadows darker while having less influence on the midtones and highlight values.
•The Brightness slider works mainly on the midtones of an image. Pushing the slider to the right will brighten up the midtones without a heavy effect on the Shadows and Highlights.
•The Contrast Slider increases or decreases the contrast above the Shadows and below the highlights. A heavy hand here will allow the effect to dip into these areas, however.
•The Vibrance Slider is a new addition. This tool applies a non-linear increase in saturation so that lower saturated pixels are more affected. It also has a built in skin tone protector to prevent a face from becoming overly red.
•The Saturation Slider remains the same.
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| Figure 500-1: Adjusting Hue to Cool Image |
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| Figure 500-2: Adjusting Hue to Warm Image |
•The second tab in line is the Curves Tab. Adobe has made this box much more intuitive with their introduction of the “Parametric” curve. Upon entering this tab, we now have the choice of working with Parametric and/or Point curves. The Parametric Curve Box opens by default but you can simply click on the Point Tab to work with the traditional curve. ??The first thing you will notice in the Parametric curve is the addition of sliders at the bottom and the middle of the box. The middle sliders are a great way to visualize where the effect of the lower sliders will occur. The Shadow Slider will affect the blue region of your image, the Darks Slider, the Green, the Lights are in Red and the Highlight Slider will affect the Yellow region.
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| Figure 500-3: Tone Curve Tab |
Figure 500-4: Detail Tab |
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| Figure 500-5: HSL/Grayscale Tab |
Figure 500-6: Split Toning |
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| Figure 500-7: Lens Correction |
Figure 500-8: Camera Callibration |
In the HSL / Grayscale tab you have a series of color sliders that may control the Hues inside of the image, the Saturation values, Luminance values, or you can blend your own grayscale image by adding more or less specific color values.
The interesting thing about this is that they are not just your primary RGB colors. We have subjunction colors such as aquas, oranges, and purples. Some times the colors are close together in the image, and other times they are not. The real benefit from this is that it gives us more control over skin tones. We now have independent control over our Reds, Oranges, and Yellows!
Note: At the time of the tutorial, many of the features in the beta were not functional, but look forward to a more detailed overview soon!
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About DVPA
Bob Donlon
