Practical Photoshop April 2021

Raw editing has improved dramatically over the last few years – and Camera Raw leads the way. Photoshop’s dedicated raw processor offers a combination of simple tools, powerful settings and great depth of features. Over the next few pages, we’ll explain everything you need to know about Camera Raw – from basic editing and workflow advice to essential imageenhancing tools and amazing features like the brand-new Super Resolution command… DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_121 ON YOUR PC OR MAC…

WHAT IS CAMERA RAW? Raw files require processing before they can be edited in Photoshop. Camera Raw is Photoshop’s raw processor. It allows you to set white balance, crop photos, enhance colors, make tonal changes and powerful local adjustments. As such, it’s invaluable for many essential editing tasks. By contrast, the main Photoshop editor gives you more depth in terms of working with layers, creating special effects, compositing and more. But for photographers who mainly prefer to make simple enhancements, the tools in Camera Raw can be all you need. These tools and settings are almost identical to those in the Lightroom Develop Module, so it’s easy to switch between the two. FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO PREFER TO MAKE SIMPLE ENHANCEMENTS, CAMERA RAW CAN BE ALL YOU NEED WHY CAN’T I JUST SKIP RAW…

1 HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS Raws hold more detail in the highlights and shadows; this is good for landscapes, as it can often be a challenge to record detail in the brightest and darkest parts of the frame. 2 WHITE BALANCE With raws you can set the white balance after the fact, so you don’t need to worry about getting it absolutely perfect in-camera: you’re free to fine-tune it later on. You can make a sky warmer or cooler with ease. 3 GRADUATED TONES Heavy editing of JPEGs will lead to an unsightly banding effect in areas of gradation where light tones transition to darker tones – this is very unlikely to happen with raw files. 4 DETAIL CONTROL You can pull greater detail out of raw files as there’s more headroom for editing; and, unlike JPEGs processed…

1 PROFILE BROWSER The Profile Browser offers a range of excellent starting points for editing your raw photos, including themes such as Adobe Landscape and Adobe Portrait. The Camera Matching set mirrors the picture style options on your camera. 2 BASIC PANEL The Basic Panel is the place to begin making enhancements to tone and color. Start at the top and work your way down the sliders. Many work in combination with the Alt key to give you a handy grayscale view. 3 TOOLBAR The toolbar on the right edge lets you access the Crop Tool, local adjustment tools, presets and more. When you click on a tool, the panel view changes to show the specific tool settings. The top icon will bring you back to the regular panel view. 4 WHITE BALANCE SETTINGS This control allows…

WATCH THE VIDEO https://bit.ly/30R9NhQ 01 CHOOSE A PROFILE The Profile Browser is often the best place to begin editing your raw. The Profiles in the Adobe Raw set have been optimized for different subjects - here the Landscape profile improves the colors and detail in our scene. 02 SET BLACK AND WHITE POINTS By setting black and white points, we can control the tonal range. As a rule of thumb, we should bring them to a point just before clipped pixels appear. Alt-drag the sliders to see clipping. 03 WHITE BALANCE TOOL Use this to set white balance by clicking on a point that should be neutral – like a gray rock, or the white cliffs here. Drag to draw a box and sample a wider area. 04 APPLY CAPTURE SHARPENING Raws are inherently softer than JPEGs (which…

01 ZOOMING You can press Cmd/Ctrl and the plus or minus keys to zoom in or out, or press Z then drag right or left. Pressing Cmd/Ctrl+0 (the number) or double-clicking the Zoom Tool icon will fit your image on-screen. When zoomed in, hold down Space and drag to move around the image. 02 ALT-DRAG SLIDERS Several sliders give you a different view if you hold Alt. The Masking slider in the Detail Panel lets you mask out areas from sharpening, while the Whites and Blacks sliders let you see clipped pixels. The Exposure slider gives a grayscale view that can help judge image brightness. 03 RESET SLIDERS Double-click any slider in Camera Raw to reset it to its default value. You can also hold Alt and click Reset to reset all changes. The three-dot…