WORKING WITH RAW FILES
N
ow that you’ve been introduced to many of the
key components in the Camera Raw editor, you
can begin to explore some of these tools and
sliders in more detail. There are many good
reasons to shoot and process raw files instead of JPEGS.
For starters you can capture much more information about
the colours and tones in a scene by shooting in raw, so this
enables you to recover detail in blown-out highlights or
under-exposed shadows. The raw editor also boasts the
amazing Clarity slider, which can increase midtone contrast
much more effectively than the standard editor’s Levels
command. This enables you to reveal delicate midtone details
(and enhance what appear to be boring overcast clouds),
as you’ll see in this tutorial.
When you shoot and save in JPEG format, the camera will
apply colour and tonal tweaks to the shot according to the
Scene mode that it’s set to. This can produce photos with
garish colours, or dark under-exposed shadows. You can edit
these colours and tones in the Expert editor, but you risk
revealing compression artefacts. By shooting in raw you have
much more colour and tonal information to plunder, enabling
you to produce photos that feature more detail and have less
unwanted artefacts. You may feel that to shoot and process
raw files is an advanced skill, but this isn’t the case. The raweditor provides all the colour, composition and tone-tweaking
tools close to hand, which removes the need to search around
in menus and sub-menus. Best of all, the raw editor is non-
destructive. You can’t permanently change any of the original
file’s information, so it’s easy to revert back to the original
file if you make a mistake.Typical workflow in
Adobe Camera Raw
Discover how to process your digital negatives
AFTER
BEFORE