STEP BY STEPhttp://www.digitalcameraworld.com APRIL 2020 DIGITAL CAMERA^73
1
Reveal & open the correct folder
Copy the Raw Preset Pack from the disc to your computer. To
access the right Settings folders on your computer, you need
to turn on the Show Hidden Files option. To do this on a Mac,
click Go in the Finder menu bar, then hold down Alt or Option
and select Library. The full path is /Users/UserName/Library/
Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/Settings. In Windows
10, open File Explorer, then select View > Options > Change
Folder And Search Options. Pick the View tab; in Advanced
Settings, select Show Hidden Files. The full path is C:\Users\
UserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings.3
Preview your preset styles
Roll the mouse cursor over each of the presets, and you’ll see
an instant preview of how your image looks. There’s a mixture
of colour and mono presets in the collection, so have a quick look
at all of them to see which works well with your picture. To apply
the raw settings creating the preview, just click directly on a
preset’s name. Nothing is fixed at any point, so if you change your
mind and want to apply another, just click on that instead! Once
you’ve got a visual style you like, you can adjust any of the raw
settings to fine-tune the result. To do this, click on any of the tabs
at the top of the panel, then tweak the sliders to alter the effects.2
Install your raw presets
Select all the .XMP files within the Raw Preset Pack folder, then
drag and drop (or copy and paste) them into the Settings folder
you went to in the first step. Once they are in place, right-click
on any raw file (or use Boat.nef from this issue’s disc) and
choose Open With > Adobe Photoshop CC. This will fire up
Camera Raw and load the raw file into it. In the Control Panel,
click the Presets tab (Cmd/Ctrl+Alt/Option+9), and you’ll
see your new raw presets at the bottom of the Presets
list in the DC 227 Style Presets folder. Click the arrow
next to it to expand the folder and see the contents.4
Customise the presets your way
Once you have the look you want, click Open Image at the bottom
of Camera Raw to load the image into Photoshop. If you want to
make another change to the raw, however, you can make your
adjustments without any impact on the preset itself. Here I’ve
used the Colour Edgy Desat preset, but wanted to customise the
look. To do this, I clicked on the Basic tab and took Exposure to
-1.00, then took Shadows to +100 and Highlights to -100 to
expand the tones. To darken the edges, I then clicked the FX
tab and, under Post Crop Vignetting, took Amount to -13. When
you’re done, click on Open Image, and save your newly styled pic.