WORKING WITH RAW FILES
Familiarise yourself with the raw editor’s key features
Overview The Camera Raw editor
01 THE BASIC TAB
This tab contains most of Camera Raw’s colour and tone
correcting tools. The adjacent Detail tab enables you to sharpen
your raw shots to create a print with more punch. It will also
enable you to reduce picture noise.
02 THE HISTOGRAM
This graph shows you the spread and strength of tones in the
image, with the shadows on the left, midtones in the middle and
highlights on the right. This photo has a fairly healthy spread of
tones, although it lacks detail and contrast in the midtones.
03 WHITE BALANCE
If your camera chooses the wrong Auto White Balance setting,
click this drop-down menu to experiment with white balance
presets such as Daylight or Tungsten. Drag the Temperature
slider to manually warm or cool colours.
04 EXPOSURE
This collection of sliders enables you to target and tweak
particular tones. The Exposure slider enables you to fix over- or
under-exposed shots. Drag the Highlights slider left to restore
missing highlight detail without altering the shadows.
05 SHADOWS
To create strong dark shadows without messing with the
midtones or highlights, drag this slider to the left. Reveal
missing shadow and midtone detail by sliding it to the right.
06 VIBRANCE
If you drag the Saturation slider right, it applies equal colour
boosting adjustments to all the colours in the image. The
Vibrance slider makes selective adjustments, boosting weaker
colours more strongly than healthier ones.
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