Adobe Camera RAW Video Tutorial – Basic Adjustment Tab
Posted by Wilk | Filed under Adobe Camera RAW tutes
The Basic Adjustment tab is where most people do all the work to adjust RAW and JPEG files, but it is really limiting the power of ARC to use just this screen. If you are in that category I want to challenge you to spread your wings a little and explore the rest of the tabs.
One reason you JPEG shooters want to watch this video is you’ll see a demostration of why RAW files are superior to JPEGS in terms of dynamic range. Once you learn Adobe Camera RAW, you’ll know how to edit not just JPEGs but RAW files as well, as there is little difference between how you work them in ACR.
In doing so, the first thing I would encourage you not to do is to take the photo as close to where you want it on the screen as far as contrast especially. I would further encourage you to explore the use of Tone Curves to create contrast rather than the contrast slider on this screen. Tone curves by enlarge to a far better job of adding pop to a photograph than any combination of the sliders you see here on this tab. The point being though, don’t take the contrast all the way on this screen. My suggestion is to go about half way and start playing with the tone curves next to see what they can do for your photo, then come back to the basic tab if need be.
Let’s go through the sliders on the Basic adjustment tab.
The White Balance dropdown gives you the opportunity to pick a basic color temp scheme; with JPEGs you only get the choices of As Shot, Auto and Custom. With RAW files, you get the full gamut of choices (daylight, fluorescent, etc.)
- Temperature: This slider allows you to change the color temperature, as the colors indicate, sliding to the left makes a shot cooler (or adds blue, useful for correcting shots taken indoors under tungsten [incandescent] light for example). Sliding to the right makes a photograph warmer (or adds amber; useful for adjusting shots taken in open shade as an example). Watch the video to see the differences in how this slider and dropdown box are presented with RAW files as opposed to JPEGs.
- Tint: most modern digital cameras have this adjustment as well (called hue on Nikon cameras as an example). This gives you the ability to shift the colors that color temperature does not address.
- Exposure: For me, this is the first slider I touch in terms of manipulating tonality if the shot is either too light or too dark.
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Recovery: This darkens approximately the top quarter of the histogram (or the lightest portion of the shot). It is useful for getting back blown highlights. For specific manipulation of the highlight areas though, I prefer the Shadow/Highlight adjustment available in Photoshop – the menu selection |Image| |Adjustments| |Shadow/Highlight| – This adjustment is far more tweakable in terms of what part of the highlight spectrum you manipulate, and when applied to a smart object becomes a smart filter (of sorts) and is fully adjustable once you save, close and reopen a document – a huge plus.
- Fill Light: This adjustment lightens the middle tone values of a photograph and acts much like adding gamma.
- Blacks: This is a slider I tend to use quite often. It adds drama and punch to the shadow areas of lighter shots especially and can add punch to middle to dark range colors.
- Brightness: While you will find the "Auto" adjustment tool on this tab makes use of brightness, I tend to shy away from it or use it infrequently. Again, I find Tone Curves far more useful.
- Contrast: Add punch to colors and contrast between highlights and shadows. I tend to use this slider far less as I prefer to add contrast through an S curve (under the Tone Curve tab in this interface).
- Clarity: A lot of people consider this a sharpening tool. It sort of is, but is not that. While it adds wonderful definition to a lot of otherwise drab parts of a shot, it affects mostly areas where there is gradation between light and shadow areas. As a consequence, it often adds drama to face shots, hence the mistaken identity as a sharpening tool. It does not affect the sharpness at the pixel level as other sharpening tools do. This is a tool worth experimenting with though, because you can get some wonderful results from certain shots. If you do not see this slider in your Adobe Camera Raw interface, you do not have the latest version of ARC, which is a free download – see footnote*.
- Vibrance: this adds punch to colors in a way that saturation does not. This is often a great alternative to the saturation too. However, because you can manipulate saturation on a single color by single color basis, you owe it to yourself to learn about the HSL tab on this interface. It gives you much better control over how colors appear.
- Saturation: Increases or decreases overall saturation of colors. Again, the Hue/Saturation/Luminance (or HSL) tab gives you far greater control over the saturation of colors.
*Adobe Camera RAW plugin is a free no-questions-asked download from the Adobe site. Go here, scroll down to the download listing and choose the Adobe Camera RAW download link for your operating system and download it to a place on your computer where you know where it is. Read the instructions for placement of the file on your hard drive, as they may vary from a Mac, to XP, to Vista.
Just copy the file from the zip into this folder and replace the existing one. You will need to close and re-start Photoshop in order for this to take effect. Note that the newer versions of Adobe Camera RAW are NOT comparable with Photoshop CS2—these tutorials require Photoshop CS3 or later.
Tags: adobe camera raw, nondestructive, video tutorial
