From the course: Photoshop One-on-One: Fundamentals

Camera Raw basics - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop One-on-One: Fundamentals

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Camera Raw basics

- [Instructor] Let's start off with a few Camera Raw basics. And so here inside Photoshop, I'll go to the File menu and choose Browse in Bridge in order to switch over to Adobe Bridge. Now, as I've said Camera Raw is a plug-in that runs not only inside Photoshop but inside a few other Adobe applications, including Bridge, which is why Bridge often serves as a perfect jumping off point for using Camera Raw. And so, notice I've got this JPEG file right here. And incidentally, if you're working along with me you're going to see a bunch of additional files and that's because I'm populating this folder as I go. And so notice if I select the file and then press the space bar in order to switch to the full-screen mode, that the image has a pronounced color bias. Now that may or may not be obvious at first, but here's the thing, I shot this image on Deception Island, so called because it looks like an Island from the outside, but it's actually an active volcano. And so this sand right here is by no means brown. Rather, it is black volcanic sand. Also notice that the sky is fairly muted. And so we're going to remedy this image using the White Balance Tool inside Camera Raw. And so I'll go ahead and press the Escape key in order to escape from the full-screen mode. And then, because this is a JPEG image, if I were to just double click on it, it would open inside Photoshop, which is why instead of double-clicking, I'm going to right click and choose Open in Camera Raw, or you can press the keyboard shortcut of CTRL+R here on the PC or CMD+R on the Mac. And that is going to open Camera Raw in my case, in the full-screen mode. And you can switch in or out of the full-screen mode by clicking on this icon in the top right corner of the screen. And in my case, that takes me out of the full-screen mode and reveals Bridge in the background. You can also switch in and out of the full-screen mode just by pressing the F key. Now, if you're seeing this filmstrip view down here at the bottom of the screen, then just go ahead and click on this icon, or you can press the / key, and that will hide the filmstrip and give you a lot more room to see your photographic image. Now, as I was saying, I want to correct this image lickety-split, using the White Balance tool. And so I could twirl open the basic panel right here and select the White Balance tool, or you can just move your cursor into the image preview and press and hold the Shift key in order to get the White Balance tool on the fly. And now with the Shift key down, I'll just go ahead and drag a small marquee around the side of this building right here and that corrects the image in a single operation. And so notice that Camera Raw has automatically cooled down the image by reducing both the temperature and tint values. And now we're seeing that more neutral black sand along with a nice blue sky. If you want to see a before and after view, you can drop down to this little icon right here and click on it, or, my preferred way of working, is to just tap the P key. And that's P for preview by the way. And so if I press the P key, we're seeing the before version of the image. Notice that Photoshop is also zeroing out those temperature and tint values. So that's something to bear in mind. If you want to preserve the corrected version of the image then you want to turn the preview back on by once again, tapping the P key. Also notice that we can cycle between various before and after views using this icon right here. But just to make things as clear as possible I'm going to click and hold on this icon and choose Preview Preferences. And then I'm going to turn on this checkbox, Divider in Split Views, just so we can better see what's going on. And now click Okay, and you can use this icon by clicking and holding on it and choosing one of these options right here. Or you can just go ahead and click on the icon which is going to cycle between the various before and after views. And so here we are seeing the before view on the left and the after view on the right. Now if you just keep your cursor in that same location and click again, then you'll mess things up. You'll end up clicking on this icon, which will copy the current settings to the before view. You don't want to do that. Instead, you want to click on this icon right here which resumes cycling between the various views. So I'll go ahead and click again. Now we're seeing the before and after views side by side with a line down the middle. And so that's that divider line that I turned on just a moment ago. Now click on that cycle icon again, in order to see the before view on the top and the after view on the bottom. And now I'll click another time in order to see a split right down the center. But for our purposes, I think the best mode is this guy right here, Before-After Left-Right Split, which is going to show me the before version on the left and the after version on the right. And those are a very few basics of working inside Camera Raw.

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