A Rough Guide to Adobe Camera Raw

Shooting in RAW and having to spend time processing your images might seem a bore when your camera produces perfectly nice jpegs as you press the shutter release however most serious photographers only shoot in RAW. This is because of the extensive image adjustments you can make to colour and density without producing ugly damaged looking images. Shooting RAW and using Adobe camera RAW found in the various versions of Photoshop and as the backbone of Lightroom has distinct advantages in the range of adjustments but also the plug ins and controls on offer.

On the pages of Lightstalking  Jason Row  gives a basic breakdown of the important options available

“Although many of us now use image management programs to process our Raw files, Adobe’s Camera Raw is still one of the most comprehensive convertors around and benefits from being tightly integrated into Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. One bonus of this, is that its user interface will be very familiar to Photoshop users. In this brief guide, we will give a rundown of ACR’s interface and most important features.

ACR’s Main Screen

When you open a Raw file in Photoshop, the program will automatically open the ACR plugin and preview the image in a large window. Surrounding this window are the important tools you need for your Raw conversion. Running along the top of the preview window are a set of image manipulation tools, in essence, very similar to Photoshop’s own tool palette.”

Click Here: A Rough Guide to Adobe Camera Raw

How to Create More Dynamic Images Using Local Adjustments

I want to drive you over to the ever impressive Lightstalking site today for this very useful and well written article about local adjustments. Lightstalking has many tutorials and galleries worth investigating so after you get there have a good look around. This article is By Jacob Maentz

“A powerful post-processing technique I use for almost every photo is adjusting my settings locally.  I use this technique to bring emphasis to key areas of a photo that I want my viewer to focus on. I am using Adobe’s Lightroom Adjustment Brush and Adobe’s Photoshop Dodging and Burning tools to accomplish this.

I generally shoot in RAW so images right out of the camera are typically flat and dull. I first make general adjustments to my photos such as correcting for white balance and overall exposure. Then I will start making the important local adjustments. When using Lightroom’s Adjustment brush I can make the following local adjustments: Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Clarity, Sharpness and Color. Depending on the photo I may use all of these or only one. I use the Exposure, Clarity and Contrast adjustments most frequently.  In Photoshop the only local adjustments I make are dodging and burning. These techniques can also be made with other file types, but I prefer uncompressed RAW files”…..more

Best compact cameras- top four

While micro cameras are getting all the headlines, with their raw file and video capture abilities plus their interchangeable lenses, compacts still have their place as truly pocketable snap cameras. Kevin Carter reviews four of the best….more Author: Kevin Carter at The BJP

10 Reasons Why You Should Be Shooting RAW

Just because most of the world only shoots jpegs doesn’t mean it is right. The advantages of shooting RAW are considerable and in class I recommend this, I only ever shoot RAW and use Lightroom as my processing engine, love it. Anyway here is a post that list 10 good reasons why you should shoot RAW

“You’ve probably heard over and over that you should be shooting in RAW. But do you know why it’s so important? And what it really means for your images? Let’s sort it out!”...more

7 Post Production Tips for Striking Landscapes

Now that you’ve captured some beautiful landscapes (hopefully in RAW format for optimal versatility in editing), it’s time to bring them into Photoshop and make some improvements. Confused on where to start? Below is a detailed, but certainly not exclusive, list of popular editing techniques….more of this article You might also want to consider our Photoshop course, the next one starts 4th May

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Christopher O’Donnell at Lightstalking

Learn Lightroom in a Week – Day 3: Organizing And Filtering

In today’s tutorial we’ll continue our in-depth introduction to Lightroom by looking at the various options for organizing and filtering your images. We’ll be discussing collections, stacks, metadata, attributes, keywords, and everything else you need to select and organize images in Lightroom!

After importing your photos it’s time to explore and organize them in order to choose the best shots to work with later in the Develop phase of the photographic workflow. The first thing you need to know now is how to perform some basic photo manipulations.

If you skipped renaming of your photos during the import process, you can do it now. To rename images select one or more photos in the Grid view or the Filmstrip and choose Library > Rename Photo(s)…..more of this really excellent series of tutorials