Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera RAW

The first adjustment that I use on pretty much every image I ever open is camera cameron is something you're going to get automatically whenever you open a raw file if you had a digital camera set to capture and raw format and that's what I have in this particular folder is a bunch of raw files if I double click on automatically get to came a wrong I do have one j peg file here if I double click on a j peg it would just open it in photo shop but if I want to force an image to be opened in camera rob because maybe it's not a raw file to begin with it's a j peg it's a tiff it's something other than a raw file I would go to the file menu and I would find a choice in here called opening camera and if I had an image that could be opened in camera that would be available s o if I had a tiff ajay peg something else I could do that there are some limitations mainly if your image has any layers attached to it it can't be opened in camera so um we're going to talk about ross if you happen and no...

t with work with raw files no you'll select your image go to the file menu and choose opening camera otherwise just double click on the file of it's already a rafa this is cameron and I just want to give you an overview of some of the most essential adjustments that are in here. They don't want to spend a dramatic amount of time on this because I've covered in other classes that I've done, I want we want to get to cover the fundamentals basics, so when I'm adjusting an image, my mindset first off is to fix the biggest problem first, once I fixed that problem, I look at the image again and say, now, what's the biggest problem fix that next, and I'll keep doing that until I got no problems. And so if the biggest problem is that the image overall is to brighter, too dark, then the slider I'm going to go to in camera wrong is called exposure. This one I thought, was too bright to begin with. If, on the other hand, the problem is not with the image overall instead it's on lee with the bright areas or it's only what the dark areas, then I'm going to go to a different set of slaughters in those sliders or called highlights in shadows highlights is going to work on the bright area of your image. Shadows will work on the dark, so in this image, after I darkened it overall, I think it's the shadow areas, the dark parts. That I still need to work with, they bothers me I can't see enough detail in there, so that means I'll go to shadows and I can bring it up if you're used to older versions of photo shop, the slider that would affect the dark party or image was not called shadows. It was instead called phil light in some older versions, and if you're used to working with the older versions, just so you know, if you brought that up, it would sometimes not make the image look all that good, you would end up seeing weird artifacts around the edges of areas, and it just wouldn't look natural. I know that with the newest version of photo shop, when you have a slider called shadows, you can crank this up a size you need to, and the image usually still looks good. So all insane is if you're used to the old version, where you might be a little more subtle with this slaughter where you I felt that if you moved it too far, you're overly cautious because the image might not look good, that you no longer have to think that way with the new versions. If it's a slider called shadows, you can crank it up asshole as you need it, and the image should look pretty good, so now when I look at the image in I've not seen any big problems with it anymore before I thought it was too bright and after I got the brightness and its general range than I thought the shadows were too dark, we fix that now I could just find too in the images a hole by working with the rest of the sliders and let's just talk about a few of them, then we'll move on to a different picture. If I would need the image to be more colorful, I usually go for vibrance let's bring that out. I like how colorful the images I don't use saturation is often, but the difference between the two if you'd like to know his saturation treats all colors equally, every color gets an equal boost as you move up saturation. The problem with that is usually some areas are already pretty colorful, and if you bring up saturation, those areas that are already pretty colorful become too colorful before the rest of the image has reached its full potential violence. On the other hand, concentrates on the mello colors, the things that aren't all that colorful to begin with and that's where most of the boost happens and as it gets into areas that are more and more colorful, it affects the image less and less and so as you bring up vibrance, you could get away with pushing this much higher, then you could with saturation with saturation, you'll find things become overdone very quickly, but with vibrance that's not as much the case, so most the time you'll see me heading towards violence and not saturation. The other thing I might want to do to this image is if I want to emphasize the detail in the image details emphasized using a slider called clarity, so bring that out and you'll find the textures and the image will be enhanced. Be easier to see any detail that happens to be there that's all going to do to this particular image when I'm done in camera rather is no save button there's no concept of saving from camera instead of the bottom. There are some choices in aiken tell whoever taught here last uses settings other than what I usually use. I'm going to change the settings to the defaults just so you know what it would usually look like then I'll describe where I change those settings, okay, usually in the lower right with default settings, you're going to have these three buttons cancel means I screwed up so bad I don't I wanted to remember and what I've done get you back to what you have before you went to camera done is people want to save. It's really the common to saving close it means let's close this document of done using it right now and it's going to attach these settings to your image so if you ever open it again it will remember him so dunn is usually what you hit and then open image means I might be done in camera, rob, but I need to make further changes in photo shop need to use the retouching tools or filters or other things available in funder shop and so this would open the image in the photo shop, whereas the done button would close it and say we're done so when I'm done I'm gonna hit the done but let's go adjust a different picture I just double clicked on it and bridge it's a raw file soto opened it automatically and came iran so this image overall when I look at it I don't think it looks too dark as a whole because the sky in the trees I think look fine it's mainly this area, so I'm not going to adjust exposure exposure is for the image as a whole if the image is a hole is fine leave that alone in this case what I don't like is just the dark areas of the picture and that's when I go to the shadow slider shadow slider is going to bring out the detail the dark parts once I've done that, the main thing is I find the image could be a little bit more colorful they want a more colorful sky and other areas and that's when I come down here to vibrance bring it up I usually push it until it's too far in the colors look artificial and then I back off to say what's the highest I can get away with because if I don't go too far I'm never going to know if moving at the little of spit further would still improve the image so I go too far and then back off the other thing I might want to do to this image is just bring out the texture a little bit and that would be again with clarity and again push it too far and then back off because you're never going to know if pushing it further would help mohr until you've gone too far with any of the sliders that are available in camera if you find you don't like the end result of what you're getting you khun double click on the slider you know reset it to its default setting. So if I'm not sure if I'm going to like it by just in one of these, I'll just move it to wherever I think it might help and if I don't like it double click on the slider it'll pop right back to its default setting and that's true of any slider in camera raw I wish it was true of any slider and photo shop but it's not I tried double clicking things on photo shop and finish up all the time hoping they would reset and they never do I'm gonna get done I'm gonna open another image but I always fixed the biggest problem first so with this image the biggest problem that I see is the bright part of the picture bugs me it's too bright so in that case instead of going to the shadow slaughter which affects the darkest part of the image I'll go to the highlights slider instead and I bring it down with these sliders moving towards the right will brighten moving to the left will darken so dark in that I'll bring it down then if I want to be able to see what's inside here a little bit and possibly what's up in this area that's what I would call the dark part of the image seen that would be controlled by shadows so I could adjust it as well and at any time after messing with the image if I find the image as a whole starts looking to brighter too dark always the images the hole is exposure now I'm adjusting this for my screen I don't know if the brightness is mind screen is the same as what's being broadcast out there or not I hope it's pretty close but you'll find that if I make things too dark, I'll probably universally make them too dark, which means your screen looks a little darker than mine, that kind of thing. So then one of the thing when it comes to working with both of bright and dark, we have another control in here called contrast, in contrast, controls how big of a difference is there between the bright area of my picture in the dark area? Just how big of a difference is there? And so if I need a larger difference between bright and dark, I could bring contrast up and you see the dark hairs or getting darker, bright areas, they're getting brighter at the same time. There's a big difference between the two if I bring it down, the bright and dark areas will become more similar to each other. And so if you find you've shot in under midday sun and you have really dark shadows and really bright highlights and it's just way over done overall on both ends, then you might find you need to bring down contrast a little bit to make it a little less crazy when it comes to the contrast, if, on the other hand, what you shot was something that was shot in the fog and everything's looking aboutthe same everything looks kind of gray and obscured by fog. Then you might do the opposite if you bring contrast up difference between bright and dark is going to become more great and you'll start breaking through the fog but just know that contrast means if you bring it up greater difference between bright and dark either bring it down, make bright and dark more similar to each other. I find that if I reduce contrast, oftentimes the image looks a little bit flat in to get it to pop again, I need to come down to clarity clarity is what brought out the textures in the image and if I bring that up, the image kind of gets its life back. You could say, uh, it doesn't feel quite as flat looking, so just note that if you lower contra it's quite a bit tried bumping up con clarity to compensate for it and oftentimes it'll look a bit better hit done let's, try another image here we're in burma in burma there is a place that has twelve hundred temples in something like sixteen square miles it's ridiculous I mean it's mind blowing when you see it here somehow if isolated only about five or six temples there's a big one, a big one and a couple of little bitty ones if you see these little tops, those air temples but to me this image is just feeling a bit flat so if there's not enough of a difference between the dark parts in the bright parts, they'd look to similar that's when you're going to boost contrast, then the bright parts get brighter. Dark parts get darker all together at the same time. Once they fixed that, I look at the image and what's the biggest problem with it for me, I'd like to see a little bit more shattered detail just a little so that's the shadow slider in maybe I want to see what would look like of the bright part of the picture was darker one of the sky and here was darker. Well, if it's the bright part of the image that would be highlights, and so I could bring it down to see what would it look like? But most the time I end up moving, a lot of these sliders all end up moving four, five sometimes darn near all of them. If I want to bring out the detail on image, I could bring up clarity, bring it too far first, then back off on it. Otherwise, you wouldn't know how much you can get away with, and it might make the image a little bit more colorful with vibrance. If the colors off noticing in the shadowy area over here is gonna blue, you'll find that shadows in general or blue because what's lighting the shadowy areas it's not the sun which is a warm light source instead it's usually a blue sky whatever the rest of the skies filled with. So when you're blue sky kind of day the shadows really blue it's an overcast day less blue in the shadows, that kind of thing but it's the sky this that is lightning the shadow areas the sun is lighting the the lit areas if you need a change the overall color feeling of the image that's what temperature intent could be used for? So I think this image looks a little too blue. I see blue over here and I just need to move the slider away from blue. What happens is every color has an opposite in the opposite of blue is what's on the other side of this slider yellow so moving the slaughter towards the right is going to make the image look less blue. And once we get rid of all the blue, that was kind of in that image it's going to start making the image look more yellow but let's see what happens to this shady area over here. If I move the temperature slaughter towards the right yeah, I'm getting to be less blue in there, it's going to do it the whole image though not just the shadow areas the slaughter below goes between green and kind of a magenta, so could move it over, make a little more green a little more magenta. What I do typically is if I'm not sure where it needs to go. If I'm not sure if it's to magenta to green, I'll move it one direction until the images to green just to see what that looks like a move in the other direction until it's to magenta, and then I'll get somewhere right in between, and I'll try to figure out which setting let's the color separate the most so that they look most distinctly different from each other. They don't all look greenish, they don't all look magenta, they start separating. Then if you do that, usually you're getting close to the right color, click down let's, do another one this image like stark overall so any time it's overall it's exposure, but at the same time there's just a tremendous amount of contrast, if you look at the difference between the bright area and the darker it's, huge has not, so that could be contrast. If I lower contrast, those two are going to become more similar. I could bring it down until I get a little more similar, but then it's the shadows where I can't really see the detail. I don't know if it's going to be helpful to see the detail in here it might be distracting pulling me away from what I like through here but I can see I'm going to bring up shadows to see how much of that would be useful you cassie and get it in there if I like it I can leave it up and then to bring out the textures and the image I could bring up clarity and I'm not seeing much color so let's bring up vibrance when I bring up vibrance I noticed the image looks rather blue do you see that so if I don't like that it feels rather blue that's temperature intent there's blue over here so let's move it away from blue and move it move it until it's too far you'll never know if it's going to keep improving your image unless you go too far and if you're going to adjust the top one you might as well try the bottom one now let's see is there anything else the bugs me well maybe it's this bright area over here I wish that the sky had a little bit more to it it's looking almost gone that's the british air the image so isn't how the highlights slaughter so I could bring that down to say okay but there's only so much she can bring it down if you had nothing in there whatsoever when you shot it meaning in your camera you can make your cameras set up so it blinks when something solid white. If that was blinking and your camera screen, you can still try to bring down the highlights, but if you bring him down too far it's going just turn gray it's not gonna look very good, so bring it down till it's too far that just tells you what you going to get, and then you'll be able to back off on it until you like it. If you ever want to see before and after you've messed with your slaughters, you want to see if you've improved the imager messed it up there's a preview check box at the top if I turn preview ofthe here's before turning back on here's after, just say no that on ly previews whatever tab of settings you're currently looking at, so if you're looking at the tab called basic that's, what you're previewing the changes from but if you happen to click on one of these other little icons for the different tabs, you're only going to be turning on and off the settings that are found under that particular town I'm gonna hit down now is one of the thing with all my images that I d'oh to make him look better, and that is what I'm done adjusting them there are two sliders that I might use I want to go through each of the images we just adjusted open them again and then see if I want to use these other sliders I find that almost all images look better if they have a small area of solid black within them if it lacks a small area of solid black image just feels kind of hazy it doesn't have a depth to it that I like so what I do with all my images once I think it looks good I go in here and there's a slider called blacks blacks works on the absolute darkest part of your picture if I click on this and I move this to the left the absolute darkest part of my picture will get darker if I move it to the right the absolute darkest part of the picture will get lighter there's a way to tell if something is becoming black there's a couple ways to do it but I want to share with you one of them and that is there's a way to get the behavior of the slider to be different there's a key can hold down to change its behavior it's a key we've already talked about I mentioned it does one of two things that neither works on a duplicate of something where it changes the behavior of something like a button and that is the option key ultima windows I'm holding it down right now with that key held down going to click on blacks and when I do photo shop will show me any area that's become black in my picture it makes my screen turn white and let me just turn it down so you can see what would happen if we had a lot of areas of black it would show me where is it become black within my picture ignored the areas that are showing up in color just look at the areas that are black I usually make sure there's a small area of black doesn't have any big it all just a tiny little blob so right now we have tiny areas of of black that usually will improve a picture if it didn't have it to begin with it won't always be dramatic on screen some house it's more dramatic when printed but it will almost always improve just about any image. So when I'm done adjusting all the other sliders before I leave photo shop, I simply hold on the option key I click on the black slider and I see do I have any black and if I don't, I move this slider to the left and so I see a tiny little area black and most of the time it'll make the image look better there's one other adjustment that ideo when I'm done and that is I look at the bar chart that's here that bar chart we'll talk a lot more about these part charts later on, we talk about adjustments in general, but in general, this shows me the brightness range it's in my picture imagine black is on the left and white is on the right you have all the shades of gray in between in between if the bar chart extends all the way to the left, it means he got black in your picture. It extends all the way to the right. That means you have white in your picture, so for now ignored shape, ignore all the colors just look at how wide it is when you look at how wide it is, look at the white part of it if it extends all the way to the left and touches, you got some black cool would I end up doing though, is I look on the right side and if there's a gap there, then I'm going to try another slider. All I'm doing is when I'm done with all the other adjustments I glance at this thing, I don't care about a shape over all I care about the end on the right. What I'm looking for is a gap. If in on lee, if there's a gap I will do the following, I'll move the slaughter called whites. It controls the absolute brightest part of my image what I'm going to dio is I'm not even going to look at the picture I'm going to look at this bar chart I'm gonna watch right here at this gap and I'm going to move whites up until the gap goes away whites up until the gap goes away then I'll look at the picture to see if it helped so I'm looking at the bar chart bringing this up the gap just went away didn't and now look at the image and if I want to see the difference, I just double click on the slider remember double clicking reset something to its original spot so I'll double click and say this is what it looks like without adjusting it and then I'll click right where my mouse was without moving and this is what it looks like what the whites turned up and I'll see does it help or not? It'll help some images it won't help others so I just try to evaluate it in this case it's hard to say it's not a dramatic improvement where I'm like it's definite improvement I just got to decide is it a nice improvement or not? If I don't like it double click on it so it's reset to normal and just say you're done so let's try this on a few of these images see if we can find anywhere it will help so option click on the black slider we already have little areas of black I can see him down in that little gray bar that goes across my screen that tells you my keyboard truck s so we're good there I look at my bar chart I don't really see a gap was that microscopic one you could say means I can't move this very far to get rid of that gap, so I don't think I'm going to notice a difference with that there just wasn't a big gap click done go to the next one option click on my black slider I think that's red in color I don't see black so move that still left and so you see a black speck up near the top and starting to see little black blobs might be hard for you guys to see from your distance, but they're they're um and then I look at my history, graham is there a gap on the right? Nope, that means I don't have to adjust the white slider go to the next image I would usually do this right after I was done moving the other sliders I just don't want to bring it up to begin with because it would be too much to think about, but when I'm done hold on option e can't see if there's any blacks there so move this until I have a little blob of black then I look at my history, graham is theirs gap on the right? No, there isn't, so I don't need to adjust whites and just do that to each of my images. I'll show you what it would look like if the whites would help in a second here, I only go to the black slider. I don't see anything there, so I'm gonna get some black and first let's see if he can tell blacks in this particular image since I had to move it quite a distance, you might notice here's without look at the dark areas of the image and notice that they're just not that dark, whereas when I get a smaller a of black, it gives a certain depth to the picture that just more richness to the image and let's show you what it would look like if there was a big gap on the right. Um, I would bring the whites down right now to see if I can get a big gap, but what'll happen is the brightest part of your image will feel rather dull, the brightest partier, and this just won't be all that bright. You'll end up looking over here at the history and saying, hey, there's a gap there and you'll end up bringing up whites until the gap goes away, which I'll do right now. And let's see the difference? I'll just choose undue before it kind of dull in the bright part of the image after not as dull, so all he would say is after you've optimized your image, then to fine tune it go to the black slider mix tree of smaller in black if you have a gap on the right of the bar chart, then bring up whites until the gap goes away and just see if it helped on some images that will help dramatically and other images. It won't be noticeable, but it's something that I do on all my images when I'm done because it can sometimes be the difference between just an average looking image and one that really shines so that's how I think about it when I'm in camera just remember tackled the biggest problem first, then once that problem solved say now what's the next biggest problem tackle that until you have no problems left once you have no problems left you confined to the image may be working that the clarity, slider and vibrance for something tio control how colorful it is and how much the detail pops out but that's in general how I think about general adjustments within camera questions about the general of controls that aaron camera there's a lot more we can cover and in other classes we do, but I just wanted to get the overall great, I have a question from mary from costa rica who asked, is it a good idea to open a jpeg file and they are using the open as option in photo shop? Or should we only edit raw files in asia? You should open any and all files that you that are capable of being open and camera meaning j pegs tips any file you want open? I would start in camera. You'll find that once we start talking about adjustments, which will do later on, that in order to get the same kind of changes in the main part of photo shop, you're going to have to go to so many areas within photoshopped that it's going to feel like a pain and that here they've consolidated so many adjustments in the one spot that makes this so much more efficient that I would start just about any image here, the wisconsin pat, when you have files open from several different locations, is there an easy way to save them all toe? One new folder you have files from a bunch of different locations, right? Do you mean locations on your hard drive? Believes if they're a bunch of different locations and your hard drive and you want to consolidate them into one couple things, you could do one, it would be in bridge. To remember what we had a choice called collections you could make a collection and then drag images from multiple folders into that collection then you can view this collection which would be like this s o you would see them even though these might be located in multiple folders then if I want to consolidate these I could select all of them and now dragged them to a particular folder appear not a collection but a folder and it would physically move them on my hard drive so yeah using collections you could do it hopefully does anyone have a question? Okay, we have more from the internet sure there is a question here from o j vest who said if you hit done and then open again in camera are all the settings right where you left them or is everything defaulted again? No when you when you click the done button it means attached the's settings to my picture so the next time I open it has the same setting and in fact if you look in bridge you can tell which image has been adjusted with cameron which haven't if you look closely at the thumbnails you will find a little icon up here that's round uh that means that this particular image has camera adjustments attached to it if I look at a different picture down here that doesn't have that attach like this one right here doesn't have that icon above it it's never been opened in camera or when it's been opened, somebody hit, cancel when they were done instead of done so that means that trusted and came around. Is there a significant difference between bridge and light room? There is in general light room is a cataloguing program, meaning that in order to see images within light room, I have to import them first, and when I import them, it makes all these thumbnails and previews that it saves and what's nice about that is I can still view my images, even if the hard drive that contains them isn't connected to my computer, like at home, I have a huge hard drive full of all the images I shot over many years of time. They won't fit on this laptop, but my light room catalog fits on there, and the light room catalog has all of the thumbnail images and previews of those, so I can view those images even though I don't have the hard drive that contains them hooked up, I can create slide shows, I can organize them there a couple things I can't do, I can't adjust them, it needs the original picture connected, and I can't print them, it needs the high res picture connected eso all I need to do is go home, connect the hard drive to it and in light room now I can adjust the images and print him but I can still do a lot of organizational things whereas in bridge it can on ly show you what's actively connected to your computer right now if you disconnect that hard drive you can't view the images that are on there without cooking it back up what about what about in um making adjustments are the adjustment quality on both light room and bridge they're identical identical wallaby wise if I open something in camera raw all the sliders that you see in camera are named exactly the same as what they are in light room so if there's a slider I talk about here in cameron and you have light room you could apply the exact same slider in light room the quality will look identical so you're saying in light room organization there's a little bit more toll lt's organization in light room yeah also though the adjustments air more elegantly implemented you might have the same sliders available but there will be some other features and light room that just make it more convenient for instance in camera I can choose undo get multiple in news I think but the moment it done it doesn't remember how I got there remembers the end result but not the path I took to get there the history in light room it always remembers the history I can click on an image that I adjusted five years ago and there's a little panel called history. It'll tell me the exact order I applied all the sliders in, and I could click on a previous choice within that list. That brings me back to the way the image usedto look with toby camera the second I clicked done, it remembers the end result, but not all the path that I used to get there. So that's just one example, and there are many others in kamerad that make it a much more elegant program, so if you have a light room I would replace using his replacement for camera in bridge. Yeah, ok, one last question you're on camera ross and we're going to move on from camera guy in dallas, texas, when adjusting blacks while pressing optional key. What are the non black colors that appear? The overlay telling you are they clipped colors? They are clipped colors, it's behind the scenes, you're images made out of three colors red, green and blue. If you lose detail in all three of those colors, you make it so bright that it turns white in all three of those colors you have solid white in if you make it so dark that all three of those colors turned to the darkest they can get, you have solid black the colors you see showing up is when only one were two of the colors that make up your image or losing detail. We haven't lost in all three yet. Okay, in oftentimes that's, an indication that an area is losing detail in a colorful part. If you have a picture of a flower, something else that might be very vivid in color. If you see a color on top of it. When you get into that preview, it means you might be able to get a little more detail there if you back off when your saturation.