Hey guys, welcome to my another tutorial from 30 Days to Learn Photoshop series. Today, we’ll be discussing the Camera Raw in Photoshop. Last time I discussed Shape tool in Photoshop and with that tutorial, there’s nothing else required from the tool panel for a beginner.

I remember when Camera Raw was not present as a filter in Photoshop. In fact, it was not at all present in Photoshop. It was a standalone plugin for which users need to pay extra amount. Then Adobe merged it with Lightroom, and then with Photoshop.

The Camera RAW engine is basically made to process RAW photos but, nowadays, most of us use to process any type of photos. In Camera RAW, you can play with the basic look and feel of the image like basic settings, curve, details, split toning, and so on. Until you’re a hardcore photographer, that’s all you want to do with the photos.

Without further ado, let’s get started with the tutorial.

What is Camera RAW in Photoshop?

Camera RAW is a plugin (yes, plugin!) that comes in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. It’s a processor to perform small and basic tasks efficiently to save the time of photographers.

Where in Camera RAW located in Photoshop?

You can find them in Filter menu. Go to Filter>Camera RAW Filter. Alternatively, you can press Cmd+Shift+A/Ctrl+Shift+A to activate it.

Camera RAW Window

Below is what Camera RAW window looks like.

I have numbered the 5 components of Camera RAW.

1. Preview: It is the preview of the image. Whatever changes you make, Photoshop is going to preview it here.
2. Histogram: If you like the image to be balanced, you can check it here. Right now, the Histogram says that the image is bit overexposed.
3. Tabs: Here you can switch between the settings that are tabbed together according to their functionality.
4. Settings: Here you can see the sliders to alter the image.
5. Options: If you have ever used Lightroom, these icons will look similar to you. The icons present here will help you with white balance, color picker, the addition of gradient, red eye removal, spot removal, etc.

Now, let’s start with the sliders that Adobe calls as basic.

White Balance:

The name pretty much explains itself. This slider helps you correct the white balance of your photos. If you’re editing a JPG, PNG, or basically any format that is not RAW, you’ll see 3 types of predefined settings – As Shot, Auto, Custom.

As Shot – This resets the white balance to the default
Auto – Photoshop will determine what’s the correct white balance should be which is 99% of the time is wrong
Custom – If you play with the below two sliders, Temperature, and Tint, even by a little, White Balance will change to Custom. This tells the photographers that Photoshop is having a custom white balance

If by any chance you get to edit a RAW photo, you’ll get 6 additional formats:

• Daylight
• Cloudy
• Shade (my favorite)
• Tungsten
• Fluorescent
• Flash

Temperature: It sets the temperature of the image. If you drag it to the right, the image will look warm and gives a perception that it was shot on a hot day or in the presence of the sun. If you drag it to the left, the image will look cold and gives a perception that it was shot at the time when the sun was not present.

Tint: It helps you to give the artistic effect and further correct the white balance by changing the hue.

All Photographer’s Choice

Below 6 sliders are the one that photographers use in almost all image. If we remove them from all of the photo editing apps then Instagram and Snapchat will go bankrupt.

Exposure: It sets the exposure of the photo i.e. brighter and dimmer. Even by increasing by 0.05, the image gets visibly brighter.

I get asked a lot of times that what is the difference between Exposure and Brightness. The correct answer is this:

Exposure shifts all levels which are highlights, mid-tones, and shadows. In fact, it scales all levels by a constant multiplying factor. For instance, to push exposure +1EV means doubling all levels in the linear domain (a different factor in the gamma domain).But Brightness is not just a mid tone control since it affects the entire image again.

The difference of Exposure vs Brightness is that the later preserves the highlights while Exposure will blow them. In chance, Brightness makes us loose contrast in the highlights and can lead to some hue changes (not clearly perceivable).

Contrast: Even if you say that you don’t know what it is, I won’t believe you. Even a 1st class student knows what it does.

It helps to create a balance between highlights and shadows by altering the mid-tones.

Highlights: It changes the highlight portion of the image. I use it a lot to bring back the overexposed sky. It doesn’t work as good as with JPGs as it works with RAWs.

Shadow: Just opposite of highlights. This helps you to brighten the darker areas of your image. If you drag it to the left, it’ll make them even darker.

Whites: This slider plays with the white points of the image which is global. If you lower it, you’ll notice that the image gets dark.

Blacks: Just as Whites, this plays with the Black points of the image.

Detail + Saturation

Clarity: It sharpens the image or makes an image less blurry. The effect is drastic and you many not want to drag the slider to the extreme right. Otherwise, the image will look grungy.

As a rule of thumb, I never increase the clarity of most of the images by more than 10%.

Vibrance: If you drag it to the right, you’ll get a more vibrant picture.

Saturation: If you drag it to the right, you’ll get a more saturated picture.

Difference between Vibrance and Saturation
Just like exposure and brightness, another very common question is the difference between vibrance and saturation. If you play with the vibrance slider, it’ll affect only those pixels of the image which are not saturated. For example, a pixel which is saturated red will not be affected by this slider, unlike a pixel which is pale red.

On the other hand, Saturation doesn’t discriminate pixels, it simply saturates them.

Now switch to the next tab.

Tonal Curve

It is almost similar to the Curves that we see in the Image>Adjustment menu.

If you see the graph, the y-axis is divided into 4 parts. Each part represents a region. Upper parts demonstrate the light and lower parts demonstrate the shadow.

Highlight: It affects only the upper regions

Light: It mainly affects the upper two regions but slightly affects lower two regions as well

Darks: It mainly affects lower two regions but slightly affects upper two regions as well

Shadows: It only affects lower two regions

Now switch to the next tab.

Detail

This is where the noise reduction and sharpness come into the picture.

Here I am going to explain only three sliders which are Amount in Sharpening, and Luminance and Color in Noise Reduction. Other sliders are for advanced users and if I explain those, I need to use certain terms which you are not used to.

Sharpening>Amount: This sharpens the image.

You may ask a question that what is the difference between Clarity and Sharpening.

Sharpening works on the edges of light and dark pixels. The algorithm is build to look at lines of pixels in your photo and to lighten the pixels next to light lines, and darken pixels next to dark lines, thus creating a better definition along these edges.

Clarity on the other hand adds contrast to the mid-tones of the photo. The results is in the details of the textures.

Noise Reduction>Luminance: This reduces the noise. Sometimes, you see that there are a lot of grains present in an image. This sliders helps you to reduce them.

This slider works flawlessly with Skin softening as well.

Noise Reduction>Colors: Generally noise are white dots but in some cases, you’ll see blue and red dots i.e. colored noises. This slider helps you to reduce it.

It’s always recommended to zoom in to 100% or even more when you play with these sliders because changes are subtle and you may notice the difference if you’re zoomed out. Even Photoshop also displays this notification at the bottom.

That’s all folks for today. We’ll cover more of them in the next tutorial.

Let’s meet again next week. Here’s the part 2.