GET THE MOST OUT OF EVERY RAW IMAGE
Does your camera have a raw mode? Are you using it? If so, then you will be doing a large portion of your image processing in Adobe Camera Raw I (ACR), the program inside Elements that is specifically for processing raw I camera files. The good news is that ACR is simple to use, and the results I can be pretty amazing. It’s fair to say that once you are done processing I your image in ACR, you may have very little left to do in the Editor.
Poring over the picture
WHY YOU SHOULD BE SHOOTING RAW
Your camera most likely has a choice of image formats for storing the pictures on the memory card. JPEG is probably the format that is most familiar to anyone who has been using a digital camera.
There is nothing wrong with JPEG if you are taking casual shots. JPEG files are ready to use right out of the camera. Why go through the process of adjusting raw images of the kids opening presents when you are just going to email them to Grandma?
And JPEG is just fine for journalists and sports photographers who are shooting nine frames a second and who need small images to transmit across the wire. So what is wrong with JPEG? Absolutely nothing—unless you care about having complete creative control over all of your image data (as opposed to what a compression algorithm thinks is important).
Just to give you a little background, JPEG is not actually an image format. It is a compression standard, and compression is where things can go bad. When you have your camera set to JPEG—whether it is set to High or Low compression—you are telling the camera to process the image however it sees fit and then throw away enough image data to make it shrink into a smaller space. In doing so, you give up subtle image details that you will never get back in postprocessing. That is an awfully simplified statement, but it’s still fairly accurate.
SO WHY RAW?
First and foremost, raw images are not compressed. (Some cameras have a compressed raw format, but it is lossless compression, which means there is no loss of actual image data.) Also, raw image files will require you to perform postprocessing on your photographs. This is not only necessary, it is the reason that most photographers use the raw format.
Raw images have a greater dynamic range than JPEG-processed images. This means that you can recover image detail in the highlights and shadows that just isn’t available in JPEG-processed images.
A raw image is a 14-bit image, which means it contains more color information than a JPEG, which is almost always an 8-bit image. More color information means more to work with and smoother changes between tones—kind of like the difference between performing surgery with a scalpel as opposed to a butcher’s knife. They’ll both get the job done, but one will do less damage.
A raw image offers more control over sharpening, because you are the one who is applying it according to the effect you want to achieve. Once again, JPEG processing applies a standard amount of sharpening that you cannot change after the fact. Once it is done, it’s done.
Finally, and most importantly, a raw file is your digital negative. No matter what you do to it, you won’t change it unless you save your file in a different format. This means that you can come back to that raw file later and try different processing settings to achieve differing results and never harm the original image. By comparison, if you make a change to your JPEG and accidentally save the file, guess what? You have a new original file, and you will never get back to that first image. That alone should make you sit up and take notice.
Using adobe camera raw
To open your image in Adobe Camera Raw from the Organizer, select the image’s thumbnail in the Media Browser and then click the Fix tab. Click Edit Photos. Elements will open the Editor and then open your image in Adobe Camera Raw. If you are already in the Editor, choose File > Open and then double-click the raw file you want to use.
THE CAMERA RAW ADJUSTMENT TOOLS
There are three tabs on the right side of the Adobe Camera Raw interface. Each one contains a variety of controls that enable you to make specific adjustments to your image. You will probably do most of your work in the Basic tab (Figure 4.1).
THE BASIC TAB
A raw image file contains no adjustments when it comes out of your camera. It does, however, contain the metadata that stores the camera settings used to create the image. This includes things like aperture, ISO, and shutter speed settings. It also has the camera’s white balance information, which is what shows up in the White Balance control.
FIGURE 4.1
The Basic tab is where you will spend most of your time in Camera Raw.
GETTING THOSE COLORS RIGHT
The default White Balance setting is As Shot, but you can change that to several different presets, just as you would on your camera. Included in the list of presets are Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, and Custom (Figure 4.2).
Selecting one of these presets will change the Temperature and Tint settings of the image to a preset value. If you do this manually by using one of the sliders below the White Balance presets, the White Balance setting will be set to Custom. If you have something in your image that is neutral in color, you can click on it with the White Balance tool and automatically adjust the white balance. This is also helpful if you have included a white balance card in one of your images.
FIGURE 4.2
Click the White Balance dropdown to find a better white balance or change the look of your photo.
If you have not included a white balance card in your image, start with a preset that closely matches the light that your photo was taken in. If it still needs a little adjusting, fine-tune it with the Temperature slider until it looks right. The goal of this adjustment is to remove any color cast in your image and make the colors look like they should.
MAKING TONAL CORRECTIONS WITH THE EXPOSURE SLIDER
Once you have adjusted the image’s white balance, it’s time to start correcting the overall brightness and darkness. A good reference for what to adjust can be found in the histogram in the upper-right corner of your screen. A histogram is a graphical representation of the tones in your photo, with the darkest areas on the left and the brightest parts on the right. If your image is overexposed or has areas that are so bright that they will appear as white and have no visual information, the histogram will have a spike on the right side. If there is a lot of black in the photo, the histogram will have a large spike on the left side. The key is to make sure that you have good tones throughout the image and that the blacks and whites are as accurate as possible. The easiest way to do this is by adjusting the Exposure sider.
If you need to make overall adjustments to the image brightness, you can do this by moving the Exposure slider, which has a default setting of zero. The adjustments are related to stops in exposure value. You can make the image four stops brighter by moving the slider to the right, or four stops darker by moving it to the left.
