Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
Right now we're gonna be talking about Camera Raw and I know that doesn't sound exciting because you're thinking, Camera Raw, how exciting can a file format be? Well not that exciting really but Camera Raw plugin inside of Photoshop is absolutely amazing. It's very similar to the tools inside of Lightroom, we'll talk about that but what I find very exciting is the fact we just had an update recently. You guys remember the recent update? We got profiles, we got some really cool things in there so amongst everything else I'm gonna show you, you're gonna be very surprised with all the things you can do inside of Camera Raw but one of the things I'm also gonna show you is the new Color Profiles and how to make them, how to actually create a lot and if you don't know what that means you will, how to create a lot in Photoshop and then take Photoshop adjustments that are not available inside of Camera Raw and automatically apply them to your RAW images and that will also work inside of Lightr...
oom as I said. The other thing is Camera Raw since version CC inside of Photoshop, that became available as a plugin. It's been inside of Photoshop for a long time so if you have an earlier version of Photoshop, if you right click on your images you'll see a thing that says Open in Camera Raw and you can open your images that way, in fact, we're gonna do this way anyway just so everybody can follow along. Now, Camera Raw is not just for raw files, it's also for JPEG, it's for PNGs, can do PSDs in here and what it is is just a more modern set of tools for adjusting images and once you start using Camera Raw, I'm not gonna say you don't use the other tools inside of Photoshop. I love all the tools in Photoshop and I use 'em all the time, they're my very good friends. But they're kinda like my teddy bear, I don't use 'em as much anymore because the tools inside of Camera Raw are just so amazing that you're gonna find that a majority of all the image adjustments you wanna do, you're gonna do inside of the Camera Raw plugin and it's, so that's the thing. I love it, I barely use the other tools anymore unless I'm compositing or creating some kind of art you know, I wanna cut things out and do things like that then I'll jump into Photoshop. And so a lot of the time in my workflows I'll start with a RAW image and I'm not gonna explain the difference between RAW and JPEG, I think we all know that. At this point, you wanna be shooting in RAW. You know, better dynamic range, more detail, and then also flexibility 'cause you have the ability to change the adjustments later on. So we shoot in RAW and then we bring the photos into Photoshop. Now you might start in Lightroom and that's okay so the adjustments inside of Lightroom and the adjustments inside of Camera Raw are absolutely identical and that's for a reason. So you can go backwards and forwards between the two programs and you can easily do that. So you make adjustments in one, you can go back to the other one and share them. So you will be familiar with some of these tools. So we're gonna have a look at all the different tools, what they can do, why they're better for making your image adjustments and then we're gonna look at some other things like how to work with multiple images, we can do HDRs as panoramas, we're gonna do some cool things but like as I said before, we're gonna create Color Profiles and I'm gonna show you a few tips and tricks in here so even if you're not really using Camera Raw and you're only using Lightroom, you're gonna find this super useful but if you are a Photoshop user and you're using Photoshop, this stuff is just, you know, you're gonna love it. So I know a lot of us are all really familiar with Camera Raw so what I'm gonna do is we're gonna kind of do a couple of things. One of the things is we're gonna do just a basic like, what do these sliders do? You know, we know these sliders when we're moving them, adjusting them and we're gonna go through just a basic sliders, explain to you what they are and what they really do to an image and the order that you would use them in. And then we're gonna jump into some of the like more cool and exotic features inside of there so there's gonna be a little bit of something for everybody. Now one of the great things about working in Camera Raw is the fact that everything we do is non-destructive. Non-destructive sort of used to be a buzz word but I don't think it is anymore, it's just an expected workflow and non-destructive means that when you change something, you can change it back. But the other thing it means is it doesn't deteriorate over time. So for example, you know you photocopy something, anyone remember photocopy, and then you take a photocopy and you make a copy of a copy. You ever seen the movie Multiplicity? Yeah like that and then you're shaving your tongue before you know it, you know, I thought it was a great movie. Was it Michael Keaton? It was a good movie. So that's what happens with a JPEG. When you work with a JPEG and you save it, it loses quality and then you save it again, it lose more quality, more quality or you're working with destructive filters. You know you apply a levels, not an adjustment but you're applying a level into your image and you do it again and again and slowly it's degenerating. Non-destructive after 1000 adjustments, your image is still is intact as it was from the first adjustment. So that's really the big benefit of the non-destructive and you can go back and change things later.