Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [69]
Editing JPEGs and TIFFs in Camera Raw
Not everyone has been keen on using Camera Raw to open non-raw images. However, the Camera Raw processing tools are so powerful and intuitive to use that why shouldn't they be available to work on other types of images? The idea of applying further Camera Raw processing may seem redundant in the case of JPEGs, but despite these concerns, Camera Raw does happen to be a good JPEG image editor. So from one point of view, Camera Raw can be seen as offering the best of all worlds, but it can also be seen as a major source of confusion (is it a raw editor or what?)
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program is designed as a raw processor and image management program for photographers. It uses the exact same Adobe Camera Raw color engine that is used in Photoshop, which means that raw files that have been adjusted in Lightroom can also be read and opened via Photoshop. Having said that, there are compatibility issues to be aware of whereby only the most recent version of Camera Raw is able to fully interpret the image processing carried out in Lightroom and vice versa. Lightroom does have the advantage of offering a full range of workflow modules designed to let you edit and manage raw images all the way from the camera import stage through to print and Web output. There is no differentiation made between a raw or non-raw file other than how the default settings are applied when a photo is first imported. When you choose to open a Lightroom imported, non-raw file (a JPEG, TIFF or maximum compatibility PSD) into Photoshop, Lightroom offers you the choice to apply or not apply Lightroom edited image adjustments.
Perhaps the biggest problem so far has been the implementation rather than the principle of non-raw Camera Raw editing. Earlier in Chapter 2 , I made the point that opening JPEGs and TIFFs via Camera Raw was made unnecessarily complex in Photoshop CS3, but with the changes made in Photoshop CS4, this issue has been resolved and the Camera Raw file opening behavior for non-raw files is now much easier to configure and anticipate (see page 106 for the full details).
On the other hand, if you look at the Lightroom program, I think you will find that the use of Camera Raw processing on non-raw images works very well there indeed. I'll be explaining the Lightroom approach to non-raw editing a little later, but it has to be said that the process of editing non-raw files in Lightroom is much easier to get to grips with, since now Lightroom manages to process JPEGs quite seamlessly (see sidebar).
Alternative Raw processors
While I may personally take the view that Camera Raw is a powerful raw processor, there are now other alternative raw processing programs photographers can choose from. Some camera manufacturers supply their own brand of raw processing programs, which either come free with the camera or you are encouraged to buy separately. Other notable programs include Capture One, which is a favored by a lot of professional shooters, Bibble ( www.bibblelabs.com ), FotoStation ( www.fotostation.com ) and Apple's Aperture, which can also be seen as a rival for Adobe's own Lightroom program. If you are using some other program to process your raw images and are happy with the results you are getting then that's fine. Even so, I would say that the core message of this chapter still applies, which is to use the raw processing stage to optimize the image so that you can rely less on using Photoshop's own adjustment tools to process the photograph afterwards. Overall it makes good sense to take advantage of the non-destructive processing in Camera Raw to freely interpret the raw capture data in ways that you can't do using Photoshop alone.
A basic Camera Raw/Photoshop workflow
The standard Camera Raw workflow should be kept quite simple. Select the photo you wish to edit and double-click the thumbnail in Bridge to open it in Camera Raw. Or, you can use the shortcut to open in Camera Raw via Bridge (this is discussed