Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [70]
1.
In this first step I opened a window in Bridge, selected a raw photo that I wished to edit and double-clicked on the highlighted thumbnail to open it via Camera Raw in Photoshop.
2.
This shows the photograph opened via the Camera Raw dialog hosted by Photoshop, where I clicked ‘Auto’ (circled) to apply the Camera Raw Auto settings.
3.
I was then able to use the panel controls on the right to optimize the tone color and contrast and improve the look of the photograph. Once I was happy with the way the image looked I clicked the Open Image button to continue editing in Photoshop.
4.
The Open Image button rendered a pixel image version of the raw file that could then be edited in Photoshop using all the tools that Photoshop has to offer.
5.
In this step I added a black and white adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack. This allowed me to preserve the color data in the retouched image and retain the ability to switch the conversion on or off.
A Lightroom/Photoshop workflow
The following workflow applies to working in Lightroom and Photoshop, and I have included this here in order to illustrate an alternative approach to incorporating Camera Raw style processing within a Photoshop workflow. In this example you can see how Camera Raw adjustments are applied at the beginning stage to optimize the master image. An Edit-copy is opened in Photoshop and when the retouching is complete, you can use the Develop controls in Lightroom to further edit the copy image, such as applying a black and white conversion.
Lightroom 3 beta
At the time of writing, Lightroom 3 is only available as a public beta program. However, the screen shots shown here provide a good indication of how the final version of Lightroom 3 will work in conjunction with Photoshop CS5.
1.
The Lightroom/Photoshop workflow starts off in more or less the same way as the Camera Raw/Photoshop workflow. Here, I selected a photo from the Lightroom Catalog, went to the Develop module (shown here) and applied some basic image adjustments to optimize the tones and colors. When I wanted to take the photo into Photoshop, I went to the Photo menu and choose Edit in Edit in Adobe Photoshop CS5 ( ). This opened the selected master photo in Photoshop as a pixel image copy of the original master, ready for me to edit. When I saved the image this added the copy photo to the catalog (in the same folder location) and added an ‘-Edit’ suffix to the file name.
2.
As before, I could use Photoshop to further edit the Edit-copy pixel image that was rendered from Lightroom.
3.
As the rendered ‘-Edit’ image was worked on in Photoshop and saved, the Lightroom catalog preview was updated. In Lightroom, I was able to apply further edit adjustments in the Develop module. In this instance I was able to use Lightroom to convert the photo to black and white, rather than adding an extra adjustment layer in Photoshop. As you can see, I was able to achieve a lot stronger black and white conversion using Lightroom.
Camera Raw support
Camera Raw won't ‘officially’ interpret the raw files from every digital camera, but over 275 different raw formats are now supported, and Adobe is committed to providing intermittent free Camera Raw updates that will always include any new camera file interpreters as they become available. This generally happens about once every three months and sometimes sooner if a significant new camera is released. It is probably no coincidence that Thomas Knoll, who is a Canon EOS 1Ds user, always happens to have a new Camera Raw update for the