Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [83]
As you work with Camera Raw to edit your shots, the key can be used to mark images that are to be sent to the trash. This places a big red X in the thumbnail, which can be undone by hitting again.
1.
If you have a large folder of images to review, the Camera Raw dialog can be used to provide a synchronized, magnified view of the selected pictures. The dialog is shown here in a normal window view, but you can click on the Full Screen mode button (circled) to expand the dialog to the Full screen view mode.
Selecting rated images only
If you -click on the Select All button, this selects the rated images only. This means that you can use star ratings to mark the images you are interested in during a ‘first pass’ edit and then use the above shortcut to make a quick selection of just the rated images only.
2.
Here, I selected the first image in the sequence and clicked on the Select All button. I then used the zoom tool to magnify the preview. This action synchronized the zoom view used for all the selected images in the Camera Raw dialog, plus I was able to use the hand tool to synchronize the scroll location for the selected photos.
3.
Once this had been done I could deselect the thumbnail selection and start inspecting the photographs. This could be done by clicking on the file navigation controls (circled) or by using the keyboard arrow keys to progress through the images one by one. I could then mark my favorite pictures by using the usual Bridge shortcuts: progressively increases the star rating for a selected image; progressively decreases the star rating.
Camera Raw preferences
The Camera Raw preferences ( Figure 3.19 ) can be opened by clicking on the Open Preferences button in the Camera Raw dialog ( ) or by clicking on the Camera Raw Preferences… button in Photoshop's File Handling preferences.
Figure 3.19 Camera Raw preferences dialog.
XMP sidecar files
Camera Raw edit settings are written as XMP metadata and this data is stored in the central Camera Raw database on the computer and can also be written to the files directly. In the case of JPEG, TIFF and DNG files, these file formats allow the XMP metadata to be written to the XMP space in the file header. However, in the case of proprietary raw file formats such as CR2 and NEF, it would be unsafe to write XMP metadata to incompletely documented file formats. To get around this, Camera Raw writes the XMP metadata to XMP sidecar files that accompany the image in the same folder and stay with the file when you move it from one location to another via Bridge.
Let's look at the General section first. In the ‘Save image settings in’ section I suggest you choose ‘Sidecar “.xmp” files’. TIFF, JPEG and DNG files can store the XMP data in the header, but if the XMP data can't be stored internally within the file itself, this forces the image settings to be stored locally in XMP sidecar files that accompany the image files.
Should you wish to preview adjustments with the sharpening turned on, but without actually sharpening the output the ‘Apply sharpening to’ option can be set to ‘Preview images only’. This is because you might want to use a third-party sharpening program in preference to Camera Raw. However, with the advent of Camera Raw's improved sharpening, you will now want to leave this set to ‘All images’ to make full use of Camera Raw sharpening.
Auto tone corrections
Camera Raw has the useful ability to apply auto tone corrections. To do this, just click on ‘Auto’ ( ) in the Camera Raw dialog (circled in Figure 3.20 ).
Figure 3.20 Clicking on the Auto button applies an auto adjustment to the Basic panel settings in Camera Raw. This auto-adjusts the Exposure, Recovery, Blacks, Brightness and Contrast settings.
Auto grayscale and white balance
The Auto slider settings are in fact determined by the White Balance setting. If you adjust the Temp and Tint White Balance controls in the Basic panel ( Figure 3.20 ) and then select the Convert to Grayscale box in the HSL/Grayscale panel shown in