Camera Raw & CS3 question

DScience · Apr 27, 2009

When you initially open a RAW file from your camera, in Photoshop you first get a CameraRaw screen with several options (including Recovery, exposure, contrast...). What I want to know, is can you hit 'open image', go in and do more editing, and then access this CameraRaw adjustment screen again, keeping all my current edits?

I'm brand new to using CameraRaw, help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Danny

Dwig · Apr 27, 2009

No, Camera RAW is an "import filter". It processes the RAW image an passes the resulting RGB bitmap to Photoshop. The image in Photoshop is no longer a RAW image. You still have a RAW image on your disk and that can be reopened in Camera RAW and reprocessed, but it will not contain any of the edits or alterations done in Photoshop itself.

DScience · Apr 27, 2009

Ok thank you, that's what I thought but was hoping!

rufus5150 · Apr 27, 2009

You can however set bridge to open tiff files in camera raw, which gives you access to those controls again, but it's not the same as processing a raw, really. But photoshop doesn't have a 'vivid' control in a single slider, which can come in handy sometimes and it gives you a chance to monkey with the white balance again fairly easily.

Peano · Apr 28, 2009

DScience said:
What I want to know, is can you hit 'open image', go in and do more editing, and then access this CameraRaw adjustment screen again, keeping all my current edits?

Yes. Open the raw image in Photoshop as a smart object. When you double-click that layer icon (in the layers palette), the image will re-open in Camera Raw so you can make further adjustments there.

Inside Camera Raw, click the blue link beneath the image and choose this option in the dialog box that opens:

EDIT (clarification): You want to do this while "keeping all my current edits." It isn't clear what you mean by that.

If you have several adjustment layers above the background smart object, and you re-open the background image in ACR, the effect of those adjustment layer won't appear in ACR. You will see only the adjustments applied by ACR, and you can change those adjustments. All of your edits inside Photoshop will remain intact when you leave ACR and return to PS, so you "keep" them in that sense.