RAW in Photoshop

[TylerF]

Hi everyone, I would like to apologize first for asking a question that has probably been asked before. But I don't have too much time to sift through all the searches.

My question is this:

I am thinking of shooting in raw instead of jpeg. i heard photoshop doesnt open the files though. Im sure i can find a converter easily enough. But once i get the image into photoshop, how do i correct the WB and stuff? i hear of an eyedropper technique but don't know what that is lol. i know how to change just about everything else just nor WB. haha.

thanks

 

[IgsEMT]

Photoshop, legitimate version, contain Adobe Camera Raw (w/e version) that does open RAW files.

 

[Sam6644]

I edit raw in photoshop.


you can edit raw in lightroom too, and legit Lightroom 3 beta is free.

 

[Garbz]

As said, RAW needs the Adobe CameraRAW plugin for Photoshop, or a version of Lightroom (which is built around the same engine as CameraRAW). The plugin is freely available from Adobe's website, as is a 30 day trial for Lightroom (though with LR3 around the corner I'd wait before buying LR2 unless you get offered some upgrade).

Adjusting WB you get a whole array of options. Firstly you get the settings your camera has "Daylight, tungsten, shade, cloudy, etc". Note these will differ from the Camera's same setting very slightly in terms of tint and exact colour temperature. You also get the option "As shot" where it will decode the camera's own setting. Or you can specifically adjust the white balance using the kelvin slider (blue / yellow) and a tint slider (green / purple).

The dropper is a tool to help with that kelvin slider. Basically if you know of something in the picture that is neutral such as someone wearing a white shirt, or a grey shirt, or better yet you have a grey card, the dropper will adjust the kelvin / tint settings for you to make sure that all three values for red / green / blue on the point you shoot are equal, thus effectively making it neutral grey and removing all colour.

For a quick hint, go out and find a piece of fabric that is grey, and just stitch it to your camera strap, then when you're shooting, take a photo of the strap (doesn't need to be sharp or anything). That way when you use the dropper tool on it you can read the white balance settings it picks to make them neutral, and apply them to all the other images with the same lighting conditions.

 

[Sam6644]

get lightroom 3 beta for free:
Adobe Labs - Homepage

 

[Temecula_Photog]

Hi Tyler, I think everyone answered you main question, but I wanted to add something that may help. I shoot all of my weddings in raw. I then browse them in Adobe Bridge (I'm using Adobe Creative Suite CS4). I do ALL of my editing for my workflow right there without ever even opening photoshop unless I need to do something artisitic like using a filter. Across the top menu bar, you'll see what looks like a camera shutter. Thats the "open in raw' button. From there I can adjust color curves, exposure, and everything I need, all while still in RAW and 16bit. Once done, I ouptut my entire folder to jpg for print / albums / client's proofs. SHortcut: selected multiple images with like lighting conditions and make changes to all of them at once. I attached my screenshot

for reference.
Hope that helps.
Temecula wedding photographer
Theresa Minnette

 

[TylerF]

thanks everyone. i have cs3. i guess i will just have to mess with things. i have never shot in raw before. where is this kelvin slider? never seen it lol

 

[Dwig]

... i have never shot in raw before. where is this kelvin slider? never seen it lol

The Kelvin slider is part of the Camera RAW plugin's UI so if you haven't shot RAW and used ACR then you can't have seen the slider.

Be aware that the ACR plugin is version specific. You PS/CS3 works with ACR version 4.x. It does not support the newer ACR v5.x plugins. No RAW converter can handle flavors of RAW that weren't available when the converter was written. As a result, many of the newest camera's RAW files can't be opened in the older v4.x versions of ACR.

If you encounter this problem there are two "fixes":

1. Get a newer application (e.g. Lightroom v2, PS/CS4 plus the newest ACR, the newest PS/Elements plus the newest ACR, ...) to convert the RAW files to TIFF for further editing in PS.

2. Download the newest version of Adobe's DNG Converter and use it to convert your camera specific RAW files into Adobe's "universal" RAW format, DNG. PS/CS3 with its v4.x ACR will then be able to open and process the DNG RAW file. The conversion to DNG is a lossless conversion and the DNG is still a RAW file so you will retain full functionality in ACR.

 

[Garbz]

thanks everyone. i have cs3. i guess i will just have to mess with things. i have never shot in raw before. where is this kelvin slider? never seen it lol

Well Temecula_Photog didn't help with that one since he has a JPEG open in his screenshot of Bridge. The slider is called "Temp" in Lightroom, or "Temperature" in CameraRAW above. In this case because there is a JPEG open you can only push or pull the Temperature in non descriptive values, and do it in a lossy way (since not all the sensor data makes it to a JPEG).

However when you open a RAW, for instance it will say Temperature: 5350 K, Tint -8 or something similar. It gives you an adjustment value in Kelvin, and the option to adjust it to any point without quality loss.

 

[Auspiciousnight]

If you have a Mac you can use aperture, thats what I use.