Photoshop® CS4 Bible

4.3. Using Adobe Camera Raw

Now that you're a believer and are ready to dive in with the RAW format, I'll get a little more specific about the various controls and tools you can use to manipulate your images with Adobe Camera Raw. Additionally, you'll learn how Camera Raw tracks your adjustments, metadata, and image thumbnails, allowing you to use Bridge to quickly browse and organize your images. Finally, you'll learn about the options you have for saving your images in other formats.

4.3.1. Importing RAW, JPEG, and TIFF images

You can import RAW images in several ways. Double-click a RAW file (or files) via the Open dialog box in Photoshop (or in Bridge). You can also open JPEG or TIFF images in Camera Raw by right-clicking on them in Bridge and selecting Open in Camera Raw, or by pressing Ctrl+R/.cmd;+R on your keyboard.

Initially when your images are opened in Camera Raw, a JPEG preview of the images appears while the image data loads and processes according to the definitions that correspond to each camera's RAW format. Unless you've made and saved adjustments to your RAW files, the JPEG preview that you see when you first open a photo is one that was generated and embedded by your camera. The Camera Raw plug-in updates this JPEG preview as you make adjustments to the image.

Once you've adjusted the images to your liking, you may want to save those adjustments as a preset ...