The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers

Chapter 4. Basic Image Editing in Camera Raw

INITIAL COLOR AND TONE ADJUSTMENTS

Many photographers have a hard time fighting the urge to jump directly into Photoshop once they find a photo or two they like. You may have that impulse now, after having identified your three- four-, and five-star images during the photo-editing process in Bridge. But stay with me here for a minute. Even though Photoshop is an amazing image editor, its place is later in the flow.

The bulk of your image editing will actually occur in another application known as Adobe Camera Raw. ACR is a plug-in that comes bundled with Photoshop CS4 and is hosted by either Photoshop or Bridge. To be perfectly candid, this is amazing software that has changed my approach to image processing. ACR lets you quickly fine-tune your photos using tools that are easy to recognize. For example, adjustments such as Exposure, Fill Light, Brightness, and Saturation are the sort of controls that you'll be working with. Even though the names of these controls sound familiar to you, that doesn't mean you get to skip this chapter. I'll show you how the Exposure slider lets you control the highlights, how you can use Brightness to control midtones, how you can recover shadow detail using Fill Light, and how Saturation affects color intensity. But you can see already that this conversation makes sense and the controls will be easy to remember. ...