Intro to Camera Raw - Photoshop for Beginners | Lesson 11

now before we get into camera raw let us first understand what is a raw photo so here we have a raw potato what can you make of it you can make fries you can make mashed potatoes you can turn it into chips now let's say you chose to make chips you fried the whole thing it's on a plate can you turn that chips to mashed potatoes of course not can you turn it back to a raw potato of course not a raw photo is just like a raw potato it's uncooked it's unprocessed it's unedited it's exactly the way your camera sensor captured it it has all the information like dynamic range white balance Etc let me share with you an example so here we have a raw photo let's drag it and drop it into Photoshop once you do it will open up in camera raw now as you can see the highlights are Overexposed but if we decrease the exposure have a look we recover all those details so you have a whole lot of dynamic range to work with you can decrease the highlights all the way through increase the Shadows all the way through have all the contrast you want on top of that you have all the white balance information if you scroll down and open up color right here the temperature and the tint is set exactly to the values that was in your camera when you were capturing this photo you can set the white balance to as sh and if you click on the drop down you'll see the settings from your camera so you can set it to whatever you like let's set it to as shot and as you work with the temperature it is the same as working with wide balance in your camera but the jpeg on the other hand is not as powerful as the raw because it is already cooked you cannot uncook it to this raw photo or potato let's open up the jpeg version of the same image now it's not going to open up in camera raw you can go to filter and then camera raw filter we're going to get to how to open up jpex and Camera raw later but for right now if you zoom in similarly details and the highlights are gone if you open up light and decrease the exposure you will not get the details back see it's beginning to show these artifacts right here and it's just fading it's not restoring anything besides of course you don't have any white balance information and changing the white balance isn't the same have a look there is no information right here and even changing it isn't as natural as changing in a raw photo so in all of this what is camera raw camera raw is simply a module to work with Raw photos but you can also apply it to jpeg you can also apply it as a filter it's a bunch of Sliders and functions to help you process photos that's all now how do you access camera there are a couple of ways and it can get a bit tricky so I want you to understand this carefully first is if you drag and drop a raw photo into Photoshop or open a raw photo in anyway in Photoshop it automatically opens up in camera ra let's say you just wanted to work the whites and the blacks and the contrast now you have two options you can either choose to click on done and once you do it if you go back to the folder and open the photo again the raw photo you see the changes is saved in that raw photo and you can change it at any point in time the second option is open if you click on that it opens up in Photoshop for further editing however if you open up a JPEG file in Photoshop you already know this it doesn't open up in camera raw so how do you open JPEG files in camera raw as well if you want that you can change a little setting in Photoshop click on Photoshop go to settings and then file handling on a Windows edit preferences file handling inside of that click on camera Rob preferences and right here in this drop down check automatically open all supported jpegs and hc's hit okay hit okay again now when you open up a JPEG it also opens up in camera RW for this image let's hit Auto right here let's set the whites the exposure a little bit and the blacks maybe the Shadows a little less this is fine if you click on done keep in mind it's a JPEG but if you open that back up again in Photoshop all of these settings are still right here now from here you can open it up in Photoshop and from here you can do your retouching I already did it so here's the before here's the after if you want to learn more about dodging and burning you can watch these videos right here later another way you can access an apply camera RW is as a filter in this poster this subject is just not fitting right so before we apply camera raw as a filter let's convert this layer into a smart object by going to filter convert for smart filters hit okay this is important so that when we apply camera raw we can change the settings later now let's go to filter and Camera raw filter now inside of it you can do a variety of changes first things first to add that muscle drama let's change the profile to monochrome and then let's increase the contrast a hell lot make the Shadows visible it's just going away and then let's enhance it even more by going to effects and just bump up the clarity just like this you can also increase the texture right here this looks pretty darn fantastic already hit okay once you're satisfied and there you go It just fits right in now there's one incredible camera raw trick that you definitely must know if you love those raw details so if you open up this raw photo into Photoshop of course it opens up in camera raw all of these settings show up if you go to color white balance information shows up it's all right there but if you hit open here it is in Photoshop and all of it is gone there is no way I can get back to those settings if you apply camera raw by going to filter camera raw filter it's all gone of course nothing is there so how do we have the details the secret is smart objects so when you open up this raw photo into Photoshop and when you're working with it in camer and once you are done instead of clicking on open right here if you hold the shift key it turns to open object alternatively you can click on the Arrow right here and choose open as object up to you just hold the shift key and if you click on open object it opens as a smart object now on top of it you can work with whatever you want let's say you added a curves adjustment layer on top of that you added a hue saturation adjustment layer and you increase the saturation on top of that you created a color lookup adjustment layer shows something like crisp warm this is too much decrease the opacity and now you decide you want to go back and change the white balance earlier we couldn't do that but right now since we opened it as an object just double click on the thumbnail of the smart object layer and that exact raw photo shows up with all the settings still intact see the white balance information is still intact and you can just play with whatever you want let's say you want it to decrease the highlights there you go let's see you wanted to increase the shadows and hit okay the changes take effect you think it's too much let's go back and just mild it down like this here okay there you go before we proceed here's a very important setting that you need to be aware of before working with camera raw so when you open up a raw photo or a JPEG photo in Photoshop and it opens in camera raw you need to be aware of the color space you're working with or the color profile you're working with so before hitting open right here click right here and check what color profile would you be opening the image in if you're an advanced user you know how to set this but if you're a beginner or you're just starting out I highly recommend setting it to srgb or adobe RGB trust me even after using Photoshop for 15 years 99.99% of the times Adobe RGB does the job so set it to Adobe RGB for Simplicity and set the depth to 16 bits per channel so that you have more details to work with and there will be less of a banding issue when editing your photos now as you become more and more advanced depending upon what field you get into whether it's print or web you can start working with different profiles but you'll know then for right now set it to srgb or adobe RGB hit okay and you're good to go now when you open your image you'll notice that your image has Adobe RGB color profile if you click on the status Arrow right here choose document profile have a look it is Adobe RGB and it is RGB 16 bits per Channel starting off with some basic functions how do you reset it let's say you moved a lot of Sliders exposure contrast highlights changed a lot of settings the profile the amount added a lot of masks you wanted to completely reset it how do you do that click on the three dots on the side and then click on reset to default and the image will be reset and now if you're in deep deep regret of resetting everything and you want to go back so how do you undo and redo inside of camera the same as Photoshop press control or command Z or Zed however you pronounce it to undo and to redo press controller command shift and Z there you go let's talk about a few slider functions when adjusting a slider if you want to reset it just double click on the slider it's reset another way to move a slider is hovering over the parameter name and just dragging right and left this also adjusts the slider now while dragging to the right and left while dragging keep that in mind not before dragging while dragging while the mouse or the tablet is held in if you hold the shift key and then do that it happens faster if you release the shift key this is normal speed now here's another shortcut if you want to automatically set any of these parameters just hold the shift key as soon as you do that the names change so instead of whites it says Auto whites Auto Shadows Auto highlights so just hold the shift key and click on it the whites is automatically set click on this the Shadows are automatically set so you can click on any of these parameters to set those automatically now of course it's just a technical correction not artistic and then you can set it to your taste according to your liking and work through what you want now time for shortcuts if you're worried about losing details so if you hold the ALT key or the option key when working the whites the moment you begin to see the artifacts those are the areas where you're losing details those areas are so bright that it's clipping similarly if you hold the ALT key of your the option key when working with blacks see the artifacts are the areas where we are losing details due to Darkness because it's so dark there is no detail similarly you can work the highlights and the Shadows you'll see the same artifacts they will indicate you when you're losing details you can choose to stop or go beyond don't be afraid to do that you're making art here now let's say you have moved a lot of Sliders and you want to check which areas are losing details in the highlights and shadows so you can press the letter O to see which areas are losing details in the highlights you can press the letter O again to hide the indicators then you can press the letter U to see which areas are losing details in the shadows and those areas are painted in blue so o for the highlights U for the shadows and you can turn those off by pressing U and O and of course if you have done all the hard work anyone want to take a look at how far you have come or in other words look at the before and after press p for the before P again for after now zooming and navigating is a bit different in camera ra as opposed to photoshop just click and drag to the right to zoom in and to the left to zoom out if it's not happening you want to make sure that the zoom tool right here is selected once zoomed in you can hold the space bar the hand tool shows up to move around now you might be thinking if you're not you should be thinking how do I zoom in and out if I'm using some other tool like a brush mask or the healing brush tools let's say we create a mask click on create new mask and we're going to choose brush now the brush tool is selected as we are painting so how do we zoom in and out you can press Zed or Z to select the zoom tool zoom in and out press Zed or Z again to get back to the brush alternatively you can also press control or command minus to zoom out control or command plus to zoom in how do you fit the canvas to the screen controll or command zero just as in Photoshop now let's introduce ourselves to different sections inside of camera raw now the camera raw module has several sections which you'll find right over here the first one activated already is the edit section then you have the crop section then you have the healing section let's go through some of them starting with the crop section as you can see the image is not absolutely straight so how do you make it straight click on this button right there and then drag a line along a line in the image with should have been straight there you go it's straight again then you can of course crop it according to your liking as much as you like then you can rotate it flip it that's up to you if you want to maintain the original aspect ratio you can keep it locked so now when you adjust it it's locked if you unlock it you can move it anywhere you want all right you can also choose the aspect ratio like 1 is to 1 4 is to 5 that's all up to you now do keep in mind that sections like crop and snapshot only show up when you first open an image inside of camera raw not camera raw as a filter so let's say you applied all of this you clicked on open let's make a copy of the background Li let's go to filter convert for smart filters hit okay let us not forget it then go to filter camera raw filter when applied as a filter you'll see that the crop and the snapshot is gone now maybe I know what you're asking just maybe what what are snapshots well let's say this is your version in the light section you increase the contrast and then you went to color mixer you did a few changes here and there in the oranges so this is your version you want to save this version you go to snapshots you click on this button right here this version is saved let's name it colorful now let's say you want to create a different version you go back right here and you make it black and white monochromatic now let's go to light increase a lot of contrast and then you go to effects and increase a lot of clarity right here then go back to light did a lot of changes and this is your black and white version you also like this version so you go back to snapshots again and click on this button again let's name it bnw so this is your black and white version this is your color version both of them are in the same file even if you click on done it's closed you open that file again in camera ra if you go to snapshots see both of them are right here now let's move to the healing section which is used for removing stuff the shortcut to which is B right here by the way if you want to know the shortcut of anything just hover over it it will give you an animation of what it does it will give you an explanation and the shortcut even for parameters like these like whites or blacks just hover over them and animation will show up and also the explanation right over here so why do you even need channels like these just go to the healing section and then if you want to remove something let's say I want to remove this wing of a plane I wouldn't do that but let's say you wanted to remove that first of all let's try the content aware remove tool it automatically removes automatically samples different areas to fill this area with so let's paint over this area just like that don't forget these engines turbines and stuff now it's not very good if you want to remove big and complicated stuff I highly recommend doing that in Photoshop let's say you don't like the results you can click on refresh now it will sample a different area for you you can keep trying refresh if you still don't like it move to the next tool that is the heel tool here you will Define which areas to sample from so you can move it around let's say this is the area I want to sample from but there is not enough areas but you get the point let's say I want to sample from this area it tries to match it it tries to do its best but it is what it is and then you have the Clone tool which is just a copy and paste in a brush that's all if you place it here it's just a copy and paste in a brush of course you can feather it out a little bit but it's a simple copy paste again for Big Stuff do it in Photoshop for small stuff which is why I have this image right here let's delete delete this select that area and press the delete key for small stuff like there might be some sensor dust in the sky this is important now right now it is so hard to find where the sensor dust is you can visualize them by checking visualize spots move these sliders to figure out exactly where they are so right here we have a sensor dust right here we have a sensor dust again so select the content of a remove let's make this brush smaller you can change the size an opacity from right here just do that gone do that Gone Gone Gone Gone by the way with all of these pins and markers showing up if you want to hide them you can always press V it's hidden if you want to bring them back if you want to see which areas are being selected and which areas we have painted you can press V again to bring it back now let me introduce you to the edit section the main section of camera raw if you are in any other section press e to go back to the edit section this is where the main stuff happens now the edit section is divided into several different panels and each panel has its own purpose it's pretty self-explanatory if you want to adjust the lights go to the light section if you want to adjust color go to the color section effects for effects section details if you want to sharpen everything so everything is self-explanatory although they are self-explanatory there's so much we can do with it that each panel deserves its own lesson I'm going to share with you my perspective of playing and I underline playing with this particular image in this image the biggest thing I see a Miss is the overall color it needs to be a little warmer so let's start by correcting the white balance let's go to the color section and select the white balance tool right here and click on an area which should have been neutral or gray in real life not color so I think this would be an area and there you go you can try clicking different areas which you think should have been gray but this area works just fine and just by doing that look at the Improvement here's the before here's the after now we can work with light her t-shirt is way too bright and it's taking the attention away from the face so let's take the highlights down just like that not too much and you can take the Shadows up we want the face to be a bit even you can also take the whites up to add a bit of brightness and maybe the blacks up as well this creates a slightly faded brighter Airy feel you can also increase the contrast a little bit there you go that makes it pop slightly our attention goes towards the brighter areas and away from the darker areas and to draw the attention more towards the subject let's add a vignette effect let's scroll down open up effects and in the vignette section let's take it to the left there you go now this is not the shape that I like so let me give you a tip decrease the feather all the way to the left hand side just to see what shape it is then play with the roundness and the midpoint and adjust it accordingly then use the feather right here let me adjust the roundness then use the feather to soften it all out just like that I'm going to take the midpoint a little bit towards the outer side and there you go and if you want to have a look at the before and after of a particular section only you can use this I right here to toggle the visibility so here's before and here's the after attention goes straight in maybe not too much maybe just a little bit might be enough now we already touched upon Curves in Photoshop in previous lessons and by the way if you want to learn more about Curves in Photoshop here's a complete mastering guide but in here in camera there's also curves so why not take advantage of it let's open it up and you can just move the curves just as you would do in Photoshop simply the right side represents the bright areas the left side represents the dark areas if you create a point on the right hand side and take it up it makes the bright areas brighter if you create a point on the left hand side and take it down it makes the dark areas darker thus increasing the contrast if you want to remove a point just click and drag it all the way up now another easier way to adjust it is using the targeted adjustment tool right here just select it right and then all you got to do by the way let's Zoom zoom in a little bit let's say you want to brighten this particular area this level so just click and if you drag it to the right automatically that point is created it will be brightened and then I want to darken areas like this so I want to create a point click and drag to the left just very slightly that's nice and for the bright areas I want to introduce some yellows blue is the opposite of yellow remember RGB opposite of cmy red red is the opposite of cyan green is the opposite of magenta blue is the opposite of yellow so let's go to Blue section it says yellow right here let's bring the point on the right hand side because right hand side represent the bright areas let's bring it down let's add some yellow in the highlights there you go it looks amazing now let's go to the Reds I think these areas have too much Reds so click and drag it slightly very slightly to the left hand side and for the greens I think these areas are getting too greenish click and drag it slightly to the left hand side very very slightly and just like that it creates a marvelous effect now if you want to Target specific colors you can go to the color mixer you can change the Hue saturation and luminance of all colors let's say there's Green in the background right you want to make it more saturated let's go to saturation and just make the greens more saturated you can also play with it in the image click on the targeted adjustment right here and go to the green areas and there you go it moves the sliders of all the colors that fall into that area accordingly let's reset both of them let's just move it from right here there we go now the background is wonderfully saturated you can also change the luminance of those areas so you can make them brighter darker up to you I'm going to make them slightly brighter and Hue as well you can make it more greenish or more yellowish that's up to you I'm going to keep it this way and just like that this is Magic let's go to The Masks section just as in Photoshop masks allow you to apply an effect to only a particular area the shortcut to which is there you go it will show up M press M by the way when you're working with any tool inside of the edit section for example inside of the color section the white balance tool right here or inside of the color mixer this targeted adjustment this will be selected even if you move to different panels so you want to make sure that after you're done with the tool you select any other tool or you deselect it just like that all right now let's go to the mask section now there are lots of ways you can create a mask you can use the brush you can draw in a gradient or use AI masking if you click on the subject the subject is masked let's go back by pressing control or command Z if you click on people right here this person you have a lot of options you can can choose facial hair body skin so there is a mask right now of just the facial hair and the body skin together if you want to select the lips you can do that if you want to select the teeth you can do that lots of different face let's hit cancel for now the very first issue that I see with this image is that the eye area is too dark now of course you can select the eye using AI but that rhymed but I want to select the eye area entirely I want to use the radial gradient let's draw in a gradient like this that's all this is simply a mask in the eye socket if you want to see the Border press V to see it and then you can adjust it to your liking you can move it around now let's add one more now this is one mask right here inside of it you can just add and subtract a bunch of things let's add another radial gradient and we can add it just right here now if you want to hide the red overlay you can check this button if you want to show it check it again as soon as you start adjusting it it will go away anyway so let's increase the exposure that is getting better now I would also increase the feather of these so let's select this one and there's a Feathering option I want to increase it all the way up for this one as well I want to increase the Feathering all the way up now let's work with the exposure there you go let's hide it press V to hide it I don't want to see overlay so uncheck that now let's adjust the other settings let's increase the Shadows just this much and that is very very realistic you can take down the blacks a little bit maybe increase the exposure a slight bit want to have a look at the before and after before and after of this mask so here's the before here's the after so much better isn't it now if you want to decrease or increase the overall effect whatever you did right here more like opacity in Photoshop you can play with with the amount so this is more natural if you want to go over what you did more like the equivalent of duplicating the adjustment in Photoshop you can increase the amount as well so I'm going to keep it at about 100 100 was fine now with all of the adjustments we have added the teeth has become a little bit yellowish so let's make it brighter by creating another mask by clicking on this button create new mask and we will choose people right here because then we get the option to set select the teeth there you go make sure teeth is selected click on create now you can just increase the exposure slightly not too much now because it's yellowish let's make it bluish decrease the temperature that's all just like that you want to have a look at the before and after so here is the after and here is the before that's the difference if you want to reduce the overall effect just decrease the overall amount amount at the top to make it more and more natural I'm going to keep it at about 80 that's fine now let's create another mask with just the skin so here facial skin body skin and also the lips and the eyebrows because otherwise that would be left out all right there you go the whole thing let's click on create all I want to do here is to bring up the highlights slightly and the Shadows slightly to make it even you can play with the whites a bit and take down the blacks for added contrast and that does add some value too now let's move to presets you already know what it is it just creates a preet of all of the settings that we have done right here when you're creating a preset if you're opening a preset created by someone else it loads a preet of all of these settings all right so let's say you want to save this as a preset let's go to the presets section the shortcut to which is shift p and right here we have several several presets built in first let's save this as a preset for it let's click on this button called create preset and now you can choose what do you want to include in your preset for example for this image you have made some white balance Corrections do you want to include it because all of your images are similar or do you not want to include it because most of your images have very different white balances that's your your call I want to include everything by the way you also get to choose whether you want to include the masking because it can be very different from image to image inside of that you can choose different things like let's just do the teeth or let's not do anything I don't want to include any masking for this one and let's name this pix outdoor 4 because I did it before and you can keep these presets inside of a group let's create a new group let's name it pix test hit okay and okay there you go now there's this pix test group inside of that you'll find pix outdoor 4 pretty cool now there are several other presets that come built into camera raw there are adaptive presets which include AI masking for example you want to make just the subject pop there you go this is how you do it just hover over the preset to see what they're doing there are other presets for example portraits edgy portraits this one this one this one just hover over them see what they do and if you like a preset let's say you like this preset you can click on it and you can choose the amount you want to apply so you want more of it or less of it that's up to you let's go back to how it was this was our edit hit okay so here is the before and here is the after night and day difference and if you think it's too much here's the flexibility you can always decrease the opacity I'm going to keep keep it all the way up now the camera ra has tons and tons and tons of feature just the introduction took so much time and this was just it but one thing to keep in mind is this just because you have all the tools and all the options and all the gizmos and features doesn't mean that you have to use all of them use just the ones that you need for example in this case there was Optics there was lens blur there was color grading which allows you to add highlight color shadow color and all that stuff but we don't need it right here sometimes just for the sake of applying everything and not missing out we overdo stuff when I was a little kid and my parents used to take me to a restaurant I used to take every single ketchup bottle sauce bottle and put that on my food and it completely destroyed it every single time I didn't want to miss out I didn't want to miss out on tasting this sauce and that sauce and that ketchups and it completely destroyed the taste so don't do that but don't be afraid to experiment as well everything is undoable unlike the food so that my friend is the magic of camera raw it all started with this raw potato I hope you enjoyed the lesson and maybe after the lesson you can treat yourself to some fries or chips or something like that and if you did enjoy the lesson make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting fix imperfect on patreon and helping keep BX and perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching I'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating up here on cloud n and somehow we get it right every time cuz these days we're p and crime and I like it like that

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 36,144

Keywords: camera raw, adobe camera raw, acr, photoshop for beginners, photo editing, adobe, photoshop tutorial, camera raw filter, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: YXCHi0Uo2Ew

Length: 31min 52sec (1912 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2023