Using Adobe Camera RAW Plug-in

Here are step-by-step instructions using the Camera RAW plug-in

1.  Open the Adobe  Photoshop CS File Browser (File • Browse) and navigate to the folder to which you've downloaded your RAW files. Wait a moment (these are about 10 times larger than JPEGs) and the thumb­nail images for those files will start appear­ing.

2.  Rotate any vertical images to their proper position. (This doesn't affect the file itself, but it makes it a lot easier to judge the pho­tograph without having to lie on your side.) To rotate 90 degrees, click the Rotate Left or Rotate Right icon.

3.  Right-chick on any image you want to delete, then choose Delete from the in-context menu RAW files are very large; it's a good idea to get rid losers before the task of finding the image you want turns into a life­ time project. 

4.  Use Batch Rename (Automate Batch Rename) to rename all the images with meaningful, abbre­viated filenames that describe the subject by category name, and an alpha character tor each different point of view on the same subject. The Batch Rename dialog is shown in Figure 3-11 

5.  Double-click a RAW image, or just drag it into the Adobe Photoshop CS workspace. The Camera RAW plug-in dialog will open. Older versions of the plug­in will appear similar to Figure 312, while the Photoshop CS version looks like Figure 3-13 

6.  Choose 16-bit from the Bit Depth pull-down menu. This will allow the image to open in Adobe Photoshop in I6-bit color mode so that you can do your exposure corrections before you have to throw out all that data

 

7.  Check the Histogram box at the lower right of the Preview window (In the Photoshop CS version of Camera RAW, the his­togram is permanently visible.) The histogram shows the images distribution ot pixels over the full range of brightness This is a great aid in scientifically judg­ing the brightness levels 

in the image you will export from the RAW file 

8.  From the Space pull-down menu, choose the Adobe RGB (998) color space, as shown in Figure 3.14

9   From the Size pull-down menu, choose the largest image size the program permits for your cam­era (see Figure 315). I recom­mend you do this because any adjustments or retouching you if do is less obvious you start You'll also be with large image. You also beless likely to destroy image infomation by repeatedly having to enlarge and reduce (resample) the image.

10.  Set the resolution to 300 dpi if most of your images go to prin t, or 240 dpi if they go to a color inkjet printer tor display (If you also create web images, dont worry about size right now; you'll be drastically resampling and optimizing them at a later stage.) See Figure 3-16, 

11.  Set the brightness of the brightest significant highlight area by pressing Opt/Alt and dragging the Exposure slider until a light spot appears on the background. The smaller the light spot, the better. The preview image becomes much brighter at this stage. 

12.  Set the darkness of the area that you want to see as a solid (or near solid) black by pressing Opt/Alt and dragging the Shadows slider until the areas you want to turn dark start appearing against the white back­ ground.

13.  Drag the Brightness slider to adjust the midtones until you like what you see. There is no scientific "must" for this setting; its a matter of personal taste 

14.  Play with the Contrast and Saturation sliders They give you a lot of  interpretative leeway 

15.  Sharpness and Smoothness default to a setting of 25, but I prefer to reduce them to about I0 On the other hand, I have a talented friend who is happier with a setting ot 5,so you may want to experiment a bit to find what you like. The idea is to lower these settings so that you can better control edge sharpness and noise (smoothness) using more sophisticated tools, which we'll talk about later. 

16.  Finally, zoom in to 100% using the Zoom pull-down menu at the bottom left of the Preview window. 

And thats it! Click OK to export the image as you see it in the Preview win­dow. Or, if you want to start all over again, press Opt/Alt and click the Cancel button when its label changes to Reset.