How to use camerrawto process photos

Taking pictures in RAW format is a great advantage of digital SLR cameras. RAW format contains a lot of image information, which is more powerful than JPEG format adjustment, and the picture loss is also reduced accordingly. Let's introduce Photoshop's camera Raw plug-in. The RAW format adjustment plug-in in Photoshop software will be updated frequently. If you don't use the latest version of Photoshop software, you won't be able to open photos in RAW format. Update files for the Camera Raw plug-in can be downloaded from Adobe's official website. Execute the "File-Open" command in Photoshop, and select the RAW format photo to be adjusted in the pop-up "Open" dialog box.

Step 1

Photoshop automatically starts the Camera Raw plug-in (which can be regarded as a functional software installed in Photoshop). At this time, in the interface, the photos in RAW format need to be adjusted are on the left, the histogram of photos is on the upper right, and the adjustment options are on the lower right. Now, place the mouse pointer on the triangle icon at the top left of the histogram and click to activate the "Shadow Trimming Warning" function. At this point, the part of the photo that loses details due to darkness will be displayed in blue.

Second step

Using the same method, place the mouse pointer on the "Highlight Pruning Warning" triangle icon in the upper right corner of the histogram. After clicking, all the parts in the photo that have lost details because they are too bright will be displayed in red. These early warning functions can be used as a reference when processing photos. It can also be seen from here that this plug-in is specially designed for the fine processing of photos.

Third step

Using the same method, place the mouse pointer on the "Highlight Pruning Warning" triangle icon in the upper right corner of the histogram. After clicking, all the parts in the photo that have lost details because they are too bright will be displayed in red. These early warning functions can be used as a reference when processing photos. It can also be seen from here that this plug-in is specially designed for the fine processing of photos.

Fourth step

Because the display range of the Camera Raw plug-in is limited, if you need to observe and adjust the details of photos, you can use the "magnifying glass" function in the toolbar above Camera Raw. Click the magnifying glass icon, and then click in the photo to enlarge the photo. If you click in the photo while holding down the "Alt" key, you can reduce the photo.

Step five

Click the triangle button above the "Save Image" button at the bottom left of the Camera Raw interface to activate the "Select Zoom Level" drop-down menu. Select the scaling ratio, and scale the photos step by step to make the details of the photos clear at a glance. Among them, the more practical items are "100% scale display" and "fit for view size".

Step 6

When the photo is displayed in the scale mode of 100%, the details of the picture will be clear at a glance, which can be used to check whether the local exposure is too much or not, and also to check the clarity and level of the subject. At the same time, you can also cooperate with the "hand tool" in the toolbar above Camera Raw, hold down the left mouse button and drag on the photo to change the browsing position.

Quickly improve the quality of photos

In Camera Raw, the most commonly used option is "basic" adjustment, which mainly includes important functions such as color temperature processing, exposure processing, contrast processing and saturation processing of photos. By using these functions, you can make RAW photos look brand-new, as described below.

Step 1

Flowers are the most common subjects for photographers, and they can often take vivid and beautiful photos without leaving home. In this example, when taking this photo, because the flowers are in the backlight position, when using the automatic metering mode of digital single camera, the light entering the lens is stronger than the light reflected by the flowers, so the photo is underexposed, the picture looks dull, and the exposure, contrast and saturation need to be improved.

Second step

Import the photo into Ca m e r a R aw, find the "exposure" adjustment slider, put the mouse pointer on the slider, press and hold the left mouse button to move the slider to the right, and release the mouse when the numerical value shows "+0.75". Through this operation, we increased the exposure of the photo, making the picture brighter and the flowers more colorful. It can be seen from the histogram at the top right of the Camera Raw interface that the color blocks before adjustment are concentrated on the left, and the adjusted histogram extends evenly.

Third step

The previous step improved the exposure value of the photo, so the photo looks brighter than before adjustment. But because it is applied to the whole photo, the brightness of the dark part of the picture is also improved, and the photo looks low in contrast and weak in contrast. At this time, you can find the "black" adjustment slider and set the value around "20" according to the picture display, so that the dark part of the photo is stronger, the contrast is increased and the picture looks more stable.

Fourth step

After the "black" adjustment, the photo looks closer to the picture seen by the naked eye when shooting, but the color is not strong enough. Here, find the Contrast slider and set the contrast to +30. At this time, due to the increase of contrast, the histogram of the photo is more compact, the contrast of the picture is further increased, the color is more gorgeous, the spot of the backlight is brighter, and the tone of the dark part of the blade is more dense.

Step five

To make photos more colorful, you can use the Saturation Slider in the Basic adjustment bar in Camera Raw. If you have ever used the "hue/saturation" function of Photoshop, you will find that this adjustment will cause color spots on the picture. This is because Photoshop is not only a photo processing software, but also a graphic design function. Camera Raw will consider the loss of photo quality in real time when adjusting. Here we slide the saturation slider to "+20" to make the picture more vivid and colorful.

Step 6

After the previous adjustment, the color of flowers and the blurred green leaves behind have been obviously improved, but there is still potential for further improvement because of the protective effect of CameraRaw on photo quality. Because the saturation adjustment function is aimed at the whole photo, if all the colors are oversaturated, then all the details will be connected and indistinguishable. At this time, you can use the "detail saturation" function to continue to adjust, and you can continue to beautify the color of the photo on the premise of protecting the saturated color.