5 ADOBE CAMERA RAW TIPS YOU PROBABLY DON’T KNOW

I want to share 5 effective Camera Raw tips with you in this lesson. Check out the video, and I’ll provide all the written instructions here as well.

And the advice is…

ACR TIP 1. AI ADJUSTMENTS FOR THE BATCH PROCESS
This one will save you a tonne of time. I demonstrated how to construct a smart preset in Camera Raw in last week’s post.

We’re going to develop this further right now. You can alter an almost infinite amount of images, and you don’t even need to open Camera Raw or Photoshop or create a preset to accomplish so.

We need to make a change first. Anything might be changed. We’ll make advantage of the AI masks to demonstrate how wonderful this feature is. Anything might be the cause, even a sky modification. I’ll conduct a simple hair colouring so you can clearly see the outcome in order to keep it really obvious. Keep in mind that ANY auto mask tool can be used with this.

Right-click to open the bridge.

Select Camera Raw Editing.

Select the individual after selecting Mask.

In this case, we will just select the hair mask, it can be multiple masks if you want.

Click create.

Move the hue slider to make the hair pink.

Press done.

Back in Bridge, you can see the adjustment has been made. The pink hair is hard to miss. Also look to the top right of the image and you will see a badge that means adjustments have been applied.

Right click on the thumbnail and choose Develop Settings>Copy Settings

The settings are now loaded in memory

Choose the photos that you want to apply the settings to.

Right-Click and Choose Develop Settings>Paste Settings

You will see a dialog box.

Choose what you want to apply. We will only choose masking on this.

The hair on all of these photographs was instantly detected by the AI masks and covered up (after some processing time). Impress me, please. (Was the pun meant, or not?)

ACR TIP #2. SELECT ANYTHING

Can the AI masks select what we want them to select? We know that they can select things like skies, backdrops, people, and objects.

Yes.

the Objects option after selecting the Mask button.

Loosely Paint with the brush to tell ACR what you want to select.

When you release, you will se it did a fairly decent job, but it’s far from perfect. (I hear comments from people, “the masks aren’t perfect” and neither are most things. Lets make them perfect shall we?

Paint over the areas that were missed such as the top left of the cog.

When you release, it is added to the selection. Repeat until you have everything selected.

Oftentimes, there will be things selected that you didn’t want selected.

Hold down Alt/Option and paint in the areas to be removed from the selection.

Not bad, better. There are still small areas to work on.

In the Masks panel, Choose Subtract and then brush

Zoom in and manually touch up the selection

You can now alter everything you want, and it will only affect the region you chose.

ACR TIP #3 COLOR GRADE VIDEO

In Photoshop, choose File>Open and navigate to a video clip

The video will open in Photoshop

In the Layers panel, right-click on the thumbnail and choose Convert To Smart Object.

If you don’t make it a smart object, the adjustment will only apply to a single frame of the video. Wrapping it into a Smart Object ensures the entire clip will be affected.

Opt for Filter > Camera Raw.

Inside of Camera Raw, a frame will appear.

Just as you would with an image, make modifications. Be warned that while most modifications will work, the warping tools won’t.

Input OK.

And the color grade is applied to the video.

Choose Export>Render Video to get the video out of Photoshop.

ACR TIP #4. HIDDEN HELPERS

Helpers are things that help us visualize our adjustments as we are working.

The Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key is the secret key. Holding down Alt or Option when adjusting the whites will allow you to see where the image will clip and lose detail.

See how the detail is gone.

Same with the Blacks. Hold alt/option to see the dark areas that are too dark and lose detail.

This tips works on all the highlighted Adjustments.

Not only that, there’s more. This trick also works really well on sharpening.

Here is is at work on the Sharpening Masking. Watch the video at the top to see it in action and get an explanation of the 4 sharpening sliders.

ACR TIP #5 USING COLOR LUTS IN CAMERA RAW

This one is fairly huge. Both Lightroom and Camera Raw support real LUTS. The secret is that you must really build them in Camera Raw, as we will soon do, if you wish to use them in Lightroom. It can’t be done right in Lightroom. Additionally, any presets or profiles you build in Camera Raw will be available in Lightroom and vice versa.

selecting the Preset button