Adobe Camera Raw Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

I’ve written a few posts that talk about Presets in Adobe Camera Raw. Those posts discuss how to create one, how to install third-party presets and how to apply them to a photo you’re editing. There are tons of great tips in these posts, so if you’re interested in this type of thing, please be sure to read through them. They’ll give you a good background for what I’m going to write about below.

In today’s post, I’d like to continue on in the Preset world. I know there isn’t too much left to cover when it comes to the basics, but if you ever decided that you wanted to create your own Presets and sell them, things get huge fast. I’m going to avoid all that for now and simply stick to what can help that majority of photo editors who use Camera Raw.

The first area I want to talk about I can get done really quickly. I merely want to show you one more method for applying Presets via Adobe Bridge. After that, I’d like to show you how you can use an existing or imported Preset, modify it and then save it as a version of the original. This is as straightforward as you can get, so there’s no sweat at all. After that, I’d like to explain how you can rename a Preset if you ever wanted to and finally, I’m going to go ahead and demonstrate two different methods for deleting those Presets you no longer need or want.

While this sounds like a lot, it really isn’t. And to help you out, I’ll give you a quick tip below that will certainly speed things up if you ever become a Preset master.

Applying a Camera Raw Preset From Adobe Bridge

In this post, I explained how you can easily apply a Camera Raw preset straight from Bridge, without ever opening Camera Raw at all. I have to admit, this method is pretty slick. I love it when I can make wide ranging alterations with minimal work.

In this section, I just want to go over one more very simple method for doing the exact same thing. This time, it has to do with right-clicking on a thumbnail as opposed to using the Edit menu.

If I open Bridge and navigate to the folder where my thumbnails live, I can select a thumbnail, right-click on it and find the Develop Settings menu item that appears. If I roll over that item, all of my installed or created Presets will appear, along with some other options at the way top of the sub-menu.

This menu has many of the same options as the one from the Edit menu item up at the top of the application. It even has the Clear Settings option I mentioned in my earlier post.

So this is just another way to access presets via Adobe Bridge. I told you it was easy.

Modifying a Preset & Saving the Modification

Trust me, this is going to happen all the time. You’ll find a sweet Preset that has almost everything you want. The problem is, you find that no matter how many times you use the Preset, you always need to go to one area of Camera Raw to make a simple tweak. Perhaps even a few tweaks. When this happens, it’s worthwhile to use the existing Preset, modify it like you always do and then save everything as a new Preset. Let me show you how this works.

Let’s say I open a photo into Camera Raw.

Now, I’ll head to the Presets panel and apply the Vintage Look preset. Actually, the full name of this preset is B_W 06 Sat-75 Vintage Look.

Now, just by looking at this, I already know that I want some more contrast. I already took a look through the various panels to see what changes were made to create the preset and discovered that everything resides in the HSL / Grayscale panel. It seems as though all of the color sliders were reduced to the value of -75 in the Saturation tab and the Red, Orange and Yellow sliders were increased to +20, +30 and +30, respectively, in the Luminance tab. While these edits aren’t difficult at all to make, I sure wouldn’t want to make them over and over again if I had many photos to apply them to.

I mentioned above that what I’m seeing after I apply this preset isn’t good enough. I want more contrast and I probably will for the duration. So, to help out, I’m going to head towards the Basic panel and increase the Contrast to a value of +50.

And since I want this to happen automatically from now on, I’ll create a new preset that’s based on the original values from the previous preset and the new value I added. To do this, I’ll go back to the Presets panel and click on the New Preset button down at the bottom (see instructions for creating new presets). Then, after the New Preset dialog box opens, I’ll type in the name of the original preset, which was “B_W 06 Sat-75 Vintage Look” and add to it whatever change I made. So, the new name will be “B_W 06 Sat-75 Vintage Look Contrast+50.”

When I’m done, I’ll click on the OK button and look at the presets in the panel. Low and behold, the preset I just created is there. The best part is, since presets are listed alphabetically, it’s directly under the original, which keeps things simple and easy to find.

Being listed alphabetically is important here because, oftentimes, folks change existing presets a lot. Having an entire list that’s organized really saves a lot of time.

How to Rename a Preset

Here’s a quick and helpful tip for you. If you plan on working with Presets often, make a shortcut of the folder they’re located in and add that shortcut to your desktop. To create a shortcut in Windows, just navigate to the folder just above the folder you’d like to create the shortcut for, right-click on it and select Create Shortcut.

After it’s created and is sitting there in the folder in front of you, drag it to your desktop or where ever it will be easy to access. I know that it’s a real pain in the butt to navigate to the folder where these Presets are stored. That’s why I’m suggesting this. Also, if you don’t know which folders I’m referring to, please read this post.

Okay, now on to renaming a preset.

Doing this is simple. Again, navigate to the folder where the presets are stored, find the one you’d like to rename, right-click on it and choose Rename.

You can either right-click on the file or slow-click on it twice. That means that you click once, wait a second and then click again. Either way, the file name will become editable.

From there, type in the new name you want and hit Enter on your keyboard. You’ll see the name update in the folder and when you head back into the Camera Raw Presets panel, it’ll be updated there as well.

How to Delete a Preset

Sometimes, we get carried away and install far too many presets than we’ll ever use. I know this from experience. It’s jut something you have to go through when you enter this field. Don’t worry, the lesson will be learned soon enough. More isn’t always better.

Anyway, after you install hundreds of presets you’ll never use, you can easily get rid of them. To do this, simply navigate to the same folder I just mentioned again – the one where the presets are stored. From there, you can click on any preset you don’t want and hit Delete on your keyboard. That will get rid of it for good. If you want to remove many at once, you can click on the first one in a series, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and then click on the last one in the series. Then, press Delete and they will all disappear in both the folder and Camera Raw. If you’d like to delete many randomly placed presets from this folder, click on the first preset you want to remove, then hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and choose the rest. When they’ve all been selected, press the Delete key and you’ll get the same result as above.

If you’re working inside Camera Raw and would like to remove a small number of presets, you can do it from there as well. All you’ll need to do is select a preset and then click on the small trash can icon in the lower right corner.

That will remove the preset from Camera Raw and the folder. Just remember, once you click that preset, whatever it is will be applied to the photo, even after it’s gone, so be sure to get rid of these things and then click the Cancel button in the lower right corner to close out of Camera Raw without applying any changes.

Wow, that was pretty long. I hope I showed you how to work with presets in Camera Raw a bit more than I did in my previous posts. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

I touched on the topic of using outside tools to assist you in your photo editing in a previous post. That one had to do with Color Efex Pro for Photoshop. In that post, I explained some of the many advantages for using tools and presets such as the ones in that package. If you haven’t read that post, basically, tools like this save a heck of a lot of time. If you already have a vision in your mind for what you want your final product to look like, you can simply install a package such as Color Efex Pro on your Mac or PC, choose the sample image that looks like your desired outcome and select that image. From there, you can tweak the look of your own photo.

Besides saving time, many users who don’t necessarily know how to do a lot of fancy editing can use these types of presets and still get professional looking results. That’s really the whole purpose behind creating them. Not everyone can sit behind a computer for hours on end editing images. Sometimes, it’s simply too time consuming. For instance, if you’re a wedding photographer who has two weddings per weekend and do all the editing yourself, you’re going to need to take advantage of a preset tool. You just won’t have enough hours in the day to do all the images justice, much less have a life outside of photography. The good part is, if you have a few “looks” that you apply to most of your shoots, these tools help even more. When you get used to using presets and tools like Color Efex, you’ll be whipping through photos before you know it.

In today’s post, I’m going to attempt to accomplish two things; first, I’d like to offer you a list to resources for finding presets for Adobe Camera Raw. In the list of resources, there will be some “sampler” presets that are offered for free and there will be some more higher-end professional ones that cost some money. If you get anything from this post, I’d like it to be the recognition that presets for Camera Raw exist, learning about where you can find them and finally, how to install them on your computer. Actually, that last one was the second thing I’d like to accomplish in this post. How to install presets.

Websites That Offer Presets For Camera Raw

In this section, I’m going to list some resources for where you can find presets for Camera Raw. I’ll try to keep this list up-to-date as time goes on because I know how websites come and go. Hopefully, I won’t need to do that much because many of what I’ll lead you to below has been around for a while and is quite reputable. Still, if you notice something “off” about one of these below, please let me know about it in the comment section at the bottom of this page.

Free Presets for Adobe Camera Raw – ON1, Inc.

Camera Raw Presets Products by Creative Market

Free Camera Raw Presets – PSKISS

Camera Raw Presets v6 – SLR Lounge

The Quantum Collection: Free Presets for Adobe Camera Raw

VSCO Film Camera Raw & Lightroom Presets

Presets for Lightroom and Camera Raw – Adobe Blog

Mind you, some of the presets from the sites I listed above are very simple and some are very complex. I can remember back in the early 2000s when I would download and install “Actions” into Photoshop. There were times I was annoyed at how stupid some of them were. Sort of like, “Yeah, I could have done that in about 20 seconds.” Others were really detailed and so far out of my reach that I was glad I found them. So, the point here is to read up about what it is you’re downloading and installing so there aren’t any surprises, especially when it comes to paying for these things.

One last word of warning when it comes to “free” actions and presets for Adobe products. Beware. If you start bumping into website that have the words “FREE” and “DOWNLOAD” written all over them, walk the other way. There is a ton of malware and other nasty objects included in packages the uninitiated download to their computers. Only, only, only use reputable resources for this kind of stuff.

How To Install Presets For Camera Raw On Your Computer

In this section, I’m going to walk you through the process for installing a preset for Camera Raw on your computer. It’s really easy, so this shouldn’t take long at all.

I haven’t downloaded this type of thing in a while. The last presets I downloaded were straight files. Today, the creators of presets are including them into a self-installing .EXE file. This is what ON1 does. I just downloaded their free presets and it consists of an installer file that’s 418MB. That’s shocking, considering there are only 10 free presets that would normally take up only a few kilobytes.

Anyway, to install their package, all you need to do is download their installer file, find it on your computer, double-click it and follow the directions.

That’s really all there is to it. The installer will find the location on your computer and place the appropriate files into it. From there, you’ll be able to use the new presets. I’ll talk more about this in my next post.

If you do happen to download presets from a more straightforward outfit, they’ll come packaged in a .ZIP file. I just went ahead and downloaded some presets from the Adobe Blog and this is how I got them (after I double-clicked on the zip file).

And when I clicked into the PS ACR Presets folder, I found the actual preset files.

It’s this view you’ll most likely see.

To install the files, all you need to do is copy the files from the zip folder to the target folder. These target folders differ between Windows and Mac, so I’ve listed each type of computer below.

Mac: (user)/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Camera Raw/Settings

Windows: C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CameraRaw\Settings

Since I’m on Windows 10, I’ll show you a screenshot of the target folder here.

Now, it’s very important to follow a few instructions here because it can be a bit confusing. To find the target folder, you’ll need to browse the C: directory from your File Explorer. From there, you’ll need to click the View tab up top. Then, click the box for Hidden Items. Without doing this, you won’t have the ability to see a few of these folders. They’re hidden.

In the above screenshot, you can see the preset I created when I was writing this post. If I want to add the new presets, I’ll click Ctrl+A on my keyboard in the source (zip) folder to select all the files and the Ctrl+V to paste them in the target folder.

And that’s it! Once the files are in their proper folder, I can head into Camera Raw and use them, which I’ll talk about in a later post.

I hope I explained this concept clearly. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

I have no idea how popular Adobe Bridge is. Actually, I don’t think it’s very popular at all. I know a lot of people enjoy using their operating system’s file explorer tools and are fine with that. I was for years. That is, until I discovered how cool Bridge really is and until I explored much of what it can do. Today, I’m a huge proponent of Bridge and I hope you’ll read what I have to say below. You may just end up loving Bridge as much as I do.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you something really cool. Since I’m the type of person who has somewhat settled on my editing style (99% of photos get the same treatment) in Camera Raw, I could certainly benefit from having my process automated. I used to set up automated processes in Photoshop. Those were called Actions. In Camera Raw, they’re called Presets. Basically, both Actions and Presets record any edits made to an image and save them as an instruction. The next time an editor would like to make the same exact edits to a photo as they did when they created an instruction, instead of pushing sliders around, they could simply hit the Action or Preset button and the edits would be applied automatically.

Now, that’s all fine and good and you may already know about these small pieces of magic. What you may not know is that once a Preset is created in Camera Raw, you no longer have to launch a photo into that application to apply it. You can do it straight from Bridge and be done with it. You can even apply the Preset to multiple images via Adobe Bridge, saving even more time.

I swear, I’m getting sucked more and more into Bridge every time I use it. There are so many hidden tricks that it’s definitely worth diving into and making it a part of the workflow.

Launching From Adobe Bridge

To kick things off, I’ll open up Adobe Bridge. From there, I’ll navigate to the folder I’m interested in. Then, I’ll select a thumbnail and launch it into Camera Raw. If you aren’t familiar with how to open files into Camera Raw, you can check out this post:

How To Open Files & Photos Into Adobe Camera Raw

This is the folder I’m going to be working from in Bridge.

Creating a Preset in Camera Raw

The next thing I want to do is to edit the photo in Camera Raw the way I normally do. I need to be careful to keep things on the straight and narrow. In this step, I’ll be creating the template that my Preset will be modeled from, so I don’t want to get too particular with specifics that this image may need. What I’m trying to do here is to reduce the amount of work I’ll be doing in the future.

I’ll start by pushing some of the sliders that are in the Basic panel.

Next, I’ll head into the Detail panel and make my usual changes there.

Finally, I’ll head into the Presets panel by clicking on the appropriate tab.

To create a Preset, I’ll need to click the New Preset button that’s located at the bottom of the Presets panel.

After I do that, the New Preset dialog box will appear.

Since I’d like to apply all the changes I made to the image to my new Preset, I’ll leave all the boxes in this panel checked off. If I only wanted a few of them applied, such as the settings I made in the Detail panel, I would only keep those checked (or choose Details from the Subset drop-down box). The same goes for the edits I made in the Basic panel. You can really pick and choose here if you wanted to. If you did it this way, you could create multiple Presets that slice and dice what you have the ability to apply to images in the future.

I’ll go ahead and name this new Preset Normal Edits and click the OK button to create the Preset.

At this point, the Preset has been created. Any time I launch an image into Camera Raw and want to apply the same exact edits that I applied to the image I created the Preset from, all I would need to do is visit the Presets panel and click on the Normal Edits Preset. That would automatically apply the previous edits to the new photo. It’s that simple.

Applying a Camera Raw Preset From Adobe Bridge

I have to admit, Presets are really cool and they make life a lot easier. Especially when it comes to blogging. Before I began shooting in RAW and before I learned about Camera Raw, I would apply an Action I created in Photoshop to edit photos en masse. The reason I did this was because I found myself editing the same exact way, image after image. It was tiring and I needed a better method. I’m just happy that Camera Raw offers the ability to make Presets that do almost the same thing.

Let’s say that I have 100 photos from a photo shoot I shot on a nice afternoon. All the images are very similar and they would all need to be edited the same way. Sort of like I just did above in the “Creating a Preset” example. While creating a Preset would certainly help and while it would cut down on my editing time dramatically, I’d still need to launch each and every one of those 100 photos into Camera Raw to apply the Preset. As you can imagine, any time you have to do something 100 times in a row, you’ll end up wishing you were doing something else. That’s just the way it is.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could apply the Preset right from Adobe Bridge? You know, without even opening Camera Raw? Well, I have some good news for you. You can. Let me show you how.

Since my Preset has already been created in Camera Raw, I can close that down. I’ll be working directly from Bridge now.

The first thing I’ll need to do is to find and select the thumbnail of the image, or images, I’d like to apply the Preset to via Bridge. Once the image is selected, I’ll head up to the Edit > Develop Settings menu item. Inside the Develop Settings sub-menu will be any Preset that has been created in Camera Raw. In this case, the Normal Edits Preset is sitting down at the bottom of the sub-menu.

If I click on Normal Edits, that Preset will be instantly applied to the image. I’ll immediately see the thumbnail update with the new edits applied.

If I wanted to apply the preset to multiple images, all I would need to do is select multiple thumbnails and follow the same instructions above. How awesome is that? Now, after applying the Preset, I could launch the individual images into Camera Raw to tweak any of the settings. Nothing is etched into stone here. It’s just that the base edits have been made automatically.

Undoing the Preset From Bridge

By now, I’m sure you have been thinking of all sorts of Presets that you’d like to create in Camera Raw. The thing is, by creating many Presets, you’ll be adding to the list in the Develop Settings sub-menu in Bridge. As you can imagine, when you have a lot to choose from, mistakes can be made. What do you do if you choose the wrong Preset? Whoops.

To undo any Presets you have applied from Adobe Bridge, go to the Edit > Develop Settings > Clear Settings menu item and click. The Presets will be cleared out and you’ll start over from the beginning. It’s that simple.

Opening Photos Straight Into Photoshop

When I first began using this method of editing, I was left a bit stumped. I thought it was really neat that I could quickly make tons of edits straight from Bridge, bypassing Camera Raw completely. The thing is, I wondered what to do with all the edited images. How could I get them into Photoshop for my final editing? Would I still need to pass them through Camera Raw and if so, what was the benefit of doing what I just did from Bridge?

Luckily, I already wrote a few posts that discuss how we can open photos straight from Bridge into Photoshop. If you’d like to read them, click the links below.

How to Open a File in Photoshop Directly From Adobe Bridge

How to Open RAW Files Straight From Adobe Bridge to Photoshop

Those posts should help.

Well, there it is. I hope I thoroughly and clearly explained how to create Presets inside of Adobe Camera Raw. I also hope I helped with applying those Presets via Adobe Bridge. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

I just finished writing a post for my other blog. For this post, I had to edit a few photos using Adobe Camera Raw. This isn’t a big deal, but it did get me thinking. Since I do so much editing in Camera Raw and part of that editing usually involves reducing noise and sharpening the images, why not talk about those two aspects of my editing over here?

Since removing noise is one of the most popular areas to work on when it comes to post-processing, I’ll cover it first. Then, in my next post, I’ll discuss how to go about sharpening photos using Camera Raw. Both of these modification control sliders are contained in the same panel, so they’re closely related and will be very intuitive to understand when dealing with one another.

In today’s post, I’ll launch a demo photo into Camera Raw. I’ll do my usual editing in the Basic panel and then I’ll move onto the Detail panel. Inside the Detail panel are two sections. The first is called Sharpening and the second is called Noise Reduction. It’s the second one we’ll be working in today.

The Demo Photo

I’ll use a photo of a train below to exemplify how to use the Noise Reduction settings in the Detail panel. While it may not look like there is much amiss in the photo directly below, you’ll surely see what I’m referring to after I zoom into specific parts at 100%. The noise will appear as clear as day.

Editing in the Basic Panel

Whenever editing in Camera Raw, you generally want to begin with the Basic panel. The reason for this is simple – big changes need to be made before smaller changes.

Let’s pretend for a moment that I did things backwards and I went ahead and edited a photo by pushing some Noise Reduction sliders before pushing the sliders contained in the Basic panel. If I moved the Noise Reduction sliders to the point of maximum noise reduction and then went back into the Basic panel and moved some sliders such as Contrast or Clarity, I may undo what I had done in the other panel. In Camera Raw, certain edits are dependent on other edits. In this case, in order for the noise reduction to remain the way we think it’s going to remain, I need to work in the Basic panel first. I certainly wouldn’t want to get rid of all sorts of noise and come to realize that my increase in contrast brought it all back.

With this in mind, I’ll make some general edits in the Basic panel. Nothing huge. Just some things to get the ball rolling.

After I’m done here and the photo is looking pretty good, I’ll move into the Detail panel where I can continue on with some more minor changes.

Editing in the Detail Panel

To get into the Detail panel, I’ll click on the tab that looks like two triangles are stacked on top of each other.

And once there, I’ll look towards the bottom at the sliders underneath the title Noise Reduction.

Finally, before doing anything else, I’ll increase the view to 100% so I can see what kind of noise I’m dealing with. When using the Noise Reduction sliders in any editing application, it’s common to view what you’re working on at 100%. If you didn’t enlarge the photo, you simply couldn’t see the necessary detail.

I hope you can see the noise.

Now, I want you to be aware of one thing – when I edit and reduce the size of photos for use online, I really don’t need to go nuts with the noise reduction. The reduction of the photo size removes a lot of the noise by itself. Also, you can’t really see that much detail in smaller photos anyway. It’s when the image remains very large or when you print it that noise becomes very apparent. Even though I keep most of my images for online use, I still like to stay in the habit of covering all my bases. It develops muscle memory (or something like that).

If you look at the six available sliders available in the Noise Reduction section, you should see Luminance, Luminance Detail, Luminance Contrast, Color, Color Detail and Color Smoothness. While this may seem like a lot, once you grasp an understanding of what each slider does, you’ll see that it’s not. I’ll cover what each of these sliders does now.

Luminance: Push this slider to the right to reduce luminance noise. The slider default is all the way to the left.

Luminance Detail: This slider is dependent on the previous one. If the Luminance slider hasn’t moved, you won’t be able to move this one. This slider controls the luminance noise threshold. If you push it all the way to the right, you’ll preserve much of your photo’s detail, but you’ll likely produce lots of noise. To remove noise, you’ll need to push this slider to the left. Beware though, noise reduction also removes detail, so there’s a balance here.

Luminance Contrast: This slider acts much like the previous one. It also depends on the movement of the Luminance slider to work. In this case though, the slider controls the contrast of the luminance. Again, if you push it all the way to the right, you may end up with worse results. You’ll likely see noisy blotches or mottling. And like the previous slider, pushing this one to the left will offer smooth, less noisy results, but there will be less contrast in the image.

Color: This slider is the first in the second section of sliders. This first slider is much like the first in the previous section. It can move, but the two next sliders depend on it to move as well. If you push this slider to the right, you’ll reduce color noise and if you keep it to the left, it will have no effect on the image.

Color Detail: If you push this slider to the right, you’ll end up with thin, detailed color edges, but you may increase color speckling. If you push the slider to the left, there will be less speckling, but the colors may bleed into one another.

Color Smoothness: This is a fairly new slider in the Color section. When you push this slider to the right, you’re instructing Camera Raw to look to the top, bottom, left and right of each color in the photo and to reduce the “abruptness” of each difference. Think about it this way – if you have tons and tons of colors as noise in an image and push this slider to its maximum setting, you’ll actually slightly desaturate the photo. That’s the “smoothing” the slider refers to. If you push it all the way to the left, you’ll end up with more saturated and accurate colors, but they may be very noisy.

As with any of these sliders, you’ll definitely need to experiment with your own photos. The image I’m working with doesn’t exactly have a lot of color in it. It does, however, have a lot of difference in luminance. Because of this, I’ll go ahead and push only the top three luminance sliders. I want you to realize that I’m going extreme here only for your benefit. I would like to demonstrate how strong these sliders can be. I wouldn’t do this in the real world unless I was going for the cartoon look.

I’m going to push the Luminance slider all the way to the right, so the value is 100%. Then, I’ll push the next two sliders (Luminance Detail and Luminance Contrast) all the way to the left, so their values are 0. Let’s see what happens.

Isn’t that crazy? It looks like an Atlas Shrugged book cover. Since these controls are so dependent on the photo they’re altering and since the sliders in this panel are oftentimes difficult to see, I’m going to leave it here. What I would suggest is that you find some noisy photos to experiment with or take some photographs with your camera set to a high ISO value. That should give you some good noise to work with. Take neutral photos and some colorful ones so you can get a handle on both sections of the Noise Reduction section of the Detail panel.

I hope I gave you a clear introduction of how to remove noise in a photograph using Adobe Camera Raw. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: It has been requested that I use the photo from the next post that talks about sharpening photos in Camera Raw in this post as well. That photo has some really noticeable noise in it. Since it’s practically perfect for this post, I’d like to show you what kind of noise reduction Camera Raw is truly capable of.

Again, I’ll open the photo into Camera Raw and enlarge it to 100%. Take a look at all this juicy noise we’ve got going on here.

This image is full of classic Fixed Pattern Noise. There’s a heavy does of both luminance noise as well as color noise.

Right now, I’ve got each of the six sliders in the Noise Reduction section of the Detail panel pushed to the left.

For this next screenshot, I’ll push the Luminance slider all the way to the right.

As you can see, much of the luminance noise has cleared up, but the color noise remains. That’s because we haven’t gotten to the good part yet. For the next screenshot, I’ll push the Luminance slider all the way back to the left and I’ll push the Color slider all the way to the right.

It appears that by pushing the Luminance slider too far to the right, we lost a lot of detail that used to exist in the photo. Conversely, by pushing the Color slider all the way to the right, we didn’t lose any quality and practically all the color noise in the photo has disappeared. I’d say this is the safer of the two sliders to move a great distance.

For a closer look at the color noise I’m referring to, take a look at the next screenshot. I zoomed into 300%.

All those random red and green pixels shouldn’t be colored that way.

For this final screenshot, I’ll push the Color slider all the way to the right (because it’s safe to do so) and I’ll do my usual and push the Luminance slider so it has a value of 25. Let’s see what happens.

Okay, that’s much better. I did a bit of playing around with the other sliders and I ended up with these settings:

Luminance: 25
Luminance Detail: 0
Luminance Contrast: 0

Color: 100
Color Detail: 0
Color Smoothness: 100

The reason I kept both the Luminnace Detail and Luminance Contrast at 0 is because by raising their values, I only increased the grain in the photo. Also, the same was true for Color Detail. I found that when I lowered the Color Smoothness slider to 0 there were “waves” of color noise in the photo that were plainly visible. Pushing this slider to the right “smoothed” that out and got rid of the waves.

Now, I’ve got a photo that’s even better than the one I previously corrected! Getting rid of that color noise helped make this image much more crisp.

I hope this second section helped. If you have any further questions or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks!

A few days ago, I found a photo that looked like it had some great content in it, but also looked like it was rather dull. Whenever I see things like this, I wonder if I could make them appear better by working on them in Adobe Camera Raw. Since I’m fairly confident in my skills, I set it aside for a future project. Well, as it turns out, I’ve got some time today, so I sat down to see what I could do. What I came up with is pretty decent, considering it only took me about five minutes to complete. Take a look.

Don’t worry, I’ll show you the original photo below.

To make my changes, all I took advantage of was two graduated filters. By doing this, I was able to isolate the top of the photo from the bottom. I needed to make different sets of changes to each, so the graduated filter was the perfect choice.

In case you’re wondering what a graduate filter is, I already write a few posts that discuss the tool. You can find the posts here:

Enhancing Photos with Graduated Filters in Adobe Camera Raw

Enhancing Photos with the Adjustment Brush in Adobe Camera Raw

How to Use the Radial Filter in Adobe Camera Raw

While only the top post discusses the actual Graduate Filter tool in Camera Raw, the other two do a good job of explaining how similar tools work. Each of them is in the same family, so if you can come to understand one, you’ll virtually understand them all.

In today’s post, I’ll use two instances of the Graduated Filter tool in Adobe Camera Raw. I’ll limit myself to the edits I make with this tool and I’ll avoid doing anything else. I’ll explain exactly what’s happening as I progress.

Original Photo

Take a look at this photo below. I think you’ll agree that it looks less than stellar.

As I stated above, it’s got issues. First, it’s as dull as all get out. Second, the sky area is full of grain. Finally, I’d like to differentiate the beach area from the sky. In order to do that, I’ll need to alter many different slider characteristics. More on that below.

Making the Beach “Pop”

To kick things off, I’m going to work on the bottom part of the photo. I’ll first select the Graduate Filter tool from the top toolbar.

Now, I know I’ve got two photos open, as indicated by their thumbnails in the left Filmstrip column. Please ignore the bottom one. That’s the finished version that I need to refer to as I write this post. I made many changes and trying to remember them all and replicate them in this working version would probably drive me crazy.

Anyway, since the Graduate Filter tool is now active, I’ll click my mouse pointer down at the bottom center of the photo and drag up to the horizon line. This will create a very large and soft gradient of changes to things and will be very smooth. I don’t want any abruptness in this part of the photo.

If you look closely at the overlay lines of this filter section, you’ll see that one is dashed red and one is dashed green. The green tells us when the gradient starts the the red tells us when it ends. The gradient exists between the two. The closer the green and red lines, the less subtle the gradient will be.

It is worth noting, however, that the edits will still exist in the entire area past the dashed green line. Between the red and green only shows the gradient.

The next things I’m going to tackle are the edits themselves. I’ll push slider values where I want to and then I’ll show the screenshot of the Graduated Filter panel below.

This is what the bottom part of the photo looks like after I made the changes:

And here are the slider positions:

I think you’ll agree that I didn’t do much in the way of effort, but the difference between the original and this version is substantial. I could go further, but I don’t want to make things look weird. What I primarily wanted to change in this section was the color, which I accomplished by reducing the tint value towards the green side, and the contrast, which I accomplished by increasing the Contrast value and the Clarity value, among a few others.

I’ll now work on the sky section of the photo with another graduated filter.

Giving the Sky Some Color

For this part, I’ll create a new graduated filter area. I’ll begin at the very top center of the photo and drag down just a bit past the horizon line. I want to overshoot slightly this time.

As you can see, the green and red dashed lines are back, but this time they’re upside down. This is because the green always stays where you begin dragging from.

When creating multiple graduated filter areas, slider values will oftentimes be carried over from previous instances. This is almost certainly undesirable in this case. To clear out any preexisting values, I’ll click on the menu that’s located at the top of the Graduated Filter panel and then click on Reset Local Correction Settings.

Doing this will zero out all the sliders.

Next, I’ll move the sliders into the proper value positions. This is what I get after doing that:

And these are the new slider values:

Please notice that in addition to the top portion of sliders I pushed, I also adjusted some in the bottom section as well. These sliders are Sharpness, Noise Reduction and Moire Reduction. I mentioned earlier that the sky showed a lot of grain. It was necessary to “denoise” this area to make things look better.

All of these adjustments took fewer than ten minutes to complete. The most important thing to remember when you’re using more then one gradient filter is that you need to reset the slider values when introducing them to the work area. Things can get confusing, so having a clean slate helps a lot.

That’s all for this post. I hope you enjoyed learning about how you can use more than one instance of the Gradient Filter tool to edit a photo in Adobe Camera Raw. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them for me in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

In a previous post, I talked about how we can launch multiple photos into Adobe Camera Raw and edit them all simultaneously. As you can imagine, this is a huge time saver. Doing these types of things one by one can become monotonous, especially if the photos were taken of similar objects or subjects under the same lighting conditions. Really, there’s no reason not to “mass edit” these types of things.

I began using this feature in Camera Raw a while back. When photographing, I would focus my efforts on clusters of similar photos with this type of editing in mind. This way, when I returned to my computer from outside, or from wherever it was I was taking the photos, I could easily group them together for some quick modifications. The things is, I quickly realized I needed a bit of flexibility. Having the same exact edits apply to every single image that I opened into Camera Raw sort of tied my hands. I knew I needed to learn more about what was going on behind the scenes because the way things were, I was getting stuck when I went to edit those outlying photos. You know, the ones with the differences that just didn’t fit in with the rest.

In today’s post, I’ll open a few random images into Adobe Camera Raw with the intent of demonstrating how we can edit them all together or how we can use Camera Raw’s algorithms to edit them simultaneously, but independently. I know, that’s weird to think of. Let’s just say that we can have more them one photo launched onto Camera Raw and selected, but have different edits applied to each image. If you found my previous post about editing multiple images helpful, you should find this one just as helpful.

Opening Image Via Adobe Bridge

The first thing I’ll do is to open Adobe Bridge. I’ll locate the images I intend to launch into Camera Raw, select them and click on the Open in Camera Raw icon.

Once I do that, Camera Raw will look like this:

Selecting All the Images

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that only one of the five images I opened is currently selected (the first one). To select them all, I’ll simply hold down the Shift key on my keyboard and click on the last image in the series. They will appear highlighted when I do this, with the first one still visible.

Now, if you compare the previous two screenshots, you’ll notice there’s a difference between them. The first one has only one image selected and visible while the second one has all five images selected with the same one visible.

Selecting a New Image

Where things stand, I have all five thumbnails “selected.” That word is sort of misleading though, so I think a few definitions are in order. When a thumbnail (image) in Camera Raw is selected, it will appear highlighted, meaning, it will have a light gray box around it. If the image is “visible,” it will appear in the content panel at the center of the screen and will not only be highlighted with a light gray box around it in the left column, it will also display a blue outline around the gray box. This is an easy way of distinguishing between which images are selected and which one is actually visible.

In the title of this section, I wrote that I’d like to “select” a new image. In reality though, all five are selected. What I mean is that I’d like to select a new image to make it visible in the center panel instead of having the very first image in the series visible. Making this change is very simple.

If I merely clicked on a new thumbnail with the intention of making it visible, I’d deselect all the other images in the series. To keep the others selected, but make a different photo visible, I’d have to first press and hold down the Alt key on my keyboard. Once I do that, I can click on a different thumbnail so that one is visible. I’ll do that right now. Notice how a different image is visible at the center of the application while all the others are still highlighted in the left column.

Auto-Editing in the Basic Panel

Much of this post is going to stray from the “how-to” type of writing I typically engage in to a more “informative” style. There are areas of Camera Raw that essentially need to be explained. I can’t tell you how to do some of these things because there’s really nothing to do. I do want you to be aware of some aspects though. With the knowledge I share below, you’ll definitely be able to go ahead and make all sorts of edits the way you see fit.

With all five thumbnails selected in the left column, I can move over to the Basic panel in the right column. From there, I can begin my editing.

In my previous post where I discussed editing more than one image at a time, I told you that if more than one image is selected in Camera Raw and a slider in the Basic panel is moved, both images will take on the exact value of that slider, no matter what the image looks like. This is why I said editing this way is perfect for groups of photos that were taken of similar items under similar conditions. You certainly wouldn’t want to use this method to edit two photos; one of bright daylight and one of a dark interior room in a house.

There are, however, methods for editing groups of images independently, no matter their capture conditions. For instance, now that I have all five photos selected in the left column, I can click on the Auto link in the Basic panel. When I do this, the slider values will change depending on what’s actually inside of each image, not just as a blunt instrument. Camera Raw will intelligently adjust all selected images uniquely.

Let’s compare the slider values of two different photos after I press the Auto link in the Basic panel (directly above the Exposure slider).

As you can see, each image has wildly different slider values, yet they were both edited at the same time. I’m sure you can see the benefit of this, especially if you use the Auto feature frequently. By the way, Auto does a really great job. Even if you use it as a starting point and then edit via the sliders later on, it’s pretty spot on.

Lens Correction & Transform

Using the Lens Correction and Transform features are other areas where you can edit different photos uniquely, but simultaneously. If I head into the Lens Corrections panel, I can see what’s going on.

In this panel, I can check off the two top check boxes to allow Camera Raw to automatically adjust and correct any lens issues I happen to have with the photos in hand. Again, since this is an “auto” function, Camera Raw will treat each photo independently.

I do want you to be aware of something though. Just because we can use this auto feature and Camera Raw will determine each photo’s needs uniquely, that doesn’t mean we can go nuts with changing all sorts of things in this panel. Just like in the Basic panel, if I change something manually, that manual change will apply to all selected photos equally. We’re back to the blunt instrument type of thing. So, if I choose Apple from the Lens Profile drop-down box, that value will apply to each and every photo I currently have selected. Think of it this way: auto features are unique among photos and manual changes area applied across the board.

Let’s take a quick look into the Transform panel. I’ll click the Transform Tool from the top toolbar and the panel will appear. Inside the panel, I can click on the Auto button to let Camera Raw auto correct each of the selected photos. Each photo will be corrected independently, while if I pushed a slider at this point, that slider value would be applied to all images the same exact way.

In the screenshot above, I used the auto feature. I’ll go ahead now and push a slider and show you how that affects the thumbnails. This will give you a clear picture of what I mean.

In the above screenshot, I pushed the Rotate slider all the way to the left. When I did this, all selected photos were rotated. Obviously, this is not a good way to edit different photographs.

Converting to Grayscale

This is a very helpful topic. If I visit the HSL/Grayscale panel, I’ll see a bunch of color sliders.

If I click inside the Convert to Grayscale checkbox, each selected image will turn to grayscale, but with unique slider values. Take a look.

You can see from the two screenshots above that each photo has different slider values. If I went ahead now and pushed one of the color sliders manually, I’d set that value among all photos the same way. Again, the “auto” feature uniquely changes photos while manual changes are applied to all photos the same way.

If you’d like to learn more about how to make photos black and white in Camera Raw, please take a look at these posts:

Creating Black & White Photos in Adobe Camera Raw

How To Enhance Black & White Portraits in Adobe Camera Raw

Other Tools

Editing multiple images simultaneously is a great way to speed up your workflow. You do have to use this method with caution though. If we look up at the toolbar that runs across the top of Camera Raw, we’ll get a glimpse of the available tools.

As you can well imagine, you should really use some of the tools for independent photographs. For instance, if I cropped one photo to a certain shape while all thumbnails are selected, each and every photo will be cropped the same way. The same is true for the White Balance Tool, Color Sampler Tool, Targeted Adjustment Tool, Spot Removal and Red Eye Removal tools. If you make a change to a photo with one of these tools, that change will apply to everything selected. That’s actually a good thing and a huge time saver in its own right.

Basically, what I’m trying to say here is that you really need to work with each tool to see what it does. Many of them behave differently when you have multiple photos selected. While editing images simultaneously is a huge time saver, you don’t want to do the wrong thing and have to backtrack, especially if you’ve got dozens of photos open at the same time.

I hope I’ve given you a good introduction into working with and editing multiple photographs simultaneously inside of Adobe Camera Raw. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!