Question for Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw Users

printergirl

I am just wondering if I am the only one who does this? Often, when using Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw to "develop" and tweak my photos, I don't have to take it any further. Simply "touch them up" in Raw and export them to JPG for uploading. Am I the only one that does this, or do most of you carry them on into Photoshop for finalization? Just curious.

I ask because it seems that everyone else online talks about developing them in Raw and finishing them in Photoshop, but I gotta say, I get great results from Raw alone. I have many presets that I use within Raw already setup and downloaded the Wow-Presets from OnOne software (free), which also are great for rendering artistic effects, among other things. Am I alone in this work flow?

I mean sometimes I will take a picture into Photoshop and finish it, but that is on a rare occasion and only if I can't do what I have envisioned within Raw. Usually Raw can handle it.

That's why I laugh when all my Lightroom friends "look down on me" for not using it, saying "oh well I can do everything in LR and never have to open PS." Because that's pretty much how I am doing it in Raw. So, I was curious if I am an oddity for stopping there 90% of the time and not taking it further into PS?

arodney

You’re doing nothing wrong if you are happy with the results. FWIW, I do about the same thing for a lot of work but use Lightroom instead (which uses the same processing controls and engine as Camera Raw). If I know I’ll print an image, I’ll probably take it into Photoshop for a bit of work but that has been reduced about 85% since I started processing raw in Lightroom. As an example, this web gallery is 100% Lightroom, not a lick of Photoshop. With the new selective brush tools and gradients, post crop vignette, there was no need for any Photoshop work IMHO. If I end up printing them large on my Epson 7880, I might do a bit of touch up in Photoshop but it will be slight indeed.

http://digitaldog.net/Galapagos/

That said, I do see a propensity of users doing sloppy raw rendering and then spending far too much time in Photoshop trying to fix the mess. You’ll find a lot of such “techniques” on this and many other sites. My mantra is GIGO:GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT. Get it right when you render the raw, fixing in Photoshop becomes a thing of the past.

That said, there are those that have to use Photoshop’s precise pixel editing tools for true retouch work, restoration or special effects. Its a darn useful tool for that purpose. Fixing photo truds, not so necessary.

ivar

arodney wrote:

You’re doing nothing wrong if you are happy with the results. FWIW, I do about the same thing for a lot of work but use Lightroom instead (which uses the same processing controls and engine as Camera Raw).

printergirl

Arodney, awesome pics. My kind of pics. I love all the nature. I can't believe the sea lions let you get that close. Were they really that friendly? That is amazing. I loved the one where the woman is lying on the beach with them, eyes closed. Too cool!

mercphoto

printergirl wrote:

I am just wondering if I am the only one who does this? Often, when using Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw to "develop" and tweak my photos, I don't have to take it any further. Simply "touch them up" in Raw and export them to JPG for uploading. Am I the only one that does this, or do most of you carry them on into Photoshop for finalization? Just curious.

I do what you do for 95% of my photos (except I'm using Aperture). The reason is that 95% of my edits are global in nature. In other words, I apply a tweak to the entire image, not a portion of the image. If I need to tweak a portion of the image my only recourse is to go into Photoshop, layer and mask the part that needs the tweak, apply the tweak to that part, etc.

colourbox

Photoshop is not required. Considering how powerful the raw editors have become, the better you get it right in camera, the more you can complete your edits in your raw editor without finishing in Photoshop.

Maybe it means you shoot better than all your critics!

pathfinder

I fully agree. Global editing is done in LR or ACR. At least 2/3 photos fall into this category for me with single frame images.

Photoshop is reserved for localized editing requiring selections, that cannot be completed with a brush in ACR.

I am still waiting for the state of the art noise reduction that is promised in LR3 though....

Ric Grupe

pathfinder wrote:

Photoshop is reserved for localized editing requiring selections, that cannot be completed with a brush in ACR.

This is making me think.....

Would there be an advantage to using the adjustment brush in ACR to lighten and darken areas rather than dodging and burning in PS using an overlay layer? It seems easier to control in PS.

Until cameras can produce a greater dynamic range, controlling local light seems necessary to me, and has not much to do with how well you exposed the shot.

pathfinder

I tend to agree with you, Ric. Unless a shot is carefully lit in the studio, or in the field, with lights, gobos, flags, many natural scenes will require some local adjustment of shadows, contrast, highlights, etc.

I will confess that I have not developed a great love for the masking done with the adjustment brush in ACR, but prefer to create my own masks with a brush, pen tool, Quick Selection tool, etc, in PS itself. I understand the advantage of metadata editing, but the in-ability to create my own selection in ACR is still a deal killer for me at times.

Noise removal is another area that plug ins are better at than ACR so far. That is promised to change in LR3. We'll see soon enough.

arodney

Ric Grupe wrote:

Would there be an advantage to using the adjustment brush in ACR to lighten and darken areas rather than dodging and burning in PS using an overlay layer? It seems easier to control in PS.

Keep in mind that if you need to do very precise editing, Photoshop will provide more control in terms of where you place the edits, how you control the brush dynamics etc. But short of that, everything else points to advantages to doing this in the raw pipeline:

1. Truly non destructive.
2. Edits live with the file forever unlike Photoshop’s history.
3. Edits are applied in the optimal processing order automatically.
4. As the raw processing engine improves so does all the edits albeit they may appear somewhat different.

Apply say burning and dodging in LR is quite different from doing so in Photoshop and many newer users who are used to PS find it odd. That is, in PS, when you paint in an effect, if its too strong, you have one chance to control this via Fade (or start over). In LR, you have unlimited control over the painting. Paint the burn way too dark, back off as many times as you wish using the sliders. In that respect, its got far more control. You never burn the edit into pixels. Its a different way of working.

That said, piling on a lot of such individual brush work can bring the product to its knees. And as I said, doing very precise work, with the lack of brush controls like we have in Photoshop is somewhat limiting. But like most of the global work, I suspect users can do 85% or more work parametrically rather than at the pixel level and thats vastly preferable.

Ric Grupe

Good info and food for thought...thanks Jim and Andrew.