Live and Relax

The new Adobe Camera Raw 5.2 is available for download now:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4220

With this new version, there is new “Target Adjustment Tool” added.  When you launch the camera raw, you will see the new tool icon:

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In photoshop CS4, there is a new feature called “auto-blend layers” that will take some selected layers of images and select the portion that is sharp and clear in each layers with a layer mask automatically. The following are an example.  The three images are taken with focus in the right edge of the photo frame, left edge of the photo fram and the cup at the back.  As the aperture used is f2.8 and the focusing distance is close, each photo is only sharp at the focus point:

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In ACR5 (Adobe Camera Raw 5), there is one new tool introduced that give you the ability to apply local adjustment to your photo in you raw conversion process.  Previously, local adjustment can only be done in Photoshop after the raw conversion is completed.  This would be much welcome for photographers that don’t mine to take the raw conversion step on their own instead of using the jpg from camera.

The first thing you could notice when you open you raw file in ACR5, you will noticed that there is 2 new buttons on the tools bar.  They are the adjustment brush and graduated neutral density filter.  In this post, I will try to describe how the adjustment brush can be used.

You should use the adjustment brush after you have completed all the global adjustments.   Please refer to my previous post on the ACR4 global adjustments which applies to ACR5 as well.

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A work flow is just a series of things you need to do from downloading the files (no matter raw or JPG) from your camera till it is ready for final display.  Having a predefined workflow makes the post processing flow more consistent and keep various intermediate files more organized.  I see my work flow as 3 parts.  The pre adjustment phase, the adjustment phase and the post adjustment phase.  The pre adjustment phase, is from downloading files from camera till files are selected and is ready for the raw convesion and adjustment.  The conversion phase is performing the raw conversion and additional adjustment in photoshop if necessary.  The post adjustment phase is when the converted and adjusted files are selected 1 more time and those selected files are converted to the final size for consumption (in my case, it would be a small size file for posting to various place on the web). In the pre and post adjustment phase, the Faststone image viewer is the core tools for doing all the viewing, comparison and moving the image files around that I am going to show in this post.

Pre adjustment phase:

Get the folder structure ready

Each shooting will be contained in a folder with the following folder sturcture:

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The following is the result of digital equivalent push process.  I would like to see if digitally pushing the RAW file would give better or worst result than actually shooting with higher ISO.  I have take a series of shoots of the same scene using ISO800, ISO400, ISO200 and ISO100 with the same shutter speed and aperture setting.  The choosen Shutter speed and aperture give a correct exposure at ISO800.  That would means that each progressive ISO value down would mean underexposure of the corresponding frame by 1, 2, 3 stops.  The raw files were then processed using adobe camera raw with corresponding exposure setting of 0, +1, +2 and +3 to obtain the final jpg file for examination.

ISO800

ISO400

ISO200

ISO100

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Okay, I blame my slow response to this upgrade due to my trip to Xinjiang.  The Faststone Image Viewer’s latest Version 3.6 is available on September 15, 2008.  The following is a quote from their website about the improvements make in this version:

Version 3.6 (September 15, 2008)

• * Now it runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows
• * It plays video files (avi, wmv, mpg) in slide shows
• * It is possible to show EXIF / Histogram information and work on the thumbnails at the same time. Just press I key to turn the Image Properties window on/off
• * Improved the “Batch-Convert” (under Tools menu):
• o Allowed Sorting Files in the Input List
• o Added “Expand Mode” option to the Canvas tab of the “Advanced Options” window
• o It is now possible to “drag and drop” files from Windows Explorer to the Input List
• * Improved the “Draw Board” (under Edit menu). Now annotation objects (texts, lines, boxes etc.) can be edited by re-opening the Draw Board (press D key)
• * Added “Animated GIF” as an output option in Multi-Page File Builder
• * Added “Multi-Page File Splitter” (under Create menu), which is used to split a multi-page file into single files
• * Added “Image Strip Builder” (under Create menu), which is used to put multiple images side by side horizontally or vertically
• * Improved the Print dialog

Although I don’t find any of the above useful to my own work flow, I am still delighted to see this excellent image viewer is active and alive.  The Faststone Image viewer can be download here:

http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDownload.htm

To start the Adobe camera raw from Photoshop, you select menu file -> open and choose a raw file to open.  This will brings out the Adobe camera raw conversion dialogue:

It will show you a preview of your image.  Some tools on the top of the image and a zoom control on the lower left coner.  The right side of the dialogue is the control pane containing various settings that control the raw conversion process.  The settings are grouped together into 8 different tabs: Basic Adjust, Tone Curve, Details, HSL/Greyscale, Split Toning, Lens Correction, Camera Calibration, Presets.In the Basic adjust tab you will see a list of controls, mainly sliders, which provide the basic controls of the RAW conversion.  Many of them are they same controls you could find in your camera like white balance and contrast.  So we could start from top to bottom, the first on the top of the list is the white balance adjustments.   It consists of a drop down list of presets and 2 sliders controlling the blue-yellow and green-magenta color.  For most people, selecting an appropriate white balance from the drop down list could produce the effect of what you like.  The drop-down list will start with a choice of using what is set by your camera and then with other choice like daylight, cloudy, shade, florescence, tugsen and flash.  Each corresponding to a certain type of lighting condition.  As with many aspect of photography, there is no right or wrong setting.  Just go ahead and try to see which one will suite your taste.  The two color pair slidesr are actually selecting a color that is add to the picture as a color cast that should counteract whatever color cast you have got in your image.

In this example, I have choosen daylight instead of what the camera record down for white balance.  You could see that the building becoming warmer.

White balance controls affect the whole image.

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In this article, I am going to show how I make a multiple exposure effect in Photoshop for your reference.  My apology again as I could only provide chinese screen shots for phtoshop related operations.  Okay, Let’s starts with step 1, that is load your photo into photoshop.

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