Adobe 13102498 User Guide - Page 92

85 Chapter 4: Camera Raw Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw software works with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, and Adobe Bridge. You can use Photoshop Camera Raw software to import and adjust camera raw, JPEG, and TIFF files. Introduction to Camera Raw About camera raw files A camera raw file contains unprocessed, uncompressed grayscale picture data from a digital camera's image sensor, along with information about how the image was captured (metadata). Photoshop Camera Raw software interprets the camera raw file, using information about the camera and the image's metadata to construct and process a color image. Think of a camera raw file as your photo negative. You can reprocess the file at any time, achieving the results that you want by making adjustments for white balance, tonal range, contrast, color saturation, and sharpening. When you adjust a camera raw image, the original camera raw data is preserved. Adjustments are stored as metadata in an accompanying sidecar file, in a database, or in the file itself (in the case of DNG format). When you shoot JPEG files with your camera, the camera automatically processes the JPEG to enhance and compress the image. You generally have little control over how this processing occurs. Shooting camera raw images with your camera gives you greater control than shooting JPEG images, because camera raw does not lock you into processing done by your camera. You can still edit JPEG and TIFF images in Camera Raw, but you will be editing pixels that were already processed by the camera. Camera raw files always contain the original, unprocessed pixels from the camera. To shoot camera raw images, you need to set your camera to save files in its own camera raw file format. Note: The Photoshop Raw format (.raw) is a file format for transferring images between applications and computer platforms. Don't confuse Photoshop raw with camera raw file formats. Digital cameras capture and store camera raw data with a linear tone response curve (gamma 1.0). Both film and the human eye have a nonlinear, logarithmic response to light (gamma greater than 2). An unprocessed camera raw image viewed as a grayscale image would seem very dark, because what appears twice as bright to the photosensor and computer seems less than twice as bright to the human eye. About Camera Raw Camera Raw software is included as a plug-in with Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop, and also adds functionality to Adobe Bridge. Camera Raw gives each of these applications the ability to import and work with camera raw files. You can also use Camera Raw to work with JPEG and TIFF files. You must have Photoshop or After Effects installed to open files in the Camera Raw dialog box from Bridge. However, if Photoshop or After Effects is not installed, you can still preview the images and see their metadata in Bridge. If another application is associated with the image file type, it's possible to open the file in that application from Bridge.