Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everyone. My name is Dan. I'm a photographer
and a YouTuber. And in this class, I'm going
to show you how to turn your images from this to this, or from this to this
using Adobe Camera Raw. This is a beginners tutorial. So it doesn't matter
if you've never edited an image before or you're
new to the software. Here are some of the topics
we're going to cover. First, I'm going to show
you how to download and install the program
on your computer. Then we're going
to take a look at the interface of the program, and now everything works. And after that, we're
going to start editing our image with
basic adjustments, changing the tone of
the image with curves, changing individual
colors within the image. Using other tools
included in Camera Raw, adding effects such as
grain and vignette. You learn how to crop an image and resize for social media, we'll also see how
to remove spots and unwanted objects
from an image, how the masking
tool works to apply adjustments only to certain
parts of your image. How to export your picture with the best settings and some
other tips and tricks. So hopefully I'll see you on the other side, and
thanks for joining.
2. Download and Install: First things first, we need to download Camera Raw
to our computer. So we're going to fire up
our browser of choice. And we're gonna come
up here and type adobe.com and select
the first option. And in my case, I'm
already logged in, but if it's your first time
accessing this website, you would click here
and see all plans and choose which apps you want to
download to your computer. So either you would choose Photoshop or if you want
other apps as well, you could choose all
Creative Cloud apps. Creative Cloud is
basically a hub where you can find every
single app from Adobe. Adobe Camera Raw is very
similar to Lightroom. So in my case, I
only use Photoshop. You would like by now, select if you want to
pay monthly or annually. And then by now, so I would come here,
Adobe Creative Cloud or Photoshop 2023. But if I click here, this window shows up and as you can see, I have Photoshop and Camera Raw up-to-date on my computer, but I could also
come down here and install Lightroom or
Lightroom classic or Adobe Bridge and either try or by any other
of the Adobe apps. And my case, I only use Photoshop
and a camera roll that, as I said, it comes
inside Photoshop. So I could either
click here open or look for a raw
image on my computer, like this one or this one. There's one. And I
would double-click to open this raw
image in Photoshop. And as you can see,
the image opens up automatically in
Adobe Camera Roll. In this case, I'm using
Adobe Camera Raw 15.0, which is the latest version. Now we can move on to the next lesson
where we're going to talk about the interface
and how everything works.
3. Adobe Camera Raw Interface: This is the main window. And if we want to change the
zoom level of the image, we can come down here,
click on this arrow here, and select a percentage. So let's say we wanna zoom
to 25% of the image or 100 to see more of the details of the
picture that we took. If we want to see
the whole picture, we can click Fit in view. We can also click on
this icon here to show the image down
here or hide it. So we can have a bit more
space to edit our picture. If we come here to the right, we can see there's a column with different adjustments
and we're going to check them out in
the next lesson. But what you need to
know about this column here is we have our
histogram here. And this is a graphic
representation of the information on our image. Here to the left we have
our blacks and shadows, the exposure or the mid
tones highlights and whites by changing some
of the parameters here. This is going to
move left or right, and it's going to affect
the overall image. So if we click on each
and every one of these, we're going to be able to change different parameters
of our picture. So e.g. we could change the hue, the saturation, or the
luminance of our image. We can also straighten
or image here. We can also remove chromatic aberration and so
on and so forth. As I said, we're going to take a look at this in
the next lesson. We can also come
here to the right. This is the editing panel, but if we click here, we could crop or image
and resize it or rotate and flip this icon here
is the healing tool, e.g. if we want to remove
objects from our image, this icon here is
the masking icon. Let's say you want to increase brightness of your picture, but only on a certain
subject, e.g. these trees here, you
would use this panel and the masking panel to create a mask and only increase
the brightness here. But we're going to see that
in an upcoming lesson. We could also come here. This removes red
eyes if you shoot pictures with a flash
on portraits, e.g. I'm sure sometimes you'll
notice the eyes turn red. This tool will help you remove that redness
from the eyes. And if you come down
here to this icon, you'll find all the presets that come built-in in camera roll. So we're gonna go back
to the edit panel and move on to the next lesson, where we're going to actually
start editing our picture.
4. Basic Adjustments: As you can see, this is the raw image I shot
with my camera. The sky is very blown out. It looks white when
it was actually blue. And there's not a lot of
detail here in the shadows. These look very dark. So for this image, what I
would like to do is bring down the exposure and make
this area darker. Bring back some detail, and also bring back
some detail from the shadows here and
the shadows here. So if you take a look
here where it says Edit, there's a button that says auto. If you don't want to come in and change these parameters
by yourself, or maybe you don't have
time, you could click here. And as you can see,
Adobe Camera Raw does a pretty decent job editing
the image automatically. This was the before.
This is the after. In my case, I prefer changing everything myself so
I have more control. But if you want to automatically edit the image, this
is how to do it. Or if you want to turn
it into black and white, you could also click here. And now we have a
black and white image. So let's undo this and we're
going to come down here to basic display, this sub menu. This is where the magic happens. As you can see, we have
different sliders for exposure, contrast highlights, shadows,
and so on and so forth. We just have to click
and drag right or left, and this will affect
the whole image. If I go overboard, I just have to double-click on this little arrow and it will go back to the default setting. So the exposure is
more or less, okay. But as I said, this doesn't have
too much detail. There's not much
information here. So I'm going to come down to
the highlights slider and bring this down to the
left, all the way down. And I also want to recover some information
here on the shadows. So I'm going to come
here to the shadows and bring this up to the right. And as you can see, it's clearing up all these
shadow area of the image. And if we want to see
the before and after, we're going to come down
here to this icon here. And if we click on it, this
will show you the before. And if we click again, this
will show you the answer. I'm going to come
back here to contrast and bring this up a bit as I move this slider to the right and I
increase the contrast, this arrow has turned
red instead of black. This means I'm
clipping the black so I'm losing information
in the blacks. If I came here to
the exposure and I turn this all the
way to the right. You can see this is telling me I'm clipping
the highlights. When the highlights are clipped, we're losing information, so we can't recover that information. And the same happens when we're clipping the shadows
or the black. So let's bring this back to
zero by double-clicking. As soon as I see that
I'm clipping here, I'm not gonna go much further. So let's leave the contrast
slider at plus 15. For now, you could also change the white balance
if you wanted to, that will make your image
look cooler or warmer. So I could bring down
this slider to give it a cool look or bring it up
and give it a warmer tone. And of course, if
I double-click, it goes back to the
default setting. I think this looks good, so I'm not going to touch it. I'm gonna come down here. I'm not going to touch
whites and blacks. I think they look fine. And I'm going to play with
these three sliders here. So let's zoom in
to 100 per cent, so you can see what this does. If I want to move
inside the frame, I'm going to press Spacebar
and wild pressing Spacebar, we're going to move
the image around. So if we come to the
Texture slider and we bring it all the way
up or all the way down, you're going to see
what that does. So obviously we're decreasing
the texture and giving it a faded look or
increasing the texture, giving it a HDR effects. And HDR stands for
high dynamic range. So let's zoom back
out, fit in view. And this looks a bit fake, like a phone picture. So obviously we're not going
to bring it up to 100, let's say plus 20 is okay. We could also increase
the clarity a bit. Once again, you can play with the sliders and
see what these do. So removing the clarity or
increasing the clarity. Obviously you don't want
to go to plus 100 or -100, want to keep the edit
as natural as possible. But I'd say plus 20 is okay. And what I like to do is
use the Dehaze slider to remove some of the highlights in the sky and increase
the sharpness a bit. We could also increase
the vibrance a bit and the saturation. And as always, we could
come down here and click on this icon to take a look
at the before and after. So this was the original image and this is what we have now, these are the basic adjustments that you can do to your image. Now let's move on
to the next lesson. We're going to take a look at the other sub menus
we have here. So the curves
adjustment, layer, hue, saturation and luminance, or
the straight in our picture, and some other adjustments.
5. Curves Adjustment: This is similar
to the histogram. As you can see, we have a
line graph representing all the information
of our image from the darkest parts to
the brightest parts. And if we come here to the
graph and we move our mouse, we can see here we
have the shadows, darks, lights and highlights, and we also have the
mirror highlights, lights, darks and shadows. If we click and
drag to the left. Bringing down the highlights. If we click and
drag to the right or bringing up the highlights, and this is creating
a curve on the line. Let's bring down the darks. And as you can see, this
is moving the curve here, and it's also affecting
the whole image here. So if we bring this
up to the right, it's moving the curve
of the other way round. And it's also affecting
the image here. If we want to go back
to default, as always, we double-click on the
arrow and here as well. And this is the
image we have now. So the curves adjustment
is a very powerful tool, but it's also a delicate one. So you have to be subtle. And if you take a
closer look here, we have different icons. So right now we're using what's called the
parametric curve, but we also have a point
curve or the red channel, the green channel,
and the blue channel, I usually use the point curves. So if we come down
here and we reset, our image, will be able to
see what this curve does. If I want to create
a point here, I'm going to click and
bring it down a bit or up, depending on what I wanna do. And I could also create
a point here and drag it up or down. So as you can see with
the curves panel, you can increase or decrease the dark areas or the
bright areas of your image. In my case, I'm not
going to use it now, but that's how you use it. And if you want to remove
a point to create it, you click and hold of
that point and you drag it outside of the curve. Click, drag and drag it outside. So now let's go
back to the image we had before by clicking Control Z or Command Z on our keyboard as many
times as we need to. And now we're back to the
edited image we had before. Now let's close this panel. And you could also move
your mouse on top of one of these sub menus and
leave your mouse there until the message pops up. And this gives you information about what each and every
one of these panels do. It as you can see
here, adobe Camera Raw is telling us that
the tone curve gives you greater control over the tonal range and
contrast in your photo. Now let's move on to the
next lesson where we're going to take a look
at the color mixer.
6. Color Adjustment in Camera Raw: Now we're going to take
a look at the HSL panel. And as I said, I wanted to bring back some
detail from the sky. So this guy should be blue
instead of gray, almost white. So in this case, we can
change individually the hue, saturation and luminance for each and every one
of these colors. And if I came down here
to the blue slider under the Saturation tab and I brought the blues
all the way down, you could see the sky will
turn gray, completely gray. So I'm gonna do the opposite. I want to bring back
the blues on this guy. I'm going to double-click,
this is what we have now, if I click and
drag to the right, going to bring back a
bit of blue to the sky. Obviously, I don't
want to go plus 100 because this
looks extremely fake. As I said, we're trying to edit our image as naturally
as possible. And it's also affecting the blue here and the blue from the car. So we're going to double-click, go back to zero and
slowly click and drag to the right to increase
the saturation a bit. And we're going to do the
same with the luminance tab. We're going to come
down here to the blues. And instead of
going to the right, are going to go to the left. Because if you look closely, this blue bar goes
from dark to bright. And if I go this way, it's going to take the
blue out from the sky. And I don't want that,
I want more blue. So I'm going to click
and drag to the left. And once again, I won't go
-99 because it looks fake, but I am going to
decrease a bit -25. And this is what
it will look like. As always, I can
come down here to this icon to see the
before and after. So this was the
original image I took. This is what we have
now before and after. And we can also see what we've
done just using this panel by clicking and holding
the eye icon here. So this is what we have now, if I click and hold this eye, I can see what this
panel is doing. If I let go. This is what we have now. So it does make a difference
before and after. Now we can move on to
the next lesson where we're going to take a
look at this tab here, the optics and Geometry tab.
7. Other Tools: We're going to open
the optics tab first. As you can see, we
have two options. Remove chromatic aberration
and use Profile Corrections. So if we zoom in here
on the trees, e.g. two to 100%, we're going
to press Spacebar. And while we hold down Spacebar, we're going to move here. If you take a closer look here, the leaves, instead
of being green, this sort of purple tint
to them on the edges, especially this is called
chromatic aberration, and this happens with
many camera lenses. So Camera Raw has this option here that's called remove
chromatic aberration. And what this does is try and
remove these purple spots. So let's zoom in a
bit more so you can see this is without removing
chromatic aberration. But let's try and take a look at what this does by
clicking on it. So as you can see,
it's very subtle, but it's removing some of
these purple areas here. So let's zoom in a bit more. Take a look at this area here. This is without removing chromatic aberration,
but if we click on it, so obviously, when we zoom out, you're not going to
notice on or off, but it does make a difference. So in my case, I always check, remove chromatic aberration
and use Profile Corrections for any of my image when it
comes to Profile Corrections, these are also built-in
to camera roll. So some lenses have distortion, and this distortion can be
quite ugly and distracting. You would open this
arrow here and look for our lens from the whole list of lenses
that we have here. Usually I don't touch this, I just leave everything
default or auto. And Camera Raw
itself is going to detect which lens you're using. And now let's take
a look at geometry. If our image isn't a straight, we can use this tool
to correct that. So we can always
come here to the a, which stands for auto. And as you can see, it's
shifting the image a bit and we can come here
to undo or redo. We could also level only the
horizontal lines or go back, or the vertical
lines, I'll go back. Or we could choose this tool here and draw two
or more guides. So I will click here and then I would click and drag like this. And I will click and drag, let say from here to here. As you can see, it also changes the perspective of the image. I would recommend this tool for architecture photography if you want to keep your
buildings straight, e.g. or for landscape photography, if you want to make sure
the horizon is leveled. So if I want to go back and undo, I'm going to click here. And this goes back to
the original image. Now let's move on
to the next lesson.
8. Adding Effects: Now let's quickly take a
look at the effects panel here we have a Grain slider
and a vignetting slider. So let's zoom in first
to 200 per cent. Let's press space bar
and move the image. And as the name
implies, if you want to add grain to your image, you would click and drag to
the right or to the left. In my opinion, this
looks horrible. If you want to give a
certain look to your image, That's how you do it, and this is what it would look like. So more grain or less green, I prefer that my
images look sharp, so I never use that slider. But what I sometimes
use is the vignette. And we could come here and
move this slider to the left to create a vignette
has always tried to be subtle and make it
as natural as possible. This doesn't look natural, but if we add a slight vignette, it doesn't look that bad. So obviously you can
play around with the slider and see what
looks best for your picture. And now we can move
on to the next lesson where we're going to take a look at these icons here and
what they do to our images.
9. How To Crop An Image: First we're going to take
a look at this icon here, which is the cropping icon. And when we click on
the graphing icon, this grid shows up. So e.g. if you're going to
be uploading your images to Instagram or other
social media platforms. Those images are going
to be cropped and they need to be a certain
size and dimensions. So if we come here to
the drop-down menu, we have different options. When it comes to Instagram, e.g. you want to choose one
by one or four by five. These are two of the crops
that Instagram allows. And of course we can go back
to the drop-down menu and choose fall to go back to
the original dimensions. We could also come here
to rotate and flip. If we want to flip the image
horizontally or vertically. In my case, I just come here
to the drop-down menu and I select one-by-one if I want to export this image to Instagram. And you can also come
inside the image and click and hold it
with your mouse and move to the right or left to select where
you want to crop. So for this example, if the bus was the main subject, I would want it
right in the middle. And once I've chosen
the dimensions, I would press the Enter
key on my keyboard. And this is what the
image would look like. And of course, if I want
to go back and undo that, I'm going to press Control Z
or Command Z on my keyboard. And now the changes
have been reverted. Now we can move on to the
next lesson where we're going to take a look
at this icon here, which is the healing tool.
10. Removing Unwanted Objects: We're going to click here
to open the healing tool. And as you can see, we have
different icons and I use them to remove unwanted
objects or spots, e.g. if I'm doing a portrait
retouching and I want to remove some spots from the skin or
be using one of these three. So for this example,
let's zoom in. Let's say we want to remove
this black spot here, going to select 200 per cent, press the spacebar and
move the image down here. And with the Content Aware, Remove icon selected,
we're going to click here. And as you can see, it
automatically removes this spot using the content
that is below that dark spot. Now if we zoom out, we could come here to the
eye icon and remember, if you click and hold, you're
going to see the before and after of this
tool by itself. So if you take a closer
look at this white stripe, while we click and
hold this icon, we can see the dark
spot appears again, and if we let go, it disappears. So before and after, and that was extremely quick. And unless you told someone
there was a dark spot here, they wouldn't be able to tell. Now we can move on to the
next lesson where we're going to take a look at
the masking options.
11. Masking Tool in Camera Raw: Let's come here to the
masking icon and click there. And as you can see, we
have different options. So we can choose
between subject, sky, and background, and we
have more options here. So let's say e.g. I. Want to change the
brightness of the sky, but only the sky instead of
affecting the whole image. So I'm going to
click here on Sky. And Camera Raw is going to automatically detect the
sky on this picture. And as you can see, it
does a pretty amazing job at selecting this guy, although it also
has selected some of the buildings here and here. So what I can do is zoom in, press the Spacebar and hold
and move the image here. And I could come
here to subtract, select the brush, and
I can change the size. Brush, the feather of
the flow of the density with my scroll
wheel on my mouse, I can make this
bigger or smaller. And now I'm going to
subtract this building from the sky mask that
I've just created. So I'm going to paint
on the building. You can see the mask
is pink or red. When I subtract this building from the mask going back
to its original color. Now, if I zoom back out, I can change the parameters of the mask and those
would affect the sky. I can come here to the
exposure slider, e.g. and bring the
exposure up or down. And as you can see, it's
affecting only the sky because it's the area that we've masked out from the whole image. I could also increase the
contrast or bring it down, reduce the highlights
or bringing them up. And I can also come
here to show overlay to see where the mask
is being applied. And if we wanna go back, we can come here to this
arrow and reset or masks. And now the image has gone
back to its original state. Now, if we don't want Camera Raw to select
an area by itself, we can always come
here to the brush, increase or decrease the size of the feather and the
flow, the density. And we could change some
of the parameters here. So let's say we want to
increase the exposure a bit and bring up the
shadows as well. And we can make this smaller, but we can paint straight
on to the image. So e.g. let's say I want to increase the exposure
and the shadows. Here, trees here. I'm just going to paint on top. As you can see. It's increasing the exposure
and the shadows here. And now I can click
Show Overlay. And it's going to
show me where I've painted the exposure
and the shadows. And if I click again, I also have this icon here telling me that I've
created a mask there. And once again, if we click
and hold this eye icon, we can see the before
and the after, before and the after. Now we can move on to the next
lesson where I'm going to show you how to export your
image with the best settings.
12. Best Export Settings: Now that we've made
all the adjustments we want it to our image, we're going to save the
edited image to our computer. So we're going to come up
here to this icon here. We're going to click on it
and this window shows up. So up here we're going to choose where we're going
to save our image. And we can always select a
folder or create a new one. And we can come here to
this drop-down menu. Click on the arrow
and select if we want a document name or
a serial number, or the date, and so
on and so forth. We can also choose
the file extension. In my case, I always
choose JPEG or PSD if I want to keep on
editing in Photoshop later on. But usually JPEG
is the way to go. We can come down here
to metadata if we want our copyright info
or if we want to remove the location
and for our picture, and the important
part starts here. Here we can change the quality. So maximum is 10-12. I always choose 12, but if you want to make
the image smaller, so it doesn't take
up so much space. You can always bring
down the quality, or you could also click here and limit the size of the file. You should also come down
here to the color space and make sure sRGB is selected. And you can also
resize the image here. So once again, if
you want to change the dimensions for
Instagram, e.g. you could click the
arrow here and change the dimensions and
select 1080 by 1080. And you could also
change the resolution in case we're going to print the
image, you will do it here. And once all of these
parameters are set, you just click
Save and the image will be exported
to your computer. And now we can move on
to the last lesson.
13. Class Recommendations: Just a quick reminder, if you check out my
profile on Skillshare, you'll be able to
find other classes on photo editing as well
as other topics. Please feel free to
follow me as I will be uploading more classes
soon as always. Thank you very much for watching and hopefully I'll see
you in the next class.
Dan Prizont, Photographer & YouTuber
