See The Top New Features In Camera Raw & Photoshop 2023
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See the top new features in Camera Raw & Photoshop 2023.
Find out more from Colin Smith at Photoshop Cafe.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
What’s new in Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop 2023?
They’re here! The additions of content-aware retouching plus masking for Curves in Camera Raw and Lightroom are game changers. Stay tuned for more details.
Find out more at Adobe.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
The One Feature You Don’t Want To Miss In Adobe’s New Camera Raw 15 & Lightroom
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“Such a simple thing, like a curve inside a mask, seems minuscule, but this is HUGE!
Watch this video to learn about the new features in ACR 15.”
Watch this video to learn about the new features in ACR 15.”
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00:00 Intro
00:54 Content-Aware Remove Spot Removal Tool
02:33 Refresh Button in Spot Removal Tool
03:13 What’s new in Masking
04:17 Curves in the Masking Section
09:22 People-Specific Selections
11:10 Your Turn! Experiment and Enjoy!
00:54 Content-Aware Remove Spot Removal Tool
02:33 Refresh Button in Spot Removal Tool
03:13 What’s new in Masking
04:17 Curves in the Masking Section
09:22 People-Specific Selections
11:10 Your Turn! Experiment and Enjoy!
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The Best Ways To Use Multi-Colored Histograms In Adobe Lightroom & Camera Raw
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The colors that appear in Lightroom, ACR, and Photoshop’s histograms can be useful to detect color casts, determine if detail is being lost, and know more about the colors that make up an image. I start by blindly interpreting a bunch of histograms while I cannot see the image that it represents (but you can). I then explain how basic color works and how that relates to the colors that appear in the histogram.
Check out more of Ben Wilmore’s Digital Mastery here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
What’s New in Lightroom’s Big June 2022 Update
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Adobe just packed many useful features into a new June 2022 update to Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. Two updates make Masking faster and easier. Plus, there is a great new feature for presets.
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Find out more from Colin Smith at Photoshop Cafe.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
The Quickest Way To Get 200% Or More From Lightroom’s Adjustment Sliders
Did you ever wish you could get more out of a slider in Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw)?
Here’s how to go beyond the maximum amount a slider allows.
Use Create New Mask and make a Gradient or Brush … outside the image area. Click the gradient outside the border and drag away from it. Or, click the brush outside the border and check the Invert box. Then use one or more sliders to go beyond their maximums.
You can do this as many times as you like. 150%, 200%, 300%, 400%, 500% … there’s no limit.
This is faster and more uniform (less uneven) than brushing the entire frame.
This only works with the sliders available in the Masking panel.
If you want to do this with sliders that aren’t in the Masking panel, open the file in Photoshop and apply the Camera Raw filter.
But wait, there’s more. You can apply this principle selectively too. If you’re in Lightroom or Camera Raw use a brush to add more. If you’re in Photoshop, use a Camera Raw smart filter with a mask. There are no limits.
Find more resources on Raw processing here.
Learn more in my digital photography workshops.
How To Make Advanced Masks in Adobe Camera RAW & Lightroom
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Masks in Camera Raw and Lightroom are new. Colin Smith shows you beyond the basics, how to combine masks for more complex selections, such as selecting the foreground, adding, subtracting, and intersecting masks. Learn how to use combination and complex masks.
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The New Masking Tools In Lightroom & Camera Raw
“Discover how easy it is to make local adjustments to your photographs using Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw’s new Masking panel and tools including: Select Subject, Select Sky, Radial and Linear Gradients, Brush, Color and Luminance Range Masking and more!”
View more on Julianne Kost’s blog.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
6 Ways To Get Better Shadow & Highlight Detail In Your Photographs
You want your photographs to glow - right? So what’s better than one kind of glow? How about three?
You can get there by not succumbing to the classic temptations to clip shadows and/or highlights to produce a more obviously dramatic but a less lively, nuanced, and expressive tonal scale. Instead, hold the full dynamic range with a real black and white and also create gorgeous separation in the values nearest to them.
So many times we give the lion’s share of the contrast to the midtones. Midtone contrast is really important. But that doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice the light in highlights by making them too hot to look at comfortably or in shadows making them so dark they turn to murky mud. You can hold separation in these extreme ends of the tonal scale and produce beautiful qualities of light that complement not just contrast. Here’s how.
5 Reasons Why You Still Need Photoshop
Let’s say you’re not interested in compositing or adding FX or inserting text or painting on your photographs. Do you still need Photoshop? Short answer – yes. If so, why?
One Big Reason, Look No Further
One reason alone ends the discussion for me. The single biggest reason is precise localized tone control or dodging and burning with Curves. Nothing but Curves offers as precise control. It can add a special glow into all areas of an image, any one area, and treat different areas differently. I can’t think of anything more useful than that.
But can’t you do something similar in Lightroom (LR) or Adobe Camera Raw’s (ACR) using the six Basics sliders (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks), in combination with the Adjustment Brush, Graduated Filter, or Radial Filter, even in combination with Color, Luminance, or Depth Range Masks? If close is good enough, yes. If you want to make your images really shine, no.
Is it hard to do in Photoshop? No. It’s easy.
1 Open your image in Photoshop.
2 Make a selection.
3 Make a Curves adjustment layer.
4 Double click on the layer mask and slide Feather to the right.
5 Repeat if you want to make a different adjustment to another area of an image.
6 Save your file, when you’re done.
If you only use Photoshop to do this one thing, most of your images will improve. I can’t say I use this with every image I process, but it’s close. I can say the number of images I don’t want to do this for is very small. It’s a simple thing really, and I look forward to the day we can do it in Lightroom and Camera Raw.
Go Ahead, Look Further, And Find More Reasons
Want to go a little further? Let’s revisit the question, “Why do you need Photoshop?” Every time Adobe’s Raw processor(s) become more fully featured it is worth asking. Or, you might rephrase it as, “What can Photoshop help me do that Lightroom / Camera Raw can’t do as well?”
Here are five reasons.
1 Fine Retouching
2 Precise Masking
3 Advanced Color Adjustment
4 Creative Sharpening
5 Plug-Ins
Let me go into a little more detail for each one.