(Transcribed from original video)

Hi everybody, my name is Joe Conti and today I’m gonna break down a photo edit done with the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop. So let’s break this down.

Basically, I went from this original photo and here’s the end result. Okay, so first thing I do is I take the background layer duplicate it, make it a smart object . Then, I go into filter, go down a couple and go to Camera Raw filter. The reason this is such a powerful tool is because it’s a lot of your adjustments and editing features in Photoshop all rolled into one so it’s kind of like a one-stop-shop for photo editing. I use this a lot because it’s a real time-saver. It streamlines the process into basically one big step.

There’s a ton of sliders that you can make your adjustments in and if you do it non-destructively you can go back and edit it. Let’s say you get some feedback on your image and have to edit it further.

Anyway, going through some of these tools up here I basically just use a zoom and a hand tool. I don’t really mess around with any of these but you know feel free to experiment as you like. There’s a bunch of tabs up here for different options the most used at least for me is this basic tab. You’ll see the majority of your sliders up here. You’re also gonna have your tone curves next, there’s your details with some sharpening and noise reduction. Then some other tonal adjustments that I don’t really to be honest mess around with. They have some presets at the end here.

If you’re doing something based out of a studio from a photo shoot where you know you have controlled lighting I would suggest using your presets or you can just save a preset out. There are built-in ones here or you can make your own and then refer to it as a starting point at least for an action shot or an in-game shot. I honestly don’t use it that much because I use mostly action shots so every photo is a little different as far as the lighting situation and just overall photo I’m working with.

Going through some of these sliders, temperature and tint I don’t really mess around with too much. I leave all these as is really, white balance I leave. I’ll show you what temperature and tint do you know if you want to cool down, warm it up and then adjust your tint but most of the time I pretty much leave these alone. Exposure I’ll just tweak a little bit see what that does. Contrast, I’ll usually bump this up considerably to get that intensity. You’ve got highlights and shadows; again you can find these tools within Photoshop on their own so you see what that does. You don’t want to make it too intense either way because there’s trade-offs. You’ll make your brights brighter but you’ll lose details in here and the white areas you can also mask certain effects out after you apply a camera raw filter. I’ll go into that a later. So here’s shadows obviously an increase if you increase this then you bring back some of the details you lost in a darker image or if you want it to be darker and it’s too bright you know just down-tik the shadows. Whites and blacks similar features and more effect there. Then you have – new for the most recent edition of Photoshop – is this texture. It’s very similar to clarity, I’m sure that’s why they’re paired together but it’s helpful for getting that HDR intense effect. You really sharpen your image, bump up that contrast even further. It’s all about bringing drama and intensity into your image to really enhance it. Vibrance and saturation – those are also available as separate tools, separate Adjustments – see what those do. Over saturate your colors, desaturate them if you will. Just a slight bit of desaturation I find actually helps more for sports photos, at least helps give you that more intense chromatic look. That’s your basic tab.

Tonal curves, you can even go into more depth as far as your highlights and lights & darks and shadows as far as getting those right. There’s just a ton of sliders within this tool. The amount of control is unmatched in my opinion of any other single tool in Photoshop. I don’t think anything compares to the Camera Raw filter. Then you have sharpening and noise reduction here. Luminance is really helpful for when you edit your photo and you start getting graininess or blockiness in your photo. Luminance can help in smoothing that out. As you can see a little bit it gives you kind of like that painterly artistic feel too. You can increase its detail if it’s looking a little too blurry. You can get some of the details back, but it really helps forgive some of the graininess and blockiness that come when you’re editing your photo. Then you have these other tabs that honestly, I don’t really mess around with too much. I’ve played with them a little bit but I just didn’t really see the effect so much so I pretty much will leave them alone. There’s other things where if you want to distort your image. It depends on how it was shot really. You can just go into it and mess around with it and see what works for you. If you want to add grain you can do that too. That’s pretty much it for this Camera Raw feature.

I’m gonna hit OK here and then you’ll see it apply. It’ll apply to my smart object – there goes. You can turn this off if you wanna get rid of it. Again you can double click on it and you can turn down the opacity over the feature itself and then you can actually go in and re-edit it if you want to tweak even further. Real powerful tool you can also use. You can also mask it so you’ll see here in the Smart Filters you can take a soft brush and let’s say you don’t like the detail you lost in the white pants here you can edit that so just like any other mask or brush you can lower the opacity and flow, all that. You can get rid of your effect there and only certain areas and keep it in others. Feel free to experiment with it, it’s a real powerful tool.

I did this breakdown because it was a suggestion from one of my subscribers. If you guys have any other suggestions for anything you want me to go over in Photoshop or any other program please let me know and I’ll add it to my list. I hope you got some value from this, I hope you enjoyed it. Please like the video, please subscribe. I have all my links to all my profiles in the description below. Once again thanks a lot for viewing and I’ll see you next time. Thanks.

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