Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers phần 3 pps

Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 116 Type preferences Lastly, we come to the Type preferences (Figure 2.30), which are mainly of importance to graphics users rather than photographers. We could all do with smart quotes I guess, but the smart quotes referred to here are a preference for whether the text tool uses vertical quotation marks or rounded ones that are inverted at the beginning and end of a sentence. The ‘ Show Asian Text Options’ is there for Asian users, to enable the Chinese, Japanese and Korean text options in the Character panel. The ‘Show Font Names in English’ option will be of more signifi cance to non-English language users, as it will allow them the option to display the font names in English, as an alternative to their own native language. The ‘Enable Missing Glyph Protection’ option will switch on automatic font substitution for any missing glyph fonts (those swirly graphic font characters). The Type tool Options panel also provides a WYSIWYG menu listing of all the available fonts when you mouse down on the Font Family menu (see Figure 2.29). The Font Preview Size menu will determine the font sizes used when displaying this list; this menu item should not be confused with the UI Font Size preference that is in the General preferences section. Figure 2.30 The Type preferences. Figure 2.29 Photoshop presents the font lists using a WYSIWYG menu listing. Type tool initialization When you select the type tool for the fi rst time during a Photoshop session, there will be a brief pause in which Photoshop initializes the type tool engine. You may notice that if the type tool was selected when you last closed Photoshop, the initialization process happens during the startup cycle. 117 Camera Raw Image Processing Chapter 3 I n the 12 years that I have been writing this series of books, the photography industry has changed out of all recognition. When I fi rst began writing about Photoshop, most photographers were shooting with fi lm cameras, getting their pictures scanned, and only a few professionals were shooting with high-end digital cameras. In the last few years the number of photographers who shoot digitally has grown to the point where the photographers who shoot fi lm are now in the minority. I therefore reckon that the vast majority of photographers reading this book will be working with pictures that have been shot using a digital SLR or high-end digital camera that is capable of capturing fi les in a raw format that can be read by the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in. This is why I have devoted a whole chapter (and more) to discussing Camera Raw image editing. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 118 Camera Raw advantages Although Camera Raw started out as an image processor exclusively for raw fi les, it has, since version 4.0, been capable of processing any RGB image that is in a JPEG or TIFF fi le format. This means that you can use Camera Raw to process any image that has been captured by a digital camera, or any photograph that has been scanned by a fi lm scanner and saved as an RGB TIFF or JPEG. Camera Raw allows you to work non-destructively, and anything you do to process an image in Camera Raw is saved as an instruction edit and the pixels in the original fi le are never altered. In this respect, Camera Raw treats your master fi les as if they were your negatives and you can use Camera Raw to process an image in any way that you like without ever altering the original. The new Camera Raw workfl ow When Camera Raw fi rst came out it was regarded as a convenient tool for processing raw format images, without having to leave Photoshop. The early versions of Camera Raw had excellent controls for applying basic tone and color adjustments, but Camera Raw could never on its own match the sophistication of Photoshop. Because of this, photographers would typically follow the Camera Raw workfl ow steps described below in Figure 3.1. They would use Camera Raw to do all the ‘heavy lifting’ work such as ➯ Set the White point ➯ Set the highlight and shadow clipping points ➯ Adjust the Brightness and Contrast ➯ Adjust the color saturation ➯ Compensate for chromatic aberrations and vignetting ➯ Apply basic Sharpening and Noise Reduction ➯ Apply a Camera Calibration fi ne-tuned adjustment ➯ Apply a crop ➯ Open images in Photoshop for further image editing Figure 3.1 Camera Raw 1 offered a limited but useful range of image adjustments, and this list remained unchanged through to version 3.0 of the plug-in. Camera Raw 4.1 In 2008 Adobe did something rather unusual: they released the Camera Raw 4.1 update for Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug- in shortly after the launch of Photoshop CS3. This was remarkable for two reasons. Adobe don’t usually update the feature spec for Photoshop in between new versions of the program coming out, but also because it marked a new turning point in the way digital photographers were able to work with Photoshop. With the 4.1 update, Adobe refi ned the sharpening and noise reduction processing so that it now makes even more sense to carry out all your pre-image edit adjustments using Camera Raw. 119 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program is designed as a raw processor and image management program for photographers. As mentioned in the text, it uses the exact same Adobe Camera Raw color engine that is used in Photoshop CS4, which means that raw fi les that have been adjusted in Lightroom can also be read and opened via Photoshop. However, Lightroom has the advantage of offering a full range of workfl ow modules designed to let you edit and manage raw images all the way from the camera import stage through to print and web output. There is no differentiation made between a raw or non-raw fi le other than how the default settings are applied when a photo is fi rst imported. When you choose to open a Lightroom imported, non-raw fi le (a JPEG, TIFF or maximum compatibility PSD) into Photoshop, Lightroom offers you the choice to apply or not apply Lightroom edited image adjustments. adjusting the White point, Exposure and Contrast and from there output the picture to Photoshop, which is where they would to carry out the remaining image editing. Camera Raw 5 in Photoshop CS4 offers much more extensive image editing capabilities (such as localized adjustments) and it is now possible to replicate in Camera Raw the things that would normally have been done only in Photoshop. The net result of all this is that you can (and should) use Camera Raw as your fi rst port of call when preparing any photographic image for editing in Photoshop. Let’s be clear, Camera Raw does not replace Photoshop. It simply enhances the workfl ow and offers a better set of tools to work with in the early stages of an image editing workfl ow. Add to this what I mentioned earlier about being able to work with JPEG and TIFF images, and you can see that Camera Raw is a logical place for any image to begin its journey through Photoshop. If you look at the suggested workfl ow listed in Figure 3.2 you will see that Camera Raw 5 now has all the tools you need to optimize and enhance a photograph. ➯ Set the White point ➯ Set the highlight and shadow clipping points ➯ Compensate for missing highlight detail using Recovery ➯ Compensate for hidden shadow detail using Fill Light ➯ Make basic Brightness and Contrast adjustments ➯ Boost the midtone contrast (Clarity) ➯ Fine-tune the tone curve contrast ➯ Fine-tune the color saturation/vibrance plus HSL color ➯ Compensate for chromatic aberrations and vignetting ➯ Retouch spots using a clone or heal brush ➯ Make localized adjustments (brush or graduated fi lter) ➯ Full capture Sharpening and Noise Reduction ➯ Apply a Camera Calibration fi ne-tuned adjustment ➯ Apply a crop ➯ Open images in Photoshop for further image editing Figure 3.2 Camera Raw 5 has now extended the list of things that can be done to an image at the Camera Raw editing stage. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 120 It can also be argued that if you use Camera Raw to edit your photographs, this will replace the need for Photoshop adjustments such as Levels, Curves and Hue/Saturation. To some extent this is true but, as you will read later in Chapter 5, these Photoshop adjustment tools are still relevant for fi ne-tuning images that have been output from Camera Raw, especially when you want to edit your photos directly or apply certain kinds of image effects that require the use of adjustment layers or additional image layers. Does the order matter? When you edit an image in Camera Raw it does not matter which order you apply the adjustments in. The lists shown in Figures 3.1 and 3.2 are presented as just one possible Camera Raw workfl ow. So for example you could refer to the list of steps in Figure 3.2, start by applying the crop and work your way through the remainder of the list backwards. However, you are normally advised to start with the major adjustments, such as setting the White point and Exposure in the Basic panel fi rst before going on to fi ne-tune the image using the other controls. Raw capture If you are shooting with a professional back, digital SLR, or an advanced compact digital camera, you will almost certainly have the capability to shoot using the camera’s raw format mode. The advantages of shooting in raw as opposed to JPEG mode are not always well understood. If you shoot using JPEG, the fi les are compressed by varying amounts and this fi le compression will enable you to fi t more captures on a single card. Some photographers assume that shooting in raw mode simply provides you with uncompressed images without JPEG artifacts, but there are some more important reasons why capturing in raw mode is better than shooting with JPEG. The main benefi t is the fl exibility this gives you. The raw fi le is like a digital negative, waiting to be interpreted any way you like. It does not matter about the color space or white balance setting that was used at the time of capture, since these Raw is the negative You can liken capturing in raw mode to shooting with negative fi lm, and the great thing about negative fi lm is that it doesn’t matter if someone makes a bad print, because you can always make an improved print from the original negative. When you shoot raw, you are recording a master fi le that contains all the color information that was captured at the time of shooting. To carry the analogy further, shooting in JPEG mode is like taking your fi lm to a high street photo lab, throwing away the negatives and then making scans from the prints. If you shoot using JPEG, the camera is deciding automatically at the time of shooting how to set the white balance and the tonal corrections, often clipping the highlights and shadow detail in the process . Camera Raw support Camera Raw has kept pace with nearly all the latest raw camera formats in the compact range and digital SLR market, but only supports a few of the higher-end cameras such as the Leaf systems and latest Hasselblad H2 and H3 cameras (which also support the DNG format). 121 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 can all be set later in the raw processing. The only thing you have to concern yourself with is the ISO setting and camera exposure. But this advantage can also be seen by some as its biggest drawback since the Camera Raw stage will add to the overall image processing, meaning more time spent working on the images and an increase in the capture fi le size and download times. For these reasons, news photographers and others will fi nd that JPEG capture is preferable for them. JPEG capture When you shoot in JPEG mode, your options are more limited since the camera’s on-board computer makes its own automated decisions about how to optimize for tone, color, noise and sharpness. This means that you have to make sure that the camera settings are absolutely correct for things like the white balance and exposure. There is some room for manoeuvre when editing JPEGs, but not as much as you get when editing raw fi les. In JPEG mode, your camera will be able to fi t more captures onto a card, and this will depend obviously on the capture fi le size and compression settings used. But it is worth noting that at the highest quality setting, JPEG capture fi les are sometimes not that much smaller than those stored using the native raw format. What you will fi nd is that the length of the burst capture rate is greater when shooting in JPEG mode and for some photographers, such as those who cover sports events, speed is everything. Editing JPEGs and TIFFs in Camera Raw Not everyone has been keen on using Camera Raw to open non-raw images. However, the Camera Raw processing tools are so powerful and intuitive to use that why shouldn’t they be available to work on images other than raw fi les? The idea of applying further Camera Raw processing may seem redundant in the case of JPEGs but, despite these concerns, Camera Raw does happen to be a good JPEG image editor. So from one point of view Camera Raw can be seen as offering the best of all worlds, Figure 3.3 The camera’s on-board processor is used to generate the low resolution JPEG preview image that appears in the LCD screen. The histogram is also based on the JPEG preview and is therefore a poor indicator of the true exposure potential of a raw capture image. Discarded image data When you shoot using JPEG or TIFF, the camera is immediately discarding up to 88% of the image information captured by the sensor. This is not as alarming as it sounds because, as you know from experience, you don’t always get a bad photograph from a JPEG capture. But consider the alternative of what happens if you shoot using a raw mode capture. The raw fi le is saved to the memory card without being altered by the camera. This allows you to work with all 100% of the image data captured by the sensor. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 122 but it can also be seen as a major source of confusion (is it a raw editor or what?) Perhaps the biggest problem so far has been the implementation rather than the principle of non-raw Camera Raw editing. Earlier in Chapter 2, I made the point that opening JPEGs and TIFFs via Camera Raw was made unnecessarily complex in Photoshop CS3, but this issue has now been resolved in CS4 and the Camera Raw fi le opening behavior for non-raw fi les is much easier to confi gure and anticipate (see page 101 for the full details). On the other hand, if you look at the Lightroom program I think you will fi nd that the use of Camera Raw processing on non-raw images works very well. I’ll be explaining the Lightroom approach to non-raw editing a little later but it has to be said that the process of editing non-raw fi les in Lightroom is much easier to get to grips with, since Lightroom manages to process JPEGs quite seamlessly (see sidebar on page 119). Alternative Raw processors While I may personally take the view that Camera Raw is a powerful raw processor, there are now a lot of other alternative raw processing programs photographers can choose from. Some camera manufacturers supply their own brand of raw processing programs which either come free with the camera or you are encouraged to buy separately. Other notable programs include Capture One which is favored by a lot of professional shooters and Apple’s Aperture which can be seen as a rival for Adobe’s own Lightroom program. If you are using some other program to process your raw images and are happy with the results you are getting then that’s fi ne. Even so, I would say that the core message of this chapter still applies, which is to use the raw processing stage to optimize an image so that you can rely less on using Photoshop’s own adjustment tools to process the photograph afterwards. Overall it makes good sense to take advantage of the non-destructive processing in Camera Raw to freely interpret the raw capture data in ways that you can’t using Photoshop alone. From light to digital The CCD or CMOS chip in your camera converts the light hitting the sensor into a digital image. In order to digitize the information, the signal must be processed through an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The ADC measures the amount of light hitting the sensor at each photosite and converts the analog signal into a binary form. At this point, the raw data simply consists of image brightness information coming from the camera sensor. The raw data must then be converted somehow and the raw conversion method used can make a huge difference to the quality of the fi nal image output. Most cameras will have an on-board microprocessor that is able to convert the raw data into a readable image fi le, which in most cases will be in a JPEG type format. The quality of a digital image is primarily dependent on the lens optics used to take the photograph, the recording capabilities of the CCD or CMOS chip, and the analog-to-digital converter. But it is the raw conversion process that matters most. If you choose to process the raw data on your computer instead, you have much greater control than is the case if you had let your camera automatically guess which are the best raw conversion settings to use. Third-party raw converters The other software programs that can read and convert the raw camera data include: Bibble: www.bibblelabs.com, FotoStation: www.fotostation.com, Apple’s Aperture, Capture One from Phase One and of course now , Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. 123 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 A basic Camera Raw/Photoshop workfl ow The standard Camera Raw workfl ow should be kept quite simple. Select the photo you wish to edit and double- click the thumbnail in Bridge to open it in Camera Raw. Or, you can use the Cr Lr shortcut to open in Camera Raw via Bridge (this is discussed later on page 144). In the example that’s shown over the next few pages, I mainly used the Basic panel controls to adjust the white balance, the shadow and highlight clipping, and the tone contrast. These adjustments can be used to produce a well-balanced color master image that can then be edited in Photoshop, where layers and fi lters can be added as necessary. Any special effects or black and white conversions are best applied at the end in the form of an undoable adjustment layer, as shown in Step 5. 1 In this fi rst step I opened a window in Bridge, selected a raw photo that I wished to edit and double-clicked on the highlighted thumbnail to open it via Camera Raw in Photoshop. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 124 3 You can use the panel controls on the right to optimize the tone color and contrast, and improve the look of the photograph. Once you are happy with the way the image is looking, click the Open Image button to continue editing in Photoshop. 2 This shows the photograph opened up via the Camera Raw dialog hosted by Photoshop using just the Camera Raw Auto settings. 125 Camera Raw image processing Chapter 3 5 In this step I added a black and white adjustment layer to the top of the layer stack. This allowed me to preserve the color data in the retouched image and retain the ability to switch the conversion on or off. 4 The Open Image button renders a pixel image version of the raw fi le that can then be edited in Photoshop using all the tools that Photoshop has to offer. [...]... Lightroom 3 As the image is edited in Photoshop and saved, the Lightroom preview is updated In Lightroom, you can apply post -Photoshop edit adjustments in the Develop module One can therefore use Lightroom to colorize an image or convert to black and white, rather than add an extra adjustment layer in Photoshop 127 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Forward compatibility for raw files Adobe s... images on the card, eject the camera card and prepare it for reuse The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book If you want to find out more about Lightroom, I have written a complete guide about this new program called simply The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book, published by Adobe Press ISBN: 0 -32 1-55561-9 1 43 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Closing Bridge as you open If you hold down... 139 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Bridge versus Lightroom In earlier editions of this book, I suggested how you could use the File Browser (which then became Bridge) as one way to bring your photos into Photoshop Unfortunately, Bridge CS3 didn’t really manage to offer much in the way of additional benefits, while Lightroom 1.0 steamed ahead in offering a much improved workflow for. .. the steps that are required when working with the Photo Downloader For comparison purposes I have followed this up with an example of how to use the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom program, because this is the method I normally use when bringing photographs into the computer for Photoshop editing 129 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Importing images via Photo Downloader 1 The process begins... Figure 3. 10 You can open single or multiple images via Camera Raw hosted by Photoshop using a double-click, File ➯ Open, or Co Lo Photoshop is ideal for processing small numbers of images If you use Cr Lr, Bridge will host the single or multiple Camera Raw dialog Opening via Bridge is better suited for processing large batches of images in the background 145 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers. .. Options The Progress dialog shows you how the download process is proceeding 133 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Deleting camera card files It isn’t actually necessary to delete the files from the camera card first, because formatting a card in the camera will delete everything that is on the card anyway Formatting the card is good housekeeping practice as this will help guard against... file format and it is generally regarded as a safer file format to use for archiving your digital master files For more about the DNG format refer to pages 228– 230 at the end of this chapter 128 Chapter 3 Camera Raw image processing Getting raw images into Photoshop There was a time, not so long ago, when one would simply scan a few photographs, put them in a folder and double-click to open them up in Photoshop. ..Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers The Photoshop sandwich I like to describe this particular workflow as using Photoshop as a ‘sandwich filler’ for Lightroom This is because the Develop controls in Lightroom are used at the beginning, Photoshop is then used to edit an Edit-copy pixel version of the master, and the Develop... did so With this type of configuration I will end up with two copies of each image imported and stored on the computer system 131 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Figure 3. 6 Here are the options for the Rename Files menu, highlighted in the dialog above 132 4 If you click on the Advanced dialog button in the bottom left corner (see Step 2) you will show an expanded version of the... dialog shown in Figure 3. 15 Note that if you hold down the O A key as you do so, this will bypass the Synchronize dialog and synchronize everything Open all selected images Click ‘Done’ to apply adjustments and exit Figure 3. 15 The Synchronize dialog 149 Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Opening raw files as Smart Objects One of the top requests we hear for Photoshop is to have Camera . 4.1 update for Photoshop s Camera Raw plug- in shortly after the launch of Photoshop CS3. This was remarkable for two reasons. Adobe don’t usually update the feature spec for Photoshop in. le that can then be edited in Photoshop using all the tools that Photoshop has to offer. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 126 A Lightroom /Photoshop workfl ow This workfl ow. normally use when bringing photographs into the computer for Photoshop editing. Martin Evening Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers 130 Importing images via Photo Downloader 1 The process begins