Camera RAW was introduced to our class by Nick Conflitti, Jenessa Smith, and Steve McMahon. It is a plugin for Photoshop, After Effects, and Bridge that allows you to manually adjust RAW image files. The plugin manipulates data that is taken by your camera when it is in RAW mode.

Using the Camera RAW is similar to editing .jpegs, .tiffs, and other image files in Photoshop but all of the setting are specialized to adjust the layers of Camera RAW data. A few features I think will be really useful include:

• Temperature: This really helps when your images are yellow from lights indoors and you want to make them have a cooler temperature. I used Temperature on the image below, but instead of making it cooler, I made it warmer.

Original

Warmer Temperature

• Split Toning: This desaturates the original hues and mixes the one you choose in with the original so that it looks more natural than if it was done in Photoshop.
• Luminance: This is used to reduce noise and must be viewed at 100% to see any changes. It’s good for adjusting detail when interpolating an image and it there is too much detail it softens them without losing clarity.