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Shooting Raw - The Basics with Photoshop CS-4

The Video runs for 32 minutes

Why should we shoot images using Raw mode? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

In this video we hope we have answered those questions with a brief explanation, but also we let our demonstration do most of the talking for us. Our before and after image probably says more about the benefits of shooting in Raw than any explanation. Raw has great flexibility, but we shouldn't think that the sole use of Raw shooting is to make up for mistakes or problems we may have got wrong at the taking stage. Raw is far more than that. Having said that, we had around 10 images to choose from to demonstrate Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and we chose the most least likely and you can see that image immediately below.

The image above doesn't look very impressive, but despite what we have already said, the choice of this image is a great demonstration for what we can achieve using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). In this tutorial we do not get over complicated with the image and carry out practically every manipulation in ACR. By the time we open up the image and it is finally converted from its Raw starting point into an image as we know it, 99% of the work has been done using ACR.

We adjust exposure, colour, contrast, clarity, sharpness and touch out dust spots in the sky. We straighten the horizon and add a great graduated filter to the sky to balance the sky tones with the rest of the image. All we have to do in the main body of Photoshop is a smallest bit of cloning. If we can make such a dramatic difference in this case, think what we may be able to do when the starting image is already a lot better. In our view shooting Raw is the only way to go and as we see from the upgrades to Adobe Photoshop. ACR, it just keeps getting better and better.

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