If you've ever wondered what camera raw is, then the simplest way of explaining is that it's all the information gathered by the camera's sensor within a shot, but unprocessed. Not quite as crude as raw meat, per say, but an approximate way of looking at it - it's not cooked yet. Do you want it fried, grilled; rare or well done?
The film generation might liken this to setting up a shot and reshooting the same frame again and again with bracketing for exposure, colour balance, film type, and so on. But the equivalent of doing all this with a single click of the camera shutter.
As the data is unprocessed, you can in essence “reshoot” your shot by the virtue of processing. The variables that your camera permits - such as white balance control, exposure levels - become open to be readjusted. The downside is this raw data means larger files than fixed, compressed JPEGs.
Different cameras have different “types” of RAW due to the way different brands and models process information, there are often individual software packages from specific manufacturers that will solely process RAW files from a particular camera.
There's some clever software out there that simplifies this by reading (most) different RAW files - step up Adobe Bridge (Lightroom does a better job, but is a whole other piece of software that we will cover separately)
Adobe Bridge:
There's a whole lot of pre-Photoshop features that can now happen to your images in the form of Adobe Bridge; features that will, at times, keep you from opening unwanted images in Photoshop altogether. It's the ideal time saving, organising interface. Plus, anytime you are in Photoshop, you can always take it to the bridge by pressing the little folder-like icon near the centre top of your screen.
Hark back to the days of film, and you'd always have dodgy negatives amid the gems. You would need to look at your film in its original format, magnify with a loupe to check for sharpness, see what was going on in the image itself in more detail, amid exposure, dust and any other issues you can think to name.
Browsing
Bridge assists is helping a digital workflow operate much in this way. Upon opening the programme, you can browse through your computer in the way you browse an operating system. As you browse through, thumbnails of the current directory will pop up on screen. These thumbs can be enlarged using the scroll bar to get a magnified view as appropriate, whilst clicking a thumb will display in a preview window.
Thumbs can be enlarged using the scroll bar to magnify view as appropriate
The preview's more clever than this however, with one click it is possible to get a 100% zoom anywhere within the image (see above) to check for sharpness. All without so much as opening the files. Very clever.
Ctrl + L puts the selected image into full screen - even large files load super fast, and without the need for Photoshop. Esc is the Windows standard to exit full screen.
Selection & Batches
The next thing Bridge is very big on is running things in batches - if you have an oven with four shelves, then why only bake one tray of cookies?
Ctrl is the key that - as with Windows - enables you to pick out individual files with the click of a mouse. Hold the Ctrl key down and click the mouse on images which you wish to select at the same time, that way you can apply the same procedure to the whole bundle, rather than doing one thing at a time.
There's a number of things that can be run in batches - image stacks, batch renaming and batch metadata all being key.
Stacking images keeps things tidier, enables you to know what you have stacked together, and makes batch processing the bundles that bit easier too.
For renaming, select the images and/or stacks > right click > select Batch Rename
The screen that follows presents a series of “New filename” fields - any number of these can be added or subtracted, if you wish to add an additional controlled group of information. To see what you're doing, “Current filename” and “New filename” show the progress. It's important to note that you need to finish with a file extension type, in order for the images to be deemed as images - but this may be a point where you wish to batch convert the image type.
Clicking “Rename” will apply your personalised name settings to the whole batch in order, saving you heaps of time.
Metadata
This is the information attached to a file that you don't see - it's neatly tucked away, but that doesn't cease its importance.
There's a “Metadata/Keywords” tab in Bridge - it's among the most important part that you will need to focus your attention on.
The Metadata part will work not only as a visual reference, but also a searching reference - for your personal use, or for any image library (even the internet) to easily have descriptive reference words that are tagged onto an image.
Within Metadata, drop down the IPTC Core tab - this gives you the option of entering in any relevant information as you see fit. In exactly the same way as before it is possible to select images or stacks and batch process the metadata enclosed with all images simultaneously.
Keywords
One 'key' element of this information are the associated Keywords also found among the various fields - as here you can assign any words of your choice to an image by simply typing the words in, separated by commas.
Like other aspects of metadata, keywords are vital to help you sift though hundreds of files with ease. Plus, if you ever plan to sell your images to picture libraries, keywords make the difference between a firm seller and a picture that languishes unsold round the back of the (virtual) filing cabinet.
As the bank of these words begins to get large enough to encompass the majority of your needs, it then becomes possible to not have to type the word on each instance, as it becomes saved under the Keywords tab.
Now by simply selecting the required images and clicking designated keywords on or off with the aide of a simple checkbox. This includes Adobe's preset words - such as the never-endingly useful “Ryan” or “New York” - as well as your own groupings.
Search Filter
The whole process of tagging files with metadata and keywords builds a hidden platform behind your images that makes it much easier to search through them by type.
Clicking which keywords you wish to view - singularly or in multiples - will bring up all images and stacks concerned for you to browse through. As your personal image library becomes bigger and bigger, a simple program such as Bridge has the capacity to speed up your workflow.
Adobe Camera Raw (ACR):
Now that you know the bones of Bridge, Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is the programme that really puts some meat on there. Adobe Lightroom will notice strong similarities between ACR and the Develop tab - because they are essentially the same program. So, you know one, you know the other, too.
ACR is a way of opening raw (or other files) and non-destructively editing them, either individually or in batches via Adobe Bridge. Non destructive means that nothing is lost - as the information available is the original data from your camera's sensor, it has the capacity to be reinterpreted as a new edit.
To the right, there are seven tabs each with a variety of editable information - Basic, Tone Curve, Detail, HSL / Grayscale, Split Toning, Lens Corrections, Camera Calibration and Presets.
To the left are the batch of images as selected. Pressing and holding Ctrl allows for multiple images to be highlighted from the selection, thus batch editing can occur simultaneously to multiple images.
Special individual image corrections can happen too - there's a retouch option that retouches the file before it even lands in Photoshop. Here I'm removing a mole:
If I later find out that it's the mole that makes up this gents identity, then it can easily be restored. ACR never overwrites an original RAW file, it creates a duplicate, so it can always reference the original and backtrack any adjustments that are made that you want to “undo”.
From CS3 onwards it's even possible to edit jpeg files in exactly the same way too - that's non-destructive, retrievable edits in advance of Photoshop.
There's a “Metadata/Keywords” tab in Bridge - it's among the most important part that you will need to focus your attention on.
The Metadata part will work not only as a visual reference, but also a searching reference - for your personal use, or for any image library (even the internet) to easily have descriptive reference words that are tagged onto an image.
Within Metadata, drop down the IPTC Core tab - this gives you the option of entering in any relevant information as you see fit. In exactly the same way as before it is possible to select images or stacks and batch process the metadata enclosed with all images simultaneously.
