« [REVIEW—PENTAX K-m DSLR] | Main | [FLASH PARTIES] »
July 11, 2009
[SOW'S EAR TO SILK PURSE]
Our pal M has just returned from Spain with memory cards full of photos. Although he is an accomplished photographer he has never before shot in RAW. (RAW is the file format that preserves the image detail uncompressed. JPEG files are compressed to varying degrees and processed in-camera.)
His camera, a Nikon D200, did not come with any really useful RAW converter in the box. Nikon charges extra – a lot extra – for their Capture NX converter. So we told him to download Adobe Camera RAW, which is free and works with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.
ACR (as we will call it) may be free, but it is not anaemic. It is a fully fledged image editor in its own right. If you use ACR correctly when the file opens in Photoshop there shouldn't be a lot left to do. However Adobe is not so generous that they give away a user manual.
One of the best guides to using ACR is on the on-line video tutorial site Lynda.com, which charges a subscription, starting at US $25 a month. You can look at a lot of tutorials in a month.
The introduction to ACR, presented by Chris Orwig, is a good place to start. Chris is a fast talking American, so he is not easy to follow first time through. The good thing about Lynda is that you can watch the video once and then go back and watch it again.
He has another dazzling tutorial called “Photoshop CS4 portrait retouching” where you can watch his ACR techniques in action.
In this video he addresses the fundamental question: How much licence can you legitimately take in retouching a portrait? These days we are familiar with the verb “to photoshop” which is generally used pejoratively to indicate a photo is fake.
As Chris demonstrates it is a doddle to remove pimples and whiten teeth. Is that OK? What about removing the wart from aunty Gladys's nose? Cromwell might not have approved but aunty is probably pleased. And there won't be any argument about removing the power pole growing from the top of uncle Cyril's head.
There is a filter tool in Photoshop called “Liquify” which can strip a person of several kilograms of surplus body fat and still look realistic. Chris shows how to do it on an almost-perfect model who is turned into a super model with a nudge of the Liquify tool on each side of her waist.
He shows how to correct skin tone and colour in ACR, and no one should quarrel with that because tone and colour faults are not inherent in the subject but are consequences of difficult light and incorrect colour balance. Troublesome shadows under the eyes and nose can be lightened with the Fill Light tool in ACR.
We have ACR installed as the front-end of Photoshop and PS Elements and configured as the default program to open both RAW and JPEG files. We wouldn't be without it.
*
Posted by terry at July 11, 2009 02:51 PM
Worth Checking Out
Digital Cameras SydneyComments
>>His camera, a Nikon D200, did not come with any really useful RAW converter in the box. Nikon charges extra – a lot extra – for their Capture NX converter.
To say that is not only inaccurate but plain wrong. Nikon supply View NX free of charge for download from their web site. View NX will perform all basic RAW editing on Nikon .NEF files. It may not be what you term useful in the way a program like CS4 with a RRP of $986.00 does but for people who take the time to actually try using it it is very a competent and dare i say useful program.
Posted by: RichardR at July 11, 2009 10:01 PM
Richard: I didn't say that Nikon don't supply a RAW converter -- I said "useful", by which I mean a RAW conversion program that is equal to the version of Silkypix included with Pentax cameras. View NX is very basic. The much better -- in fact excellent -- Capture NX2 that must be bought separately costs about AU$400 the last time I looked. You can buy Lightroom for around that price.
Posted by: dpexpert at July 12, 2009 08:44 AM
Hello,
I think your link to Adobe Camera RAW is an updates page, and that this
http://bit.ly/dm7D
is the actual download page.
Regards,
Andrew
Posted by: AndyRazz at July 13, 2009 12:46 PM