How to Use Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop – Day 10

Adobe Camera Raw Is Lightroom’s Develop Module, Inside Photoshop

If you have ever used Lightroom, you already know how to use Adobe Camera Raw. It is the same engine, the same sliders, the same masking tools — and it opens from inside Photoshop as a filter, on any image, raw or not.

For a lot of photographs it is the right place to start, and for one specific job — separating a subject from a background — it is genuinely better than anything else in the application.

Convert to a Smart Object Before You Open It

Do this first, every time. Go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters while the background layer is selected. It takes one click and converts the layer into a Smart Object.

Skip it and Camera Raw bakes its result into the pixels; you get one shot and no way back. Do it and the filter lands as a re-openable Smart Filter, with every slider, every mask and every setting exactly where you left them. This one habit is the difference between Camera Raw as a one-way trip and Camera Raw as a permanent part of your file.

Then open it: Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

Lens Blur Does the Hardest Thing Automatically

Faking shallow depth of field convincingly is difficult work by hand. Camera Raw does it with a button.

1. Open Lens Blur and Click Apply

   It is in the right-hand panel. Photoshop analyzes the depth of the scene, works out what the subject is, and blurs everything behind them.

2. Refine the Subject With the Brush

   Under the Lens Blur controls there is a small brush icon. Drag it across your subject’s face and Photoshop tightens the depth estimate around them, which fixes the soft-edge errors that show up around hair and shoulders.

3. Set the Amount, and Keep It Restrained

   The Blur Amount slider controls the strength. It is tempting to go far; a moderate setting reads as a lens and a heavy one reads as a filter.

4. Try a Different Bokeh Shape

   The bokeh options change the character of the out-of-focus highlights — the shape of the specular blobs behind your subject. Worth a look if the background has bright points in it.

Mask the Sky Without Making a Selection

Camera Raw’s masking is one of the strongest things in the panel, and it does not use Photoshop selections at all.

1. Open Masking and Choose Landscape

   The landscape masks split the scene into Sky, Mountains and Ground automatically. Pick Sky and click Create.

2. Pull the Highlights Down

   Skies are almost always the brightest thing in the frame. Bringing the highlights down inside the mask recovers the structure without darkening anything else.

3. Cool the Temperature

   Push the Temp slider toward blue. Because the adjustment is confined to the sky mask, the subject’s skin tone is untouched — which is the whole reason this beats a global white balance change.

Add a Radial Mask Over Your Subject

1. Create a New Mask and Choose Radial Gradient

   Drag out from your subject to draw an ellipse over them.

2. Raise the Exposure Inside It

   A modest lift is enough. The eye goes to the brightest part of a photograph, so this is the cheapest way to direct attention.

3. Set the Feather Before You Judge It

   The Feather slider at the top of the radial mask controls how gradually the edge falls off. A low feather leaves a visible oval on the image; a high one blends invisibly. This is the setting people skip and then wonder why the result looks obvious.

Every Mask Stays Live

Decided the sky went too blue? Click back onto the Sky mask in the list and move the temperature slider again. Masks in Camera Raw are not applied and gone — they remain as named, editable entries you can return to for as long as the file exists.

Color Grade the Shadows, Midtones and Highlights

Come out of masking and open Color Grading. Three wheels: shadows, midtones and highlights, each with its own hue and saturation.

The reliable move is cool shadows against warm midtones. Push the shadows toward blue and the midtones toward orange, both gently, and the image gains depth without anything looking colored. This is the same split-toning idea as the levels channels from Day 7, with a far better interface.

Check It With the Before and After Toggle

Bottom right of the Camera Raw window there is a before/after control, and the backslash key does the same thing. Use it constantly. Working slider by slider it is very easy to drift a long way from the original without noticing, and a full-screen before/after is the only honest check.

Back in Photoshop, Nothing Is Locked

Click OK and you return to Photoshop with the edit applied — and, because of that first step, a Camera Raw Filter entry sitting under the layer in the Layers panel.

Click its eye icon to toggle the entire edit off. Double-click the name and Camera Raw reopens with the Lens Blur amount, both masks and the color grading exactly as you left them. Then carry on in Photoshop with layers and adjustments on top.

When to Start in Camera Raw

If You Already Know Lightroom

Everything transfers directly. Do the exposure, white balance and grading here, then move into layers for the work Lightroom cannot do.

If the Photograph Needs Global Work First

Exposure, contrast, white balance and lens corrections are faster here than as a stack of adjustment layers, and they are all in one panel.

If You Need Background Separation

Lens Blur alone justifies opening it. There is no equivalent in Photoshop proper that gets close for the effort involved.

When Not To

Compositing, retouching, type and anything involving multiple images all belong in Photoshop. Camera Raw works on one layer at a time.

Download the sample image and run the whole sequence — Smart Object, Lens Blur, sky mask, radial mask, color grade — then reopen the filter afterwards and change one thing, to prove to yourself that it all survived.

Tomorrow, Day 11 removes distractions from a photograph in about as many clicks.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Open it non-destructivelyFilter > Convert for Smart Filters, then Filter > Camera Raw Filter
• Blur the backgroundLens Blur > Apply; brush over the face; Blur Amount; try the bokeh shapes
• Bluer skyMasking > Landscape > Sky > Create; Highlights down, Temp toward blue
• Light the subjectCreate New Mask > Radial Gradient; raise Exposure, set Feather
• Color gradeColor Grading: shadows cooler, midtones warmer
• Navigate and compareCmd/Ctrl + + or - to zoom, Space-drag to pan; \ for before and after
• Reopen laterDouble-click Camera Raw Filter under the layer in the Layers panel