Camera Raw 5

Ben Long

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The important addition to Camera Raw’s Basic pane is the clarity slider, which debuted in Lightroom. Somewhat akin to sharpening, Clarity performs a lot of micro-contrast adjustments that refine an image’s details.
Camera Raw’s interface. Click the image to see a larger version.

Selective Edits
The most significant change to Camera Raw is the ability to perform selective edits. As in previous versions, adjusting a slider in Camera Raw applies that adjustment to the entire image. But with the new Adjustment Brush, you can brush adjustments onto your image, affecting exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness, or color tints. You can change brush size and edge softness, and Flow and Density controls help you manage the strength.
Adjustment Brush strokes are non-destructive, so you can alter their settings or delete them at any time. You can also batch-apply strokes to multiple images.
I do wish you could brush in different white balances to different parts of the image. For example, I’d love to balance flash with natural light by painting different white balance settings into different locations.
The new Graduated Filter tool is akin to the Adjustment Brush, but rather than brushing on edits, the Graduated Filter applies the edits through a gradient mask. It’s ideal for adjusting the exposure of skies, or any high-dynamic range situation.
In these before and after shots, you can see the difference that a graduated Exposure adjustment can make. Camera Raw has created a very smooth transition between the original and affected areas.


In previous versions of Camera Raw, the Lens Vignetting tool didn’t respect cropping you applied using Camera Raw’s crop tool. Instead, vignettes were added to the original corners of the image. The new Post Crop Vignetting sliders provide tools for adding or removing vignettes within the crop rectangle you define.
Adobe has done a great job of adding truly useful new features for Camera Raw that are implemented in a way that doesn’t interfere with the interface and workflow that long-time users are already accustomed to. And that’s no easy task!
Return to the main Photoshop CS4 review.