CS5 Archives - PhotoshopCAFE https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/ Adobe Photoshop tutorials and Lightroom tutorials Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:45:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://photoshopcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/cropped-psc512-32x32.png CS5 Archives - PhotoshopCAFE https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/ 32 32 Photoshop CS5 New Features (aka Photoshop 12) https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/photoshopCS5.htm https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/photoshopCS5.htm#respond Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:38:45 +0000 http://photoshopcafe.com/?p=2177 Learn about Content aware fill, puppet warp, HDR, Brushes, HDR toning, lens correction, refine edge and other features introduced in Photoshop CS5

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Colin Smith

Photoshop is the cornerstone of the Creative Suite. Almost every creative professional leans heavily on the use of Photoshop. Designers, Photographers, 3D artists, Video, Visual Effects, Illustration, even forensic scientists, dental, medical and scientists are using Photoshop. It’s a word regularly used on TV and films, it’s part of pop culture. Everyone has heard of Photoshop and millions of people are using it.
So what does Adobe have up their sleeve this time? What wizardry has been engineered into our favorite app to make it our even more favorite app. What have they injected into CS5 to make us want, no HAVE to rush out and get the upgrade? That’s what you will discover as you read this article. I’l attempt to give you a look at what’s new and also report what it’s like to use. Any features that will change your life, or any tips to save you time? Read on.

64 Bit and GPU

What’s worth mentioning is that Photoshop is 64 bit native on Mac and Windows. Actually all the Adobe CS5 products are 64 bit. What does this mean? It means a performance boost. Not the type you are perhaps thinking though. 64 bit removes the 4Gig of RAM bottleneck. So if you are working on large files, or files consisting of multiple composited images, you will be able to take advantage of more RAM. Also on the performance end of things is the extensive use of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). This takes a lot of the graphical load off of the main processer (CPU) and reroutes it to the Graphics card. The GPU is equipped to run these types of processes with effortless ease. So it not only results in faster screen redraws, smoother painting etc. but it also opens up the options for on screen resizing of brushes, live updates, faster scrolling, redraws and zooming.

Screen shot 2010-04-11 at 7.25.11 PM

Hold down the alt/Option key while the brush is selected to sample a color. The new Color wheel displays with the current and selected colors visible.

Screen shot 2010-04-11 at 7.25.03 PM

Hold down Control+Option+Cmd on Mac (Right Click+Alt+Ctrl Windows?) with the brush selected. You get an on screen color picker with Hue/Saturation and Brightness ramps.Very nice!

On top of this, the CPU is able to perform more work because of the helping hand of the GPU. I highly recommend looking into the NVIDIA line of cards for a fast upgrade. The Geforce line is a good cost effective way to gain extra performance. For the power user, consider the Quadro FX models.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.48.14 PM

The good stuff

Don’t worry though; there are plenty of sexy additions too. Check out HDR Pro, the Puppet Warp tool, Content Aware Fill, the new Refine Edge tools, new RAW engine, new brushes and paint mixer and much more. Let’s get started with the Refine Edge tool.

Making Selections

You may well remember that the Refine Edge and Quick Select tools were added in CS3. You also noticed that in CS4 there was a disappearance of the Extract tool. That’s because Adobe had something up their sleeve in CS5. There is a completely different way that Quick Selection and Refine Edge work together in CS5 and it was worth the wait. It’s now really fast and easy to get great looking selections, even on things like hair and fur. This may be my favorite new feature in CS5.
Start by using the Quick Select tool to make a selection. Remember to hold down alt/option to remove from a selection if you get a little too heavy handed.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.00.39 PM

With the selection active, switch to Refine Edge, you can see it in the Options bar. You will see lots of new options. While refining selections, you will work in the top part of the panel. Notice there is a pull down menu with lots of viewing options.
Here is a little tip to simplify the process. Click on Show Radius. You will notice (as you slide the radius slider in Edge Detection) an edge appears. This is the edge where Photoshop decides what to keep and what to erase.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.01.20 PM

Now change to your preferred viewing mode and click the little brush tool to the left. Paint over any edges that have background that you want to remove. Hold down Option/Alt and paint over areas that you want to keep. You will notice the display updates after each stroke. But look carefully, the entire selection updates. The more you refine the edge, the better the tool works, really simple.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.01.46 PM

The Adjust Edge tools simply allow you to choose how crisp or soft the edges will be.
Finally, you get to choose how the selection will be applied to the image. You can apply just as a selection; copy the selected object to a new layer; add it as a Layer Mask; create a new Layer with a mask or even a new document. This is really nice and allows for a flexible workflow. What I really like about this, is that it really works. I was able to get faster, cleaner edges than ever before.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.10.21 PM

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.23.51 PM

Content Aware Fill

Ok, this next feature is really freaky. You may have seen it before because Adobe leaked it to the public a couple of times before the launch. How about a magic retouching tool?

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.48.06 PM  Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.48.06 PM

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.48.14 PM

 

 

Simply put, you have something you want removed from a picture… Don’t reach for the Clone Stamp (anymore). Make a rough selection with the lasso tool. Then choose fill (Keyboard Shortcut is Shift+Delete, Shift+Backspace on PC). Select the option Content Aware from the drop down menu and click Ok. Wait a few seconds and then like magic the object is removed and replaced by the texture of the background. This is a random effect with no real options, it either works on the image or it doesn’t. More often than not, it does work, and work well. I find that applying it over all, and then reapplying o some smaller areas yields the best results. What it doesn’t work very well on is areas with a strong perspective.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 7.48.06 PM

HDR (High Dynamic Range)

First of all, let me clear up a misconception of what HDR is. The human eye is capable of seeing more details in shadows and highlights simultaneously than a camera. The range of light to dark with visible detail is called the dynamic range.
This image shows what typically happens in a high contrast scene. Notice that the exposure is pretty good. However I was unable to capture the detail outside because it’s too bright. Also some of the shadows are plugged up because they are too dark. This is known as a Standard or Low Dynamic Range image. It’s a RAW file. With some adjustments, I could coax some extra detail out of the shadows, but the Highlights are totally gone.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 6.53.22 PM

_MG_9668
Or how about another exposure to show all the detail in the Iron banister. Notice that many parts of the photo are now over-exposed.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 6.53.22 PM

The solution is to shoot a series of Photos that covers the entire Dynamic range. In this case I took 7 shots, each of them 2 stops apart. (Each F stop is double the brightness of the previous.)
Then using the new HDR Pro (a beefed up Merge to HDR) we are able to merge the Photos into a 32 bit image.
There are some significant enhancements in HDR in Photoshop CS5.
Anyone who knows anything about HDR knows that Photoshop is the best tool for merging images into HDR. I have heard some instructors, mistakenly suggest using Photomatix for merging. (Bad idea, because Photomatix converts RAW to JPG at merging point, thus throwing away ½ the dynamic range. Now Photomatix for tone mapping is a different story altogether).
When there is movement between Photos (camera shake, or blowing clouds, leaves or water etc) , doubling (also called ghosting) occurs.
A new feature in CS5 is the remove Ghosts button. When you click this, Photoshop does a pretty good job of de-ghosting. Notice that there is a green box around the de-ghosted image.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 5.11.28 PM

Try clicking a different thumbnail to set a different de-ghost and produce a very different result.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 5.09.34 PM

Tone Mapping

The 3rd part and the magic of HDR is the Tone Mapping. You can’t use a 32 bit image so we need to choose the tones to display the photograph. Photoshop now includes a decent Local Adaption for tone mapping. In the past we had to use programs such as Photomatix to do high quality Tone Mapping. There is still a place for Photomatix, but Photoshop now does a pretty decent job of Tone Mapping.
Photoshop CS5 excel’s in natural looking Tone Mapped HDR photos and contains lots of options to get the image looking the way you like.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 5.11.28 PM

_MG_9673

You can also use it to create surrealistic looking images that people either love or hate. I personally like them when done correctly, which sadly is rare.

_MG_9726-Edit

It takes a keen eye and some skill to produce a surrealistic HDR that isn’t ruined by halos and oversaturation. Check out my full tutorial and DVD for more on HDR.

HDR Toning

This is a filter than can produce a Stylized HDR “looking” result on a single image. Personally I don’t like the name HDR, because it’s not possible to create a single image HDR. “Wait!” you might say, “I’ve seen single image HDRs, or Pseudo- HDR”. Reread the explanation of HDR again and you will notice a photo isn’t an HDR because of the Tone Mapping, it’s because of the Dynamic Range. A single Photo will always be LDR (Low Dynamic Range) no matter what you do to it. It’s like taking a mono signal, playing it through 2 speakers and then calling it stereo.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 7.07.34 PM

Have a look at this Single Image raw file pushed through HDR toning. Notice, the blown out areas in the doorway, they don’t gain detail, they just turn gray. The reason is that the detail wasn’t captured on the camera and therefore impossible to recover on any type of imaging.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 6.53.22 PM

Having cleared that up, the HDR Toning tool does a good job of simulating a tone mapped look on a LDR image. For what it does it does well, just don’t expect miracles. HDR toning converts the image into a 32bit space and allows you to make some tonal adjustments. When you click Ok it goes back into its 16 or 8 bit space. It’s a cool looking filter that many people will enjoy when they only have a single exposure to work with. However I strongly recommend doing real HDR for the best results.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 6.53.22 PM

Puppet Warp Tool

This is a great tool for people who are into Photo manipulation. This tool allows you to add anchor points to your image. You can then drag the points to warp the shape of the image. You can use the unselected points as anchor points. You can select multiple points by holding down the shift key.
This is a little akin to “rigging” a character for Inverse Kinematics, a 3D and animation term. The difference is that you can warp the image anyway you like. This is a lot better than the liquefy tool for these types of purposes. I can imagine that people are going to have a lot of fun with this tool!

To truly understand what it does; watch the free video I created on it.

Tip: Hold down shift to automatically select points as you add them.

Screen shot 2010-04-06 at 8.18.43 PM (1)

 

Lens Correction

The new lens Auto correction is really good. Photoshop contains a database of common cameras and lenses. It then looks at the metadata and makes adjustments to the curvature, aberration (color fringes) and vignette to automatically fix some of the most common lens issues. As you can see it does an amazing job on removing vignetting. It also does a good job of geometric distortion. Although sometime you will prefer the distortion because we are so used to looking at it, sometimes a photo looks odd without it. This all depends on the photo of course and many wide-angle photos look better corrected.

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 7.23.42 PM

Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 7.23.07 PM  Screen shot 2010-04-07 at 7.23.18 PM (1)

New Brushes

I’m not going to get too much into the brushes here because Jane and Wes have written plenty about them. I also have a

 video for you to see them demonstrated.
In a nutshell, we now have natural bristles and new mixer brush that smudges the colors. You can paint from scratch or you can paint over a photo for a hand painted look.

Screen shot 2010-04-10 at 6.37.58 PM

Other Changes

There are a lot of other changes in Photoshop CS5. Let me touch on a few.

Work Space Switcher

We have had the ability to choose and save different workspaces for some time now. This release it has been brought to the forefront. There are now workspace buttons at the top the screen. This controls panel layout, menus and menu highlighting as well as tool presets and Menu highlighting.

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Mini Bridge

Have you even been working in Photoshop and you have the need to quickly grab an image. You don’t want to leave Photoshop for Bridge or even use an open menu. You know, when you’re in the zone and really focused. They have now added a small version of Bridge in a panel. It’s called Mini Bridge and it’s really useful in a jam or when you are working with lots of images. Personally I prefer Big Bridge because it’s faster. You also have to have Bridge running for Mini Bridge to display.
I do find Mini Bridge really useful for things like HDR, because I can merge them directly from Mini Bridge without the clutter of multiple photos on my desktop.

Screen shot 2010-04-11 at 6.53.53 PM

Paste in Place

Paste inside has a few new options.
Paste in Place, Paste inside and Paste Outside. These little tweaks are bound to help you out a lot. I especially will use Paste in Place a lot.

JDI Changes

During the development process, Adobe told all the engineers to take time off what they were working on. During this time the focus was on working on “the little things”. Adobe looked at customer requests and made many little tweaks that have been requested. They called these JDI (Just do it). Here are some of the JDI enhancements in CS5

.Delete Empty Layers Script
.Convert a 16bit file to 8bit without a dialog box on save to jpeg
.Neutral Density Gradient Preset
.Straighten image button added to ruler
.Turn off/on Gesture support
.Default for Shadow Highlight changed to 35%
.Can move a selection while to Active layer is hidden. Doesn’t move the layer, just the selection.
.Option to always default to last saved folder
.You can drag and drop a file into an open PSD to create a layer
.Shift+Enter puts focus on the text fields on an adjustment layer. They also open with the focus on .the text fields. This saves time because you can apply keyboard commands right away.

Conclusion

I am more excited about this release of Photoshop than I have been for a while. I believe this is the biggest update we have seen for a while and there is something for everyone. Would I recommend upgrading?Tune in next week to find out. Just kidding! I recommend Photoshop CS5 without hesitation!

About the Author

Colin Smith is a best-selling author, trainer, and award-winning new-media designer who has caused a stir in the design community with his stunning photorealistic illustrations composed entirely in Photoshop. Colin is also known as a pioneer of HDR photography. He is founder of the world’s most popular Photoshop resource site, PhotoshopCAFE.com, which boasts over 20 million visitors.
With over 14 years of experience in the creative industry, Colin was formerly Senior Editor and Creative Director for VOICE magazine. He is a regular columnist for Photoshop User magazine. He has been featured in most major imaging magazines including, Computer Arts, Macworld, After Capture, PSD Photoshop, Advanced Photoshop, Photoshop Creative, Digital Photographer, Web Designer magazine and a host of others..
Colin’s graphic design work has been recognized with numerous awards, including, MacWorld Digital Design and 3 Guru awards at Photoshop World 2001 and 2002, for his work in both Illustration and Web Design. He’s authored or coauthored more than eighteen books on Photoshop, including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Photoshop CS and CS2 (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2005) and award-winning Photoshop Most Wanted: Effects and Design Tips (A Press/Friends Of Ed, 2002). Colin is also creator of the Photoshop Secrets Video training series (PhotoshopCD.com). He is in high demand across the USA, presenting his Photoshop techniques to Photographers and graphics professionals across the nation. He has been a speaker at such conferences as Flash Forward, NVision, Photoshop World, PIDE, WPPI, PIDE, DL Expo, Creative Suite Conference, Cre8, Create Chaos, Deviant Art Summit and many more. In 2008 Colin was the featured speaker for a Sold out Multi-City Tour (Flash Summer Camp) Sponsored by Adobe and Lynda.com. Colin has consulted such companies as Adobe Systems, Edison International, Apple and Disney Studios.

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Photoshop CS5 – What’s in it for tablet users? https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/Wacom.htm https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/Wacom.htm#respond Sun, 30 Dec 2012 08:11:57 +0000 http://photoshopcafe.com/?p=6052 Photoshop CS5 is pen-centric through and through. We see this first hand with a new tool, The Mixer Brush. This brush emulates the effects of a traditional artist’s brush whose tip was dipped in multiple colors and then blended together. This blending of colors can be applied to a blank canvas to achieve the look and feel of various traditional media.

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A lot will be written about Adobe Creative Suite 5 and all it’s goodness for months to come. As it should be, seeing as CS5 represents one of the biggest updates to the Creative Suite since it has been bundled as a suite! But beyond all the marketing-speak, with each new release of the Creative Suite, what I really want to know is, “What’s in it for tablet users?” And I’m happy to say, “A whole lot!”

Photoshop CS5 is pen-centric through and through. We see this first hand with a new tool, The Mixer Brush. This brush emulates the effects of a traditional artist’s brush whose tip was dipped in multiple colors and then blended together. This blending of colors can be applied to a blank canvas to achieve the look and feel of various traditional media. Alternatively, you can use the Mixer Brush on a photo, picking up the underlying colors as if they were wet media, adding an artistic or painterly effect to any image.
This tool offers an extensive set of controls to alter the effects of the brush. For example, you can determine the wetness of the brush, how much paint is held on the tip, how much of that paint mixes between the tip and the canvas, and how clean the brush is after each stroke. Every characteristic that you would expect from a traditional paintbrush.

Mixer Brush Characteristics

Brush Preview

And speaking of traditional brushes, you are going to love new Bristle tips. Once you’ve selected a brush tool, you need to choose a brush tip (in the Brush panel, which I’ll get to in a moment). New Bristle tips offer stroke characteristics that rival traditional artist’s brushes. Brushes with a round, blunt tip or a flat fan brush for example. Beyond the shape of the brush, every aspect of a brush’s behavior can be modified to give you the most natural effects imaginable. Including the length of it’s bristles, their thickness, stiffness and angle of the brush tip. All of these characteristics affect the way in which color is applied on the image.
You can use one of the ten standard Bristle tip presets, or create and save your own to match your preferred look or style.

Assisting you in the creation and use of your new Bristle tip brushes is a Bristle Brush Preview feature which provides you with a real-time reference of the brushes look and behavior. This floating window gives you a visual representation of your brush when selected and active. This preview window is not only effective in the creation of new brushes, but also flat out fun!

Bristle Tip Settings

These new painting tools and features are exciting stuff for literally every type of Wacom tablet and Photoshop user. Whether you are a photographer seeking the addition of artistic enhancements to your images, or an illustrator/artist wishing to extend their creative vision, or a designer who makes dynamic composites and effects. These new painting tools and functions are going to change the way you work!

New is cool, but with CS5 newly redesigned is cool too! Savvy tablet users will immediately notice that the Brush panel icon found on the right-hand of the options bar has moved to the left to join some other brush related options. Clicking this icon opens the Brush panel, where you’ll find the majority of your dynamic (pressure) controls. The icon itself has changed as well. Formerly a dog-eared page full of bullet points, it now appears as a folder with a little jar of artist’s brushes on it.

Inside the Brush panel things look fairly similar to previous versions. A closer look will reveal that a button labeled Brush Presets has been added. Brush presets have been broken out into their own panel in CS5, and for good reason. With the inclusion of new Bristle tips—and a new way of thinking about brushes altogether—makes this a good move in my opinion. In the past, numerous size brush presets with similar attributes clogged up the Brush panel. Now, standard brush presets have been slimmed down to include base level brushes with only the most common dynamics applied.

Brushes w Pen Pressure

For example, tablet users need only select from a handful of brushes for basic pen pressure control. Should you wish to create more artistic, or stylized brushes, you can do so easily by selecting various dynamics, such as scattering, texture, color or transfer and setting controls for pen pressure. (Note: Users of Wacom Intuos4 pen tablets and Cintiq interactive pen displays may also use pen-tilt to control brush dynamics. Accessory pens for these tablets like the Digital Airbrush and Art Pen offer additional functionality.)

Also new in the Brush panel are options to modify the characteristics of the new Bristle tips (discussed earlier.)

Brush Panel Presets#269178E

Back on the Options bar, you’ll notice that two new icons appear when you select any tool that behaves like a brush. (There are 17 brush-like tools in Photoshop CS5). These tablet pressure icons (which resemble targets with a pen in them) enable pen pressure control of opacity and size of the brush tip. The controls govern the use of pressure, overriding any settings that may have been applied to the current brush.

Tablet Control Icons

This is a welcome return of a feature as it brings back an option to quickly turn pressure on and off for the two most popular controls—a feature not seen in Photoshop since version 7. Remaining visible, always on the Options bar, these controls are more accessible and more discoverable. This is refreshing for new tablet users, or those not very comfortable in the Brush panel. The tablet pressure icons toggle control on and off with the quick tap of your pen!

While Photoshop’s new painting tools and effects are redefining your creativity, here are a couple of new or improved tools that really shine when used with a tablet.

Topping my list of favorite new tools is actually an “old” but enhanced tool: The Spot Healing Brush. It takes advantage of CS5’s new Content-Aware feature, which delivers almost magical results! When painting over unwanted elements in an image, the structure and details around the area are preserved and smoothly blended in its place. In most cases, it is as if the element never existed! You can really power through an image when applying this tool with your pressure-sensitive pen!
While I prefer to do my sharpening at the very end of my workflow, and in most cases just before printing, I can’t help but appreciate the Sharpen tools new Protect Detail feature.  This option frankly makes the tool actually usable in that it doesn’t immediately throw pixels into an oversaturated halo spin-cycle! Controlling its strength with pen pressure, and a gentle hand, it’s a nice tool to have in your toolbox for down and dirty enhancements to eyes, jewelry, and otherwise sparkly things. It won’t replace Nik Sharpener Pro by any means, but for that quick glimmer of light, it’s a cool tool.

Making selections is a big part of every creative workflow, and there is no better and faster way to make selections than with the natural precision of a Wacom pen. CS5 offers new intelligent edge detection technology to give users an unprecedented level of control in the making of selections and masks. This is especially ideal when working with complex subjects like hair, and semi-transparent material. Once you’ve made an initial selection, use the slider controls in the Refine Edge dialog to tweak it. Then, finish it up with the Refine Edge Radius brush. This tool enables you to fine tune the edges of your selection by carefully painting the line around the selected subject. The action results in an expansion or contraction of the selection around the original edge. Ideal in situations where you wish to extract an element from a photo—free from residual background colors or contaminates—and place it on another background. This pressure-sensitive tool is a hidden gem, but very useful.

I can easily say that there are few—if any—images that I work on that don’t incorporate the use of some type of adjustment layer. Whether it is levels or curves for a tonal adjustment, or vibrance or hue/sat for some color, I’ve just got to have them! I’m addicted to them. There, I said it. When I learned of the new HDR Toning adjustment, I was intrigued with the effects that it can produce. Combinations of this new adjustment will most certainly find its way into my images.
Tip: The HDR Toning adjustment requires that you flatten your image. In early uses of this adjustment, I’ve created a duplicate image, applied the adjustment, then drag and dropped the adjusted image back into my working document, where I can add a layer mask for compositing. (Hold the Shift key while drag and dropping the adjusted image back in the open doc to place it in perfect register.)

Tablet Closeup


Wow! That’s a brain dump on a lot of new features, and at the same time not much at all, huh. Like I said, there is a ton of new features in CS5. Especially for tablet users! If you are not already using a Wacom pen tablet, there has never been a better time than with Photoshop CS5! For tips on setting up your Intuos4 pen tablet or Cintiq interactive pen display and using it in Photoshop CS5, look for the upcoming title from PhotoshopCAFE: “Wacom Tablets and Photoshop CS5”. All new content this spring.

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Camera Raw 6 A WHOLE NEW PROCESSING ENGINE https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/ACR6.htm https://photoshopcafe.com/cs5/ACR6.htm#respond Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:58:06 +0000 http://photoshopcafe.com/?p=6032 Adobe has done it again - they've taken the foundational image processing engine of the world's most popular raw converter and rewritten it from the ground up. The algorithms for this new "demosaicing" process allows Adobe Camera Raw 6 (like it's cousin Lightroom 3) to achieve sharper, cleaner detail while also dramatically reducing noise in high ISO images. This quality boost would be worth the price of upgrade alone but the ACR team has also added new improved blending options for the Post-Crop Vignette feature and also the ability to add a simulated "grain" back into images to obtain a range of traditional film looks.

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Adobe has done it again – they’ve taken the foundational image processing engine of the world’s most popular raw converter and rewritten it from the ground up. The algorithms for this new “demosaicing” process allows Adobe Camera Raw 6 (like it’s cousin Lightroom 3) to achieve sharper, cleaner detail while also dramatically reducing noise in high ISO images. This quality boost would be worth the price of upgrade alone but the ACR team has also added new improved blending options for the Post-Crop Vignette feature and also the ability to add a simulated “grain” back into images to obtain a range of traditional film looks.

ACR-1-Interface

Reduced Noise, Clean Detail

Noise BnA ACR-3-acr6 noise dialog

How to get both has been the digital photographers’s balancing act for the last decade – especially if one didn’t want to rely on opening a file and applying pixel-based noise reduction/sharpening filter. ACR 6’s updated Detail panel gives you three new sliders to control Color Detail, and Luminance Detail and Contrast, but you may not need to play around much with these new options (though they do add indispensable control)because the ability to get accurate, saturated, yet non “Christmas Tree Lights” color, while maintaining smooth detail, is apparent even at the default settings of the new sliders.

ACR-3-acr5 straight  ACR-3-acr6 noise n sharpen 

With the results you’ll see you will be tempted to go back to some of your older portfolio files just to see what quality increase is possible. But there is a decision to be made: Adobe couldn’t just arbitrary go back to your already adjusted files

(processed using the current 2003 engine) and update them to the new 2010 profiles. Well they could, but it wouldn’t be polite without asking, and that’s exactly what they do. Every time you open an image that was processed with ACR 5 or before, you’ll see a little exclamation mark in the lower right hand corner of ACR’s preview window telling you that new processing enhancements like Noise Reduction wont be available to you unless you click on the icon and give ACR permission to use it’s new capabilities. Of course, if for some reason you don’t like the changes (most of which are subtle and hard to see without zooming in on the file) you can always Undo and continue to work with the file as in the past. But as mentioned, if you DO click the icon, the file with gain a cleaner overall look (especially in shadow and highlight areas), and all the new Noise Reduction features will become available.

ACR-8 rerender

Staying sharp

The sliders in the Sharpening section of ACR 6’s Detail panel look and work exactly the same as in ACR 5 (and if you’re not familiar with the subtleties of the Radius, Detail and Masking options, you should be – they offer incredible control over where and how sharpening is – and is NOT – applied), but they now take advantage if the new processing engine to achieve even greater detail with less potential edge artifacts.

ACR-4-sharpening

But I want to add noise!

Actually, when we add noise back into an image (using something like Photoshop’s Add Noise filter) what we are usually trying to imitate is the organic “patina,” the texture, the finger print, of certain film grains of yesteryear. Film grain is visually very different from digital camera noise, with its inherent randomness, “clumpyness” and size variations caused by the small grains of metallic silver halide of the original medium. And it’s these subtle variations of Amount, Size and Roughness that the new Effects panel in ACR 6 puts at your fingertips.

ACR-5-Add Grain before ACR-5-Add Grain after

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 5.04.18 PM

What would be an example of when you might choose to actually add grain into a file? For me it’s when I’m imitating a traditional photography look – like something taken with a high speed film (like infrared), or a chemical developing effect (like cross-processing) or an antique printing process (like sepia toning). In this before & after sample here I’ve added a course grain back into a color photograph that has been converted to black & white, in such a way as to imitate an infrared shot.

_JHD7105-as-Smart-Object-1 

Vignettes done right

Originally added to the Lens Corrections panel in ACR to help get rid of the inconsistent darkening tone at the edge of wide angle shots, vignetting has become a tool (some would say an overused tool) in the photographers Bat Utility Belt to intentionally darken the edges of an image to help draw the viewers eye into the subject of the photograph.

The problem was that since it was designed to fix an issue with the full frame of the shot as it was captured, when a composition was cropped, the edge effect didn’t “rewrap” to follow the new size. Hence ACR 5’s Post Crop Vignette option that would follow along with the new image size. The only problem was that while the original Vignette feature has a beautiful dodge and burn result that lightened or darkened the original colors of the photograph, while maintaining the integrity of the highlights of the scene, the ACR 5 Post Crop Vignette was just a layer of blurry white or black “paint overlay.” This was great if you wanted an opaque frame effect (with muddy grey highlights), but poor for the intended aesthetics associated with a quick dodging and burning of edges.

ACR 6 to the rescue! With two new Priority “blend modes” (Highlight or Color Priority) and an additional Highlights protection slider, it is much easier to get subtitles like skies to “burn” gracefully, while maintaining the crisp highlights of the subject matter that extends into the edge area. And if you want a framing effect, the Paint Overlay option is still there (and very useful at a low Roundness and Feather setting)

ACR-7 vig dialogACR-7 vig screen

ACR-7 vig paint overlay

And don’t forget the game-changers that came in with ACR 5!

Yes, you combine these incredibly useful (I’d say completely indispensable!) improvements in ACR 6, with the paradigm shift that came in with the targeted adjustment tools in ACR 5 (not to mention it’s incremental updates that brought us lifesavers like the Targeted Adjustment Tool and the Snapshots panel!) and you have a complete procedural, non-destructive, quick and easy, one-stop shop for 90% of your photographic post processing needs! Quality, Flexibility and Speed – Thank you Adobe for ACR!!!

About the Author

Jack Davis

Jack is co-author of the award-winning and best-selling guide to Photoshop, “The Photoshop Wow! Book,” as well as an award winning designer / illustrator / photographer and contributing editor to numerous other books on digital imagery, design, and on-line communication. He is an internationally recognized expert on digital imagery and the visual communication process. He has lectured at conferences and universities throughout the US, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Brazil and Australia, as well as leading numerous workshops around the US and abroad. He teaches as part of the “Dream Team” at the National Association of Photoshop Professional’s Photoshop World Conferences. Jack was recently inducted into the NAPP Photoshop Hall of Fame.

Jack’s DVDs

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