The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 9 docx

ptg
61Chapter 3Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step One:
When you open a RAW image in Camera
Raw, by default, it applies a small amount
of sharpening to your photo (not the
JPEGs or TIFFs, only RAW images). You
can adjust this amount (or turn it off
altogether, if you like) by clicking on the
Detail icon, as shown here, or using the
keyboard shortcut Command-Option-3
(PC: Ctrl-Alt-3). At the top of this panel
is the Sharpening section, where by a
quick glance you can see that sharpening
has already been applied to your photo.
If you don’t want any sharpening applied
at this stage (it’s a personal preference),
then simply click-and-drag the Amount
slider all the way to the left to lower the
amount of sharpening to 0 (zero), and the
sharpening is removed.
Step Two:
If you want to turn off this automatic, by
default sharpening (so capture sharpening
is only applied if you go and manually add
it yourself), first set the Sharpening Amount
slider to 0 (zero), then go to the Camera
Raw flyout menu and choose Save New
Camera Raw Defaults (as shown here).
Now, RAW images taken with that camera

will not be automatically sharpened.
If you shoot in JPEG, your digital camera applies sharpening to your photo right in
the camera itself, so no sharpening is automatically applied by Camera Raw. But if
you shoot in RAW, you’re telling your camera to ignore that sharpening, and that’s
why, when you bring a RAW image into Camera Raw, by default, it applies some
sharpening, called “capture sharpening.” In my workflow, I sharpen twice: once here
in Camera Raw, and once more right before I output my final image from Photoshop
(called “output sharpening”). Here’s how to apply capture sharpening in Camera Raw:
Sharpening in
Camera Raw
SCOTT KELBY
Continued
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
62
Chapter 3 Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Three:
Before we charge into sharpening, there’s
one more thing you’ll want to know:
if you don’t actually want sharpening
applied, but you’d still like to see what
the sharpened image would look like, you
can sharpen just the preview, and not the
actual file. Just press Command-K (PC:
Ctrl-K) while Camera Raw is open, and
in the Camera Raw Preferences dialog,
choose Preview Images Only in the
Apply Sharpening To pop-up menu (as
shown here), and then click OK to save

this as your default. Now the sharpening
only affects the preview you see here in
Camera Raw, but when you choose to
open the file in Photoshop, the sharpen-
ing is not applied.
Step Four:
In previous versions of Camera Raw, you
had to view the image at 100% to really
see any effects of the sharpening. They’ve
addressed that somewhat in CS5, so it’s
not as necessary to be at a 100% size
view, but it still seems to me to render
the most accurate view of the sharpening.
The quickest way to jump to that 100%
view is to double-click directly on the
Zoom tool in the toolbar (shown circled
here). (Note: You’ll see a message about
zooming to 100% at the bottom of the
Detail panel, but it’ll disappear after you
zoom in to 100%.)
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
63Chapter 3Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
Continued
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Five:
Dipping into the realm of the painfully
obvious, dragging the Amount slider
to the right increases the amount of
sharpening. Compare the image shown

here, with the one in Step Four (where
the Sharpening Amount was set to the
default of 25), and you can see how
much sharper the image now appears,
where I dragged it to 120.
TIP: Making Camera Raw
Full Screen
To have Camera Raw expand to fill
your entire screen, click the Full Screen
icon to the right of the Preview check-
box, at the top of the window.
Step Six:
The next slider down is the Radius slider,
which determines how far out the sharp-
en ing is applied from the edges being
sharpened in your photo. This pretty
much works like the Radius slider in
Photo shop’s Unsharp Mask filter, which
is probably why the default is 1 (because
that’s probably where we’ll leave it most
of the time). I use less than a Radius of 1
if the photo I’m processing is only going
to be used on a website, in video editing,
or somewhere where it’s going to be at a
very small size or resolution. I only use a
Radius of more than 1 when the image is
visibly blurry and needs some “emergen-
cy” sharpening. If you decide to increase
the Radius amount above 1 (unlike the
Unsharp Mask filter, you can only go as

high as 3 here), just be careful, because
if you go too much above 1, your photo
can start to look fake and oversharpened.
You want your photo to look sharp, not
sharpened, so be careful out there.
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
64
Chapter 3 Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Seven:
The next slider down is the Detail slider,
which determines how much of the
edge areas are affected by sharpening.
You’ll apply lower amounts of Detail if
your photo is slightly blurred, and higher
amounts if you really want to bring out
texture and detail (which is why this slid-
er is aptly named). So, how much Detail
you apply depends on the subject you’re
sharpening. With an image like this one,
with lots of texture in the stone, it’s an
ideal candidate for a high amount of Detail
(so are most landscapes, cityscapes, motor-
cycle shots—stuff with lots of edges), so
I dragged the slider to the right (all the
way to 78), until the detail really came out
in the stone.
Step Eight:
I’m going to change photos to show you

the Masking slider. This one’s easier to
understand, and for many people, I think
it will become invaluable. Here’s why:
When you apply sharpening, it gets
applied to the entire image evenly. But
what if you have an image where there
are areas you’d like sharpened, but other
softer areas that you’d like left alone (like
the photo here, where you want to keep
her skin soft, but have her eyes, lips, etc.,
sharpened)? If we weren’t in Camera Raw,
you could apply the Unsharp Mask filter
to a duplicate layer, sharpen this layer,
add a layer mask, and paint away (cover)
those softer areas, right? Well, that’s kind
of what the Masking slider here in Camera
Raw does—as you drag it to the right, it
reduces the amount of sharpening on
non-edge areas. The default Masking set-
ting of 0 (zero) applies sharpening to the
entire image. As you drag to the right, the
non-edge areas are masked (protected)
from being sharpened.
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
666555CCChhhaaapppttteeerrr 333CCCaaammmeeerrraaa RRRaaawww———BBBeeeyyyooonnnddd ttthhheee BBBaaasssiiicccsss
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Nine:
All four sliders in the Sharpening section of
the Detail panel let you have a live preview

of what the sharpening is affecting—just
press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key as
you drag; your screen will turn grayscale,
and the areas that the slider you’re drag-
ging will affect appear as edge areas in the
Preview area. This is particularly helpful
in understanding the Masking slider, so
press-and-hold the Option key and drag
the Masking slider to the left. When
Mask ing is set to 0, the screen turns solid
white (because sharpening is being evenly
applied to everything). As you drag to
the right, the preview (shown here) now
shows only the parts of the photo receiv-
ing sharpening. If you drag all the way to
100, you’ll see that only the most obvious
edges are now receiving full sharpening.
Step 10:
Here’s a before/after of our building shot,
first with no sharpening applied (Before),
and then a nice crispvmount applied
(After) using these settings—Amount: 120,
Radius: 1, Detail: 78, Masking: 0. To see
your own before/after, press the letter P
to toggle the Preview on/off.
Before After
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
66
Chapter 3 Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics

The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step One:
Open the image with a lens problem in
Camera Raw (from Mini Bridge, double-
click on it if it’s a RAW photo, or if it’s a
JPEG or TIFF, Right-click on it and choose
Open in Camera Raw). Now, if you’ve
been using Photoshop for a while, you
already know there’s a Lens Correction
filter found under Photoshop’s Filter
menu, and they’ve updated that with
pretty much with the same features as
the Camera Raw version, but it’s better
to do the correction here because: (1) it’s
non-destructive, and (2) it’s faster. So I
always fix lens problems here, rather than
using the Photoshop filter.
Step Two:
Click on the Lens Corrections icon (the
fifth icon from the right at the top of the
Panel area) and on the Profile tab, turn
on the Enable Lens Profile Corrections
checkbox. Now, chances are that you’re
done. Boom. It’s fixed. That’s because,
as I said above, it looks at the camera
data embedded in the shot to find out
which camera and lens you used, then it
searches its internal database for a profile
of that lens, and it immediately fixes the
photo (as seen here). If it can’t find a

profile, it lets you know at the bottom
of the panel (as seen in the next step).
Previous versions of Camera Raw have had lens correction features, but in CS5,
Camera Raw can now automatically apply corrections for common lens problems
(like barrel or/and pin-cushion distortion, or edge vignetting). It does this by reading
the embedded camera data (so it knows which camera and lens you used), and it
applies a profile to fix the problem. It’s amazingly fast, and it takes just one check-
box, but what if there is no profile for your camera/lens, or there’s no EXIF data
for your image (maybe you scanned it), or if you don’t like the profile (it was too
little or too much)? You’re about to learn all of that.
SCOTT KELBY
Automatically
Fixing Lens
Problems
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
67Chapter 3Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
Continued
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Three:
So, what happens in a case like this, where
you open a photo and it can’t find a pro-
file automatically, or the image doesn’t
have any embedded EXIF data (for exam-
ple, if you’re trying to fix a scanned image,
or an image you copied-and-pasted from
another document)? Take a look at the
photo you see here. Camera Raw couldn’t
find a profile for it, so in the Lens Profile
section, the Make is set to None and the

Model and Profile pop-up menus are
grayed out. What this really means is that
you have to help it out by telling it what
equipment you used to take the photo
(if you know), or you’ll have to make your
best guess (if you don’t).
Step Four:
I shoot Nikon cameras, so I pretty much
knew this was taken with a Nikon, so
from the Make field I chose Nikon, and as
soon as I did, it did the rest—it found a
lens match and fixed the photo (look at
the field itself—now it’s flat, rather than
bowed). Now, it’s not always 100% sure it
has the right lens match, so it gives you a
list of lenses it thinks might be right. You
can click on the Model pop-up menu,
and you’ll see a list of lenses it thinks it
could be (as seen here). You can try out
any of the other lenses listed there and
see if it gives you a better result than the
one that it chose for you (it does a sur-
prisingly good job, so I usually wind up
using the one it chose, but every once in
a while I find a lens in that list I like bet-
ter, even though sometimes I know it’s
not the actual lens I used).
SCOTT KELBY
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg

68
Chapter 3 Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Five:
Our last two images were taken with a
10.5mm fisheye lens, but now let’s look at
a situation where the lens problem is so
large, a built-in profile alone isn’t going
to get the job done. Take at look at the
image shown here, where the buildings
look like they’re leaning in toward the
center (look at how the tower on the
left side is leaning to the right). This is a
pretty common problem for photos taken
with a wide-angle lens on a full-frame
camera (this was taken with a 14–24mm
lens, at 24mm).
Step Six:
Go ahead and turn on the Enable Lens
Profile Corrections checkbox in the Lens
Corrections panel (as shown here), and
even though it immediately found a profile,
you can see it didn’t do much. Actually, it
did fix one thing—it removed the edge
vignetting (darkening of the corners), so
even though it didn’t fix the problem with
the buildings, turning that checkbox on did
make the image a little better. If you think
it didn’t remove enough of the edge dark-
ening (or, if it removed too much), you can

go down to the Correction Amount sliders
at the bottom of the panel, and drag the
Vignetting slider to the right (to lighten the
edges even more than the profile did), or
drag it to the left if you think the profile
overdid it. The other two sliders work the
same way—they allow a subtle tweak to
the settings the profile applied, so if they’re
off by a little bit, you can probably adjust
them enough here to keep from going to
the Manual tab.
SCOTT KELBY
Download from www.wowebook.com
ptg
69Chapter 3Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
Continued
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Seven:
If you need more than a little tweak to
the profile (which we definitely do here),
then you need to click on the Manual
tab and basically do it yourself. (Note:
The changes you make in the Manual tab
are added on top of what you already did
in the Profile tab.) In this case, we need
to fix the vertical geometric distortion,
so drag the Vertical slider to the left, and
as you do, keep an eye on the tower on
the left. Your goal is to make it perfectly
straight, so simply drag to the left until it

is (in this case, I dragged over to –50, as
shown here). Now, pinching the perspec-
tive of the image like this will leave a gap
at the bottom and sides of the image (as
seen here), but we’ll deal with that in just
a moment. For now, at least we’ve fixed
the “leaning tower of Shanghai” problem.
Step Eight:
Go ahead and click the Open Image
button, to open the corrected photo
(complete with those gaps) in Photoshop.
Now, you have two choices here: (1) The
most common choice is simply to crop
away those gray empty areas, so get the
Crop tool (C), drag it out over as much of
the photo as you can without extending
into the gaps, and then press the Return
(PC: Enter) key to lock in your changes.
(2) Since this is CS5, we could pull a fast
one, and instead try a little Content-Aware
Fill to fill in the gaps. It probably won’t fix
100% of the gap, but if it does at least 80%
or more of the work for us, we can finish
it off with a little bit of cloning over any
areas it missed, so I think it’s worth a try.
Get the Magic Wand tool (press Shift-W
until you have it) and click it once in the
gray area to select that entire empty area
(as shown here).
Download from www.wowebook.com

ptg
70
Chapter 3 Camera Raw—Beyond the Basics
The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers
Step Nine:
Now, press the Backspace (PC: Delete)
key to bring up the Fill dialog. Make sure
Content-Aware is selected in the Use pop-
up menu, then click OK, sit back, and let
it do its thing (on a high-resolution image,
it takes 30 seconds). (Note: For more on
Content-Aware Fill, make sure you check
out that project in Chapter 9, because
there are some little tricks to using it that
will save you a lot of time and trouble.)
When it’s done, press Command-D (PC:
Ctrl-D) to Deselect and check out the
results (I know, it’s insane!). It didn’t do
everything perfectly (look at the far left),
but it did most of the work for me, and
that’s fine by me.
Step 10:
One thing you’ll probably notice when
you do a pretty major lens correction,
like we did here is, if you drag the Vertical
slider to the left, your image looks a little
bit “squashed” (the buildings aren’t quite
as tall), and if you drag to the right, your
buildings look a little bit stretched (the
farther you drag in either direction, the

more squashed or stretched the image will
look). In this case, it squashed the build-
ings a little bit, so what I do to correct that
is (wait for it…wait for it…), I stretch the
image back out. Press Command-A (PC:
Ctrl-A) to select your image, then press
Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to bring up Free
Transform. Now, grab the top-center point
and drag straight upward a little bit to
stretch it back out, so the buildings don’t
look squashed (if you press Command-0
[zero; PC: Ctrl-0], the window will auto-
matically resize, so you can reach all the
handles). When you’re done, press Return
(PC: Enter) to lock in your stretching.
Download from www.wowebook.com