Having gained an understanding of the basic principle that a JPEG file is a lossy file and that a RAW file is essentially a negative I became interested in the chance to play around with a RAW image in Photoshop. In Luminous Landscape's trailer for its Adobe Camera Raw tutorial the chap with the heavy beard explains that the image of the buddha is a JPEG image which he quickly goes on to show how in just one minute he manages to do in Adobe Camera RAW what it would have take to do in 8 minutes with Photoshop.

I'm just confused is ACR in Photoshop CS3/4 to be used for RAW images or JPEG's. It almost seems like ACR is just a new layout specific to people editing photo's whereas the main Photoshop layout is non specific and essentially cluttered with art work tools.

Sorry if this sounds a bit stupid but I'd really prefer not to spend $40 on something that is only going to speed up processing of JPEG's.


Thanks

Hi There:

Others here can answer this better, but ACR started life as a RAW converter. With the advent of Lightroom, later versions of ACR also added similar 'develop' capabilities to those featured in Lightroom. As such it can work with both RAW files and .tif and .jpg files. There are several big differences between RAW and .jpg files; a quick search of these forums will bring you to several more threads.

Mike.

Tell me please if I'm right in saying this then:

The photo editing programs like lightroom etc did away with the art work side of Photoshop to produce a package that was all a photographer would need, and was therefore easier to work with and cheaper.

In response Photoshop created ACR.

Again sorry if I'm being completely stupid here, I've been lucky enough to have been given a 5d with CS3 and I'm trying to get to grips with it all.

Thanks

That's basically right.



That's definitely wrong. Adobe Camera Raw was around long before the advent of Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture.

Don't let the fact that Camera Raw can edit JPEG and TIFF files confuse you. Camera Raw still is primarily a raw converter ... which however also can, for your convenience, apply edits to non-raw image files. So with Photoshop, you now have two places where you can edit your JPEGs: in the Camera Raw plug-in, or directly in Photoshop. Or both, as you prefer. In Lightroom, you'll have the same tools at your service as in the Camera Raw plug-in (plus some tools for archiving, cataloging, and presentation), but not the sophisticated Photoshop tool set.

-- Olaf

Adobe has provided ACR, Lightroom, Bridge and Photoshop to allow photographers different workflows. Someone who shoots a wedding and captures thousands of images will have (and need) a different workflow than a still-life shooter who is capturing dozens of images in order to create a single, final image. Think of these different programs as tools that each have their own strengths and weaknesses in terms of workflow.

In the book, Real World Camera Raw (written by the chap with the heavy beard), he states that Adobe ported several features from Lightroom to ACR in order to help photographers' workflow. This allows several different methods and/or approaches to process images.

Throughout all of Adobe's manuals and tutorials, they state that they want several different methods to solving the same problem because everyone develops their own workflow. Adobe strives to make their software a flexible toolset. Just because something is available doesn't mean it must be used in that way.

The basic difference between Lightroom/Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop is that in LR/ACR all changes you make are non destructive and don't change the pixels. It's just a set of instructions how to manipulate the base pixels to render into an image. Originally only designed for raw, but later expanded to allow using jpg's and tif's as well.

Photoshop is basically a pixel editor, which (unless you save your manipulated pictures with all layers intact) changes the pixels from one value to another according to instructions you give. For instance once sharpened (eg unsharp mask) there is no way to turn back to your original image.

Hey Guys

Thank you all very much, I'm pleased my question was looked upon seriously, as a novice I have to put a lot of thought into my question so as not to waste anyone's time.

I went ahead and bought the Luminous Landscape download tutorial for Camera Raw and I'm now tentatively moving files from i-photo to Bridge. I immediately like the way Bridge shows far more information regarding the cameras original settings.

Thanks again.

The original pixels no, the new pixels yes. You can't alter pixel values without some data loss. Now with Raw, the metadata instructions BUILD new pixels.

There are advantages of metadata (parametric) editing versus pixel editing on rendered images. All edits are applied in a preferred order, in high bit (linear data). But this isn't non destructive in terms of the new pixels. The original isn't touched true, but the results (new pixels) are.