Lift the shadows, retain highlight detail, adjust your exposure and boost colours in this important editing stage
In the next set of adjustments, you’ll really start to see the full potential of shooting Raw files. It’s easy to change the exposure by a few stops if it’s too bright or dark, and pull back some highlight detail to stop bright areas like clouds from clipping to pure white, while simultaneously lifting the shadows to reveal detail in darker areas.
This process simply wouldn’t be possible with JPEG files, which are compressed and would have lost this information captured at the point of shooting. As JPEG files are processed in-camera, they have contrast and colour adjustments baked in.
Raw files are untouched and leave you to apply contrast and colour adjustments at the editing stage – this is why Raw files often look flat when compared to a JPEG straight out of the camera. Now, we’re going to start ramping up the contrast and colours with the Highlights, Shadows, W hites and Blacks sliders, as well as Saturation and Vibrance. Here’s how to do it…
NEWEDITINGTIPS
PRO TIP
Merge Raws together
If you’ve shot a series of images for an HDR or panorama, you can merge them into one Raw file in ACR. Open up your shots, then select all of the thumbnails in your filmstrip and right-click on them. After this, choose either Merge to HDR or Merge to Panorama to create a mega Raw file in the universal DNG Raw format.
TAKE CONTROL OF EXPOSURE
01 USE EXPOSURE TO SET THE BRIGHTNESS
In ACR, head to the Edit (E) inter face and open the Basic panel, where you can utilise the extra Raw data. First, adjust the overall brightness of the image with the Exposure slider. While you can drag this sli
