A Computer Darkroom Tutorial

Hidden in the File Browser Automate menu you will find the alternative home for some of Photoshop's most useful automation commands. This tutorial demonstrates one of the most useful automation commands - Apply Camera Raw Settings.

By placing the automation commands within  File Browser they become more accessible and faster when working with multiple images. This is especially useful with the Apply Camera Raw Settings command which allows you to quickly apply any single or combination of  Camera Raw adjustments to a selection of images within the File Browser itself. Before working my way through a real world example of this command it's worth spending a few moments reviewing the Apply Camera Raw Settings dialog.

Apply Camera Raw Settings

The most obvious difference between Camera Raw and the Apply Camera Raw Settings dialog is the absence of the preview window. You should also note from Figure 1 below that where you would expect to see the preview window you now get a list of checkbox options and a popup called Update All Settings (only visible if Advanced mode is activated). These settings can be applied individually, as subsets or all at once. The right hand side of the dialog contains a replica of the Camera Raw Adjust/Detail/Lens/Calibrate tabs.

 

Figure 1 - Apply Camera Raw Settings (Advanced Mode)

 

A Real World Example - Correcting the Camera Default White Balance

There will be occasions when the thumbnail and preview images within File Browser appear significantly different from those viewed within camera makers own software. There are a number of possibilities for this including your choosing Auto White Balance when shooting under lighting conditions that are beyond the range of this setting (e.g. Tungsten lighting) or the fact that Adobe haven't been able to determine the actual white balance data tag in the raw images for your camera model. The example shown in Figure 2 below is a series of shots taken with a Canon PowerShot Pro1 and as can be seen the As Shot white balance for each of the images has a red bias. This particular problem results from my second example above. Actually in this example the red colour bias is quite significant but thankfully this isn't always the case. So what can we do about it?

In the first instance you should scream at the camera vendors NOT Adobe. Whilst this won't resolve your problem any time soon it will at least let them know how angry you are at their lack of support. Next you can make a small adjustment to your images to compensate for the unwanted colour bias. The steps are quite easy to follow and require only minimal work in Camera Raw.

 

Figure 2 - Poor White Balance rendering of File Browser thumbnails

 

• Open one of the affected images in Camera Raw
• Adjust the White Balance to taste using the Temperature/Tint sliders or alternatively the Eyedropper tool so that the image appears neutral.

Contd. on page 2

 © 2004 Ian Lyons. All Rights Reserved