Practical_Photoshop__Issue_77__August_2017

PROCESSING RAW FILES
So you’ve decided to shoot in raw. Now you’ll need software like
Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in or Lightroom to process the file...
Editing raws requires
a slight shift in mindset
if you’re used to a linear
digital workflow like: Open
file, Edit file, Save file. This
isn’t possible with raw, as you
can’t save over a raw file. The
benefit of this impenetrable
shell is that there’s no danger
of you ever copying over your
original image.
Rather than Open-Edit-Save,
the workflow is more like
Open-Process-Save As. The
first step is to open the file in
a raw editor like Lightroom
or Photoshop’s Camera Raw.
These employ parametric
editing, which means you’re
not actually making changes
to the original pixels: instead,
you’re adjusting a set of
parameters that affect how
the image looks while it’s
within the software.
At some stage you may
want to save the image as a
different format like a JPEG or
TIFF. This is like the imaging
equivalent of burning a CD,
in that you’re committing the
version of the raw you like
best into a new format.