On Mar 29, 2011, at 11:19 PM, Moose wrote:
> <snip>
> I just tried the brush(es), with no instructions and less thought. I got
> weird results. ;-)
Dear A Stick-in-the-Mud Moose,
I know you are wiser than that. The brushes are more intuitive than they seem
(I know, a contradiction), but once you've fiddled with them some they're
indispensable. Okay, for me they are.
So, in ACR you click on the Adjustment Brush, in CS5 the fifth from the right.
The brush without little dots around it. Immediately, a new "fiddle with it"
panel opens on the right side of the window. Radio buttons at the top for New,
Add, and Erase. Then adjustments in descending order: Exposure, Brightness,
Contrast, Saturation, Clarity, Sharpness. Then a Color Picker. Then come
various brush size, flow, density, etc. At the bottom the really spiffy
feature, Auto Mask and Show Mask.
Let's say you've got an image of Sand Beach in Acadia National Park. It shows a
distinct color delineated from the water beyond, and the sky beyond that. You
think the sand needs some adjustment. You click the brush. By default, the New
radio button is selected. You adjust your brush side with the bracket keys,
make your first guesstimate at the adjustment you want, and then paint over the
beach area. A pin appears. (If all the sliders are zero, you'll get a message
box telling you to set an adjustment.) If you want to make sure you painted
exactly what you want to adjust, click on Show Mask down at the bottom. Presto!
The area you painted turns red. You colored outside the lines? Shame on you! Go
up and click on erase, and fix the mess. Then you adjust your adjustments.
Exposure might give you what you want. If that doesn't work, Brightness might
do it. If the shot has texture and you want to enhance it locally, you might
mess with the clarity slider a little. And so on. You
get it like you want it.
But there's a rock you want to work on, too. So you click the New radio button,
paint the rock, and repeat above to your taste. The first pin marking the beach
will turn white. The second pin, the one that's active, will be green. It's not
exactly layers, but it does show you what you've adjusted. You click on a pin,
making the area active, and with the show mask you can see exactly what you
did. Just keep in mind the adjustments are sticky. When you click on a New
brush, you'll get the same settings you had for the last one. Easy enough to
handle if you just remember that you not only adjusted Brightness, but
Saturation as well.
Now, for extra kicks, when you transport to CS5, you can embed the RAW file as
a Smart Object in your Background Layer. Yes, it increases the size of the
file, but it means that when working in CS5, if you notice something you wish
you'd done to the RAW file, you can click on that little box on the corner of
the Background layer and voila! ACR opens with the RAW file, you make
adjustments as necessary, and presto!t hey take effect in the CS5 file.
Can't get much niftier than that.
True, it's a new, ah, paradigm for working, one that's still evolving, but I
suspect it's the future of post-processing, because little birds keep
whispering in my ear that Adobe has marked Lightroom for its ultimate photo
tool, with Photoshop drifting toward a more graphic artist work space. And if I
recall, Lightroom doesn't have CS type editing capabilities, it has ACR all
gussied up.
> They kept adding functions to ACR that I thought properly belonged in PS, but
> I was able to ignore them for a long time.
> Then they introduced lens corrections with profiles in both, but all the
> profiles seem to be for ACR. But, phew, it
> wasn't as quite good as PTLens, so again I could ignore it.
See above. It's the future. I like the new lens correction function so much
I've quit using PT Lens. If I get something really out of whack, I'll go back,
but I don't see it for run of the mill landscape images.
> Now with the Samsung JPEGs, ACR is indispensable for highlight recovery on a
> camera with limited DR. I've found it
> invaluable to have the image at 2-3 separate steps, with some hints as to
> what was done. I want to keep the untouched
> original, the ACRed version and the fully processed PSD.
Recovery coupled with Fill Light is worth the price of ACR alone. It does much
of what Shadow/Highlight will do in Photoshop proper, but for most purposes, it
does it better than with less ill effect. S/H still has it's uses, particularly
if you're over adjusting, filling a mask with black, and then painting in the
heavier adjustments you want. But for most of us. ACR's Recovery and Fill Light
works genuine wonders. It's one of the reasons I don't begrudge Adobe its
money. The product is superb. Bulky, in some cases morbidly obese, but superb.
<g>
> And now you are suggesting I should consider ACR for further post processing?
> UGH! :-) Until it has nameable layers
> for masking, so I can step back a ways, try an alternate approach and compare
> it with what I've done before when things
> get squirrely, I think I'll stay with PS for that work.
See above. Those pins aren't layers in the true sense of the word, but they
essentially function the same way in that you have an unlimited ability to
fiddle, settle, and then decide to fiddle some more. <g> True, as far as I
know, you can't do it with actions, but then aren't those actions just a little
bit addictive? <wink>
Of course the wonderful thing about all this stuff is that you can do as you
please when you please, and any information or advice you get on this list is
worth exactly what you paid for it. <g>
--An Evolving Bob
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|