Basic Raw Editing

                Shooting in RAW is always preferred by most of the photographers. RAW file is like digital negative, thus making post processing flexible and powerful and compared to editing JPEG. I use Nikon D7000 and Adobe Photoshop CS5. Other models and version can make concerned changes in the post and read. In this post I will try to explain some basic steps in RAW editing using Adobe Photoshop CS5. Before starting, here are few notes:

1. Check if you have installed proper camera raw plugin. Look in the associated equipment list for your camera model.

2. A particular version of Photoshop supports camera raw, and is mentioned in the details of the camera raw version u r downloading.

Tool pallet helps for cropping, rotating and zooming the image.  Tool pallet 2 is more useful. Histogram and EXIF information is displayed on the top. Just below it, there are plenty of tabs which are used for adjustments. First tab, Basic, is widely useful. White balance can be adjusted using some pre-sets and fine tuning can be done with temperature and tint slide bars. I use it mainly for correcting object colors due to light reflection from other objects. Exposure adjustments helps specially when the flash has not fired, I have explained it in detail here. Default values of recovery, fill light, blacks and brightness slide bars are acceptable in most situations. Contrast may be sometime improved. I don't seem it add much of the noise. Clarity adjustment may be individual taste. For macro (close-up photos) sometimes I decrease the value. Rarely I increase it. For sharpening I use "high pass filter technique". Increasing saturation increase vividness. I shoot the photos at standard picture settings. So sometimes hue and saturation are necessary. Other tabs, sometime later. Basic tab suffice most needs. :-)