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Deke's Techniques 040: Filtering Images with Camera Raw

Submitted by deke on 4 October 2011 - 6:15am.
Deke's Techniques 040: Filtering Images with Camera Raw

I use the commands under Photoshop's Filter menu as much as the next guy. But as a collection, I have five problems with them: 1) Let's face it, most are gimmicks; 2) many of them are old as the hills, so they lack previews; 3) most of the filters don't create the effects that they're named for (Fresco? come on!); 4) in what way are they even remotely related? 5) and they rarely receive any attention. There are the exceptions---for example, Smart Sharpen (CS2), Gaussian Blur (1.0), and High Pass (1.0), although generally ancient, are flat-out indispensable---but for the most part, the Filter menu is riddled with cobwebs of our communal disinterest.

So it got me thinking: Might there be a better place to filter images than Photoshop? My answer: Camera Raw. The great thing about Camera Raw is that it offers precise edge-detection capabilities---the one tenuous string that binds Photoshop's best filters---as well as equally precise color modification options. Plus, the values have huge ranges (compared with, say, the Filter Gallery) and the options make sense (compared with, say, the Filter Gallery).

The result is this free video, in which I show you how to create five independent Camera Raw filtering, from which I imagine you can extrapolate a few hundred more.

Here's the official description from lynda.com, with copious graphics: Read more » 

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CS5 Users: Download Bridge CS5 Update 4.0.1! Here's How to Use the Export Panel

Submitted by deke on 28 May 2010 - 12:15am.

It's a full moon as I write this. And the moon's phattest phase brings glad tidings: Adobe has finally shipped a fully functioning version of Bridge CS5. So when the Adobe Application Manager prompts you to download the latest updates to Dreamweaver, Premiere Pro, and the Bridge, skip the first two for all I care and then drop whatever you're doing and download the last.

Previous to today, one of the Bridge's best new features, the Export panel, has been non-functional. Not somewhat impaired or slightly rough-around-the-edges, but just sitting there like an irritating lump, entirely inoperable. If you tried hard enough, you could make the Export panel display the "Select Modules to enable" message (see below), only to claw your eyes in disbelief as you stared at the blank space where some downloadable modules ought to be. But, ha! It was all a fun joke meant to test your loyalty. Now the Export panel actually works, and I'm actually here to tell you how to actually use it.

Bridge CS5 4.0.1 Export panel

See, the spanking-new Export panel lets you batch-export images to Facebook, Flickr, and Photoshop.com. Which is swell and everything. But my favorite feature is called Save to Hard Drive. Despite its dopey name---presumably your images are already on a hard drive---it serves a much-needed purpose: Save to Hard Drive batch-converts your raw images to JPEGs so you can make them available to clients, friends, and other mere mortals. Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #34: Save for Web (and Devices)

Submitted by deke on 25 August 2009 - 12:15am.
Feature #34: Save for Web (and Devices)

If you take a look at the File menu you'll see a command, about midway down, called "Save for Web & Devices." It's actually two commands. There's the "& Devices" part, which lets you save an image for display on virtually every cell phone except the iPhone. No offense, but if I had to rank this feature, I doubt it'd make my Top 10,000.

But the first part of the command, "Save for Web," that part rocks. It lets you downsample and compress an image for dissemination on the Web. Not to mention jettison all extraneous information and convert the colors to sRGB, the color space of the people. Plus you can compare the Web-optimized image to the original and thereby judge what gets lost in the translation. In other words, Save for Web does everything it can to produce slim, trim, and ultimately beautiful Web graphics. Read more » 

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Old Photo, Meet New Lightroom

Submitted by colleen on 11 August 2008 - 8:30am.

We like to make screenshots pretty here at dekeOnline, so when I went to capture the interface of Lightroom 2 for my post a while back, I picked an old photo of Venice at sunrise I had handy. Just so happens, this particular image really benefited from one of the new features in this version of Lightroom, the Graduated Filter tool, which allows you to apply your chosen adjustments with a mask that emulates a classic graduated filter. In one stroke, I could lighten the foreground while keeping the sky romantically dark and mysterious.


I shot the original image with my trusty old 4MP Canon Digital Elph, as I emerged, bleary eyed from taking the midnight train from Rome, to this amazing scene of sunrise over the Grand Canal. I had seen both the Pyramids at Giza and the Sistine Chapel in the previous week, but this view brought tears to my eyes. Tears which are my excuse for some serious exposure issues. But Lightroom's graduated filter did an amazingly simple job of reviving the Venitian sunrise experience. And on a JPEG no less. Read more » 

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