4.8. Using Camera Raw for Creating Effects
Most of your adjustments in Camera Raw will be for changing brightness, contrast,
and other overall characteristics (such as noise, sharpness, and vignetting) using a
tool that is completely nondestructive. Most "effects" processing is terribly
destructive, which is why it is placed toward the end of the book and workflow
(Chapter 11, to be specific). However, there are a few effects that you can at least
begin in Camera Raw. After all, the more nondestructive processing you can do for
an image, the better.
4.8.1. Making Multiple Exposures in Camera Raw
Now that you know how to use and make adjustments in Camera Raw, we've come
to one of the more creative benefits of using the programto use the RAW files'
larger range of brightness as multiple exposures. There are basically two reasons
you might want to do this: to create an especially interesting interpretation of the
image by exporting the image as a particularly high-key or low-key interpretation
(see Figure 4-34 and the next two sections of this chapter, "Increasing Dynamic
Range by Making Multiple RAW Renditions" and "Increasing Dynamic Range
Using the HDR Command") or to create exposures that can be combined to show
detail in both the extreme highlights and shadows (see the two sections on HDR
techniques later in this chapter).
Figure 4-34. Three different "exposures" of the same image, all made
approximately two f-stops apart in Camera Raw and opened in Photoshop. Of
course, as long as you haven't obviously under- or overexposed the image recorded
by the camera, the difference in exposure can be varied by as much as five f-stops
in Camera Raw.
4.8.2. Increasing Dynamic Range by Making Multiple RAW Renditions
One of the great limitations of digital images is that present day printing methods
ultimately force us to reduce our image data to 8 bits because that's all the printer
can handle. So the ultimate dynamic range is somewhat less than that of film and
we often suffer clipped highlights and shadows. Of course, there are various ways
to get around that limitation. One of the best is to simply create different
interpretations of the RAW file and then use a simple process to merge them

4-36).
Figure 4-36. The Color Range dialog.
4. Choose Highlights from the Select menu. When the selection marquee
appears, click OK.
5. Choose Select Feather. Enter a feather radius large enough to give you
plenty of blending. I find that something around 150 pixels generally works
best for merging markedly different dynamic ranges, such as we have here,
but you will have to experiment on individual images to get the best result. If
you select a feather radius that is too large, you'll lose a lot of detail in the
midtones. If the feather radius is too small, you'll get very unrealistic halos
around darker-toned objects.
6. Press Cmd/Ctrl-I to invert the selection and then Cmd/Ctrl-C to copy the
contents of the selection to the clipboard.
7. Make the low-key image active by clicking inside it. Press Cmd/Ctrl-V to
paste the contents of your selection layer into the low-key image. You can
see the final result in Figure 4-37.
Figure 4-37. The Camera Raw Auto adjustment of the file (left) and the
"fake" HDR result after the merge of both Camera Raw exposures (right).
4.8.3. Increasing Dynamic Range Using the HDR Command
Although you can create HDR files from other formats, they work best when
created from RAW files, thanks to the extended range of data already in those files.
The exercise described here works best when you use a series of three to five RAW
files taken two full f-stops apart. The camera should be on a tripod, you should use
a remote shutter trigger (or cable release), and your subject must be still as a stone.
You must not change the aperture or focus, so it's best to shoot in Manual mode for
both exposure and focus and to shoot in RAW mode.
Once you've done all that, upload the pix to your computer. Although it's possible
to process HDRs directly from the Bridge Tools menu, don't. You'll get much
better results from the following sequence of steps:
NOTE

itself looks weak in the shadow tones. Leave the Bit Depth menu choice at
32 bits.
Figure 4-38. The Merge to HDR dialog.
NOTE
You can click the Browse button and browse for files to include in the
merge, but there's no way to visually identify RAW files because there are
no thumbnails.
7. A new file opens that is titled Untitled HDR. If you want to save up your
image for the day when you can actually make use of all that brightness
information in some future version of Photoshop, save the file as a Portable
Bit Map file.
8. You now have two choices for finally adjusting the file. If you want to adjust
it in 32 bits, your only choice is Image Adjust Exposure. You can see
the Exposure dialog in Figure 4-39. The Exposure dialog pops up. Drag the
sliders until you like what you see and click OK.
Figure 4-39. The Exposure dialog.
If you want to use the usual adjustment commands, you'll have to convert
the file to 16 bits. You can convert to 8 bits, but why throw out that much
data when you've gone through the trouble to collect it? At least keep it to 16
bits until you've finished doing all your work on the file. Then you can make
a copy, flatten the layers, and reduce the bit depth for publication without
destroying all the work you did on the original, which you may want to
change someday without having to do it all over again. Choose Image
Mode 16 bits. An HDR Conversion dialog appears, as shown in Figure 4-
40.
Figure 4-40. The HDR Conversion dialog.
9. You now have several methods you can choose from to interpret the final
version of the image. You'll probably find Exposure and Gamma the most
useful. The sliders are extremely sensitive, so start by getting the Exposure
adjusted to something close to what you want as an end result. Now adjust