The Calibrate Tab

You have to choose Advanced at the top of the Camera Raw dialog box in order to access the Calibrate tab; this is the same place you found the Lens tab. The sliders under the Calibrate tab (Figure 9.43) allow you to change the way Photoshop interprets the color information that your camera delivers to Photoshop. You can use these settings to simulate different film types and to compensate for problems that come along with certain digital cameras.

You might find that certain models of digital cameras produce images that have an annoying colorcast in the darkest areas of your image (Figure 9.44). If you have one of those cameras, then just about every image you open will have a cast in the shadows of the image. The Shadow Tint slider will allow you to shift the color of the darkest areas of your image toward green or magenta (Figure 9.45).

Finally, if you find that you're simply not happy with the color that you get from your digital camera, you might want to experiment with the Red, Green, and Blue Hue and Saturation sliders. These sliders can also be used to simulate different traditional film types (Figures 9.46 and 9.47). For instance, Fuji Velvia film delivers higher-contrast images with saturated colors, whereas Kodak Porta is fine-tuned to produce good-looking skin tones.

The red, green, and blue sliders will not change areas that are neutral gray. The red sliders will mainly affect the appearance of reds in your image, and will affect yellow and magenta areas to a lesser extent. The green sliders will mainly affect the appearance of greens in your image, and will affect cyan and yellow areas to a lesser extent. The blue sliders will mainly affect the appearance of blues in your image, and will affect magenta and cyan areas to a lesser extent.

I'd suggest that you first choose Camera Default from the pop-up menu above the Calibrate tab before you start messing with the Calibrate settings. That way, you can make sure that the changes you see on your image are solely caused by the Calibrate settings. Just move the sliders around while you watch your image—you can easily replace experience with experimentation when adjusting these sliders. Once you get your image to look the way you'd like it to, choose Save Settings Subset from the fly-out menu that appears just above and to the right of the Calibrate tab. Choose Calibration from the pop-up menu (Figure 9.48) in the Save Settings Subset dialog box, and then click the Save button. Now, the next time you work on an image that you'd like to have the same color qualities as the one you just adjusted, just choose the name of the preset you saved from the Settings pop-up menu. Or, if you'd like to use those settings on all the images you open from that specific camera, choose Set New Camera Raw Default from the same menu.

Now that we know how to adjust an image, let's take a look at how we can save time by applying the settings in the Camera Raw dialog box to multiple images.