Chapter 3

How to Use Camera Raw Like a Boss

Part One

Many photographers are surprised to pick up a book on Photoshop and see so much emphasis on Camera Raw, but to be honest with you, this is where most of our basic editing work is done today. Later in the book, we do cover a little bit of Levels and Curves, but for the way today’s photographers process their images (whether they shoot in RAW format or not), using Levels and Curves is really kind of old-fashioned. Really “old school.” Now, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “Ain’t no school like the old school!” but that phrase is actually referring to something much different than Photoshop. Just in case, I went online to Urban Dictionary to see how they described the phrase “old school,” and here’s what they say, “Anything that is from an earlier era and looked upon with high regard or respect. Can be used to refer to music, clothing, language, or anything really.” It’s that last part, “anything really,” that kind of loops Photoshop up in that big net. Now, understand that I have great respect for Curves and Levels, and I’ve written entire chapters on both in previous books while listening to old school rap (“I wanna rock right now. I’m Rob Base and I came to get down. I’m not internationally known, but I’m known to rock a microphone!”), which is precisely why those chapters had so many inadvertent references to rocking immediately, getting lower, and only being locally recognized. Anyway, the important thing is this: Do you want to learn the way we “used to do things back in the day” (old school) or how we actually do things today (by the way, we no longer use stagecoaches or butter churns, but at one time they were “state of the art”)? So, stick with it for these two chapters, and it will “rock your world” (please don’t look that up on Urban Dictionary because I don’t mean it like their description, which made me wash out my eyes with soap and say 10 Hail Mary’s. Ack!).