Adobe Camera RAW for Beginners: Basic Adjustments in Action

In this video tutorial we will be reviewing all of Adobe Camera RAW’s basic adjustments and seeing how we can put them to work. We’ll also take a glimpse at the stop removal bush and the gradient filter tool.

It’s a great way to better understand the Adobe Camera RAW tools, and builds upon what we’ve learned so far in the series!

Watch the Video

Video Tutorial Summary

Here’s an overview of what you can expect to see in this video tutorial. We’ll be covering a range of different images, and investigating how they can improved with post-processing in Camera RAW.

Picture 1

This product shot suffers from over exposure and blown out highlights.

Picture 2

This photo’s white balance needs to be adjusted and the blown out highlights need to be recovered. I also adjusted the saturation just to mute the overall picture.

Picture 3

This landscape is affected by a common problem in landscape photography – the sky is overexposed while the land is underexposed (for a solution to this, take a look at Achieve Beautiful Landscape Photos with a Neutral Density Filter).

We need to recover the highlights and adjust the contrast and blacks. We can certainly do a lot more with this photo, but just using the basic adjustments, we’ve already improved it significantly.

Picture 4

For this landscape photo we use the gradient filter to make adjustments to the sky while leaving the land area alone. We’ve over adjusted the sky to give you an example of what can be done using the gradient filter along with a custom color.

Be Featured in a Future Tutorial!

If you would like your RAW photos included in an upcoming tutorial, please send them to travis (at) greenteadesign.ca. We are looking for photos in the RAW format that could benefit from some post production adjustments!