Intro to Camera Raw & Photoshop

There are 3 main Adobe interfaces I work in. I start in Bridge to organize and star favorites, then I process my favorite RAW files in Camera Raw, then I retouch them in Photoshop. Each interface looks a bit different and we'll go over the basics of each together. (Camera Raw is part of the Photoshop application- Raw files automatically open up into it. Bridge is a separate application for organizing.)

WORKFLOW

Intro to Bridge:
When starting with a large group of images I've just shot, I begin by previewing them all in Bridge, Filmstrip view. I delete ones I don't want to keep, rename all the files, apply my copyright metadata, star my favorites, sort them, then open up into Camera Raw.

To open and process lots of images at once, highlight them, then hit Return/Enter and they should open up automatically into Adobe Camera Raw. Looks like this (see all the images stacked up on the left):

Some basic info about the sliders in Camera Raw:

When opening up a RAW file into Photoshop, it will initially open into the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) window. It looks like this:

Be sure to click the blue text at the bottom to set your resolution to 300. Leave everything on "DEFAULT" so you can control the quality of all aspects of the image. When you move each slider, the adjustments are saved into a "Sidecar" .xmp file that is stored in the same folder as your RAW file. If you toss this .xmp file, your image will go back to how it was when you had just downloaded it off your camera.

The main adjustments you want to make for most images are Temperature, Exposure, Highlights and Shadows. In the image below, I made it a bit warmer by moving the temperature slider to the right, and I brought out detail in the shadows by moving the shadows slider to the right. Notice it's a bit grainy because it was dark and I was at ISO 800.

After processing a large group of images, you usually hit "DONE" or "SAVE IMAGES". I generally save as JPGs, which creates a new folder.  I then photoshop/retouch the hi-res JPGs.

For a single image, when you hit "OPEN IMAGE" in the lower right hand corner, it opens up into "Regular" Photoshop, and looks like this, with a layers palatte:

Description of Tools: