You can find the Camera Raw Filter under the filter menu. To find the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter, simply choose Filter->Camera Raw Filter and the dialog box will pop up. Before you do this, you may want to stamp all layers by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Alt+e (Cmd+Shift+Alt+e).
1. Fine-tuning adjustments after raw
Once in Photoshop, and after a bit of healing work, I decided that I wanted to make the image a touch cooler and reduce the vibrancy as well. To not lose the healing work, I used the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter to make a quick adjustment.
If you’re like me, you mostly make decisions about adjustments on the spot. This is fine when you process your raw file and move it into Photoshop immediately. However, if you leave it for a day or two before you come to it, you might find that you no longer like the decisions you made.
Of course, you could always go back into Lightroom and start again, but what happens if you have already started making adjustments to your image?
Chances are, you don’t want to lose those. A quick and easy solution is to stamp the layers to a new layer and run the Camera Raw Filter. Once there, you can make any adjustments you might want and click Okay.
This works great if you want to make quick adjustments to things like the overall exposure, contrast or vibrancy in an image. I will often come back to a file after a few days to find that I want to reduce the highlights and whites before I get started properly.
2. Make trickier adjustments
I find the Clarity tool in ACR tricky to replicate in Photoshop. Here, I darkened the background and cranked up the clarity with the Camera Raw Filter. I also used a Layer Mask to keep the changes off of the subject.
Photoshop might be all-powerful on its own, but ACR (and Lightroom by extension) do make a few things easier. Using the Photoshop camera raw filter to make these adjustments is easier and can save you a lot of time.
Another example is the use of the Highlights, Whites, Darks, and Blacks sliders to make quick, intuitive global contrast adjustments. Using these tools in this way is useful if you’re not yet fully familiar or comfortable with options.
3. Local adjustments
Here, the shirt sleeve was still to bright for my taste, so I used the radial filter as a local adjustment to bring it down a bit
A common way I use the Photoshop camera raw filter is to make adjustments specific to a target area (such as a background).
After the adjustments are made, you can then use masking to ensure that the adjustments are only affecting the areas that you want.
This method suits textured backdrops well because you can adjust the clarity and contrast to your heart’s content knowing that your subject won’t be affected once you make the layer mask.
4. Vignettes
ACR’s vignette tool is easy, fast and intuitive and hard to beat in Photoshop unless you need absolute control.
There are tonnes of ways to create vignette in Photoshop, but in my opinion, the vignette tool within the ACR is by far the easiest, fastest and most intuitive to use. By doing it this way, you can create a subtle (or extreme if you prefer) vignette in just a few seconds. It is also easy to mask out (as per the previous section) any part of the vignette that might be interfering with your subject.
5. Final tweaks
With a finished image, you can always load up the Camera Raw Filter and see if there’s any small tweaks (like the ones here) to help the image.
Another useful trick for the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter is to use it to make a set of final tweaks to your finished images.
Once you’ve completed your image, you can run the filter and see if there’s any further small adjustments you’d like to make. Tiny adjustments to exposure, contrast (via all the sliders) clarity and vibrance can all help to give your finished images just a little more polish.
At this point, your images should be good to go, so do try to keep any adjustments at this stage small and subtle.
