Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom went out for a mani/pedi
Adobe Camera Raw updates usually entail camera raw profiles and minor tweaks. This week, however, ACR and it’s sister Lightroom went out for a manicure and pedicure and had one too many mimosas. They came back all pretty with a whole bunch of great new ideas. Here is the skinny:
- Dehaze has been moved to the basic settings
- Presets are Active and show on the image when you hover over them
- Presets can now be put in folders and organized (thank goodness)
- Profiles have been moved out of calibration and work as phenomenal starting points for images
While all of the changes above are steps in a positive direction, Profiles stand out as pure innovation in the industry. Many people may not see it right away, but they have the potential to disrupt the industry and what we have thought of profiles in the past. Profiles before the new update were a mystery and rarely were they used by the masses. Now, however, they have been re-engineered to find a way into your image as a starting point for your edits, and they are good…. really good!
There is a bunch of nerdy stuff that I could get into about how they work, but I will leave that to the white paper from Adobe. Essentially these Profiles add a metaphorical transparency film on top of your Raw image and map out the tones and colors to a predetermined look or profile. They serve as a starting point for editing and can be practical or wildly creative.
They are not presets. Do not get them confused. Presets change your sliders to what was determined when they were made. Profiles, on the other hand, are hardcoded and do not adjust the sliders. So if someone made a Profile with a shadow of +50 and you use it, your shadows do increase by +50, but it does not register on the slider. If you raised that slider to +25, you would have the equivalent of +75 in your shadows, but the slider would only read +25.
As sensors get better and better with more dynamic range in the raw files, these profiles are going to be worth their weight in gold!
After watching today’s tutorial, I think you will see a definite place for profiles in your workflow. I am pretty sure you will see more and more educators releasing profile packs instead of preset packs.
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Who needs coffee or a Rockstar to kick start their Friday mornings when we have Blake. Your enthusiasm is contagious, my friend. And now my yard isn’t going to get any attention as I’ll be playing around with profiles all day. I’ll just tell Betty “it’s Blakes fault” and she’ll nod knowingly.
Haha! I can hear you saying this as I read it. I love it 🙂
Blake, a good tutorial, as always. I too am excited about the changes by Adobe. As a Lightroom user also it pleased me that the Lightroom presets now show up in ACR also.
Holy mackerel Blake you woke me up with some awesome news. I was half asleep, browsing my emails and BAM there you are with awesome news!
Thank you -Blake Rocks
The best part of waking up is f.64 in your cup 🙂
I was editing photos i took on a photo shoot from last saturday of the Memphis Belle from the movie of the same name and midway thru i get this update. i guess i had tunnel vision because i noticed it but didn’t dig too deeply until i found the profiles weren’t in the calibration tab anymore. Well now i have to start from the beginning photo and try the new profiles which are nice. i hope they add more
They are a great starting point and I see some serious potential with them. They won’t make your photo epic with one click, but they do help to build a solid foundation.
I agree with Jerry. Your enthusiasm is contagious. Thank you Blake for keeping us up to date with the latest from our friends at adobe.
I really can’t hold it back. I tried to in this video, but I think it still came pouring out 🙂 oops 🙂
Wow! This ACR release is HUGE! Thanks for the preview and look forward to your tutorial.
It is pretty big! I love what they are doing and the direction they are going within ACR.
Profiles + Auto tone rock. Great combo to get an imaged started.
Cant wait to see what Blake does with the Profile SDK.
Me either! Man, this has me moving in 50 different directions now. I will have to contain myself before I can make anything worth sharing with the world.
Nice to see Adobe users can now modify things at the profile level, but Capture One Pro has had that for years; and, now with v11 we have a live preview! And, if one wishes to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, use Lumariver Profile Designer to create custom ICC profiles for C1.
Yep, all available now in ACR. It is incredible and I think because they are more prominent in Adobe software it will be that much better for everyone else. I don’t use anything outside of ACR and Ps. I like that workflow best so this suits me. Capture One, I can’t wrap my brain around it, we dont get along. They put things in places that dont work for me and I just can’t get excited about it. Everyone has their own cup of tea.
Great video, thank you, Blake. I’ve been playing with the new features for a few hours now; it was a shock when I couldn’t find the dehaze slider.
You confirmed my suspicions about how profiles work now. I incorporate profiles into the import process when using colour targets. I might also include the Lens Profiles and basic sharpening into a preset to be sure all the camera corrections are applied. Now I can build Tone and Colour into a profile before further refining the look and feel of the RAW image.
This is a big change for Adobe but I think it is in keeping with some of the application design seen in ON1, NIK, or Corel. Artists are enjoying the push button, visual approach to creating images in tablets and phones.
This week’s Creative Live Bootcamp is excellent! It’s great how you have brought the concept of workflow all together in this final week. It is a must-have course for sure.
Have a great day, Rick.
Thanks, Rick! The Bootcamp was such a great time and I am so glad you liked it as well.
Other software uses them as well, but I don’t think they use them as well and with such thought. When you dig into the white paper on it, Adobe has done some incredible things with it. I think this changes the future of Raw processing at such a small but important level.
It appears as if Adobe has learned a few things from their competitors Luminar and Aurora, in regards to their introduction in Camera Raw of their new Profiles platform, as a Preset Base of operations. This was inevitable as well as necessary on their part. Now if they will only bring their prices more in line with these Skylum Products then smiles can be had all around.
You cannot beat 9.99 per month for two of the best editing tools on the planet. I have said it a hundred times and will stand by that point. 9.99 for 4 programs actually, ACR, LR, Bridge and Ps, that’s 2.50 per month per application. I don’t think you can get any cheaper than that,
Very much looking forward to the new course on ACR. As they say “change is constant”
It is… and very much welcome!
Blake, your tutorials are just so much fun to watch. I was in a camera store today buying a new macro lens and was telling another person about your recent Photoshop Boot camp on Creative Live and how wonderful it is. I hope she will look it up. I am very happy that I purchased the boot camp. Keep up the enthusiasm as it is contagious!
Thanks so much, Kelly! I really just love what I do, I find it fun, invigorating, and very fulfilling when I receive comments like this. Wow 🙂 Thanks, and thank you for sharing!
Great news. I too am really looking forward to your new course on ACR.
🙂 I just recorded all 11 videos! It will be up on f.64 Elite on the 18th
I am absolutely amazed. Just signed up with f64 academy, and the very first message I get is about the updated versions of ACR and Lightroom. Only after I received Blake’s message did Adobe think to tell me they had updated the programs. Way to keep on top of things! I’m looking forward to a long and fruitful adventure with Blake and f64.
🙂 glad I could help! The one downfall of the CC applications is they don’t let you know there is an update very well. I login to the app every day to ensure I didn’t miss anything. Once I see it, I’ll let you know!
Amazing adds to the three most-used programs… ACR, PS and LR Classic.
Agree with you on the additional level of adjustment. Played with it yesterday in LR after the update. Thanks for the quick response of this video on ACR.
You’re the best!
Thanks, Bryan! I am just glad I can help, even in some small way.
Great presentation Blake. I’d downloaded the update but haven’t looked at it. Some truly great stuff.
One question: Would these be available when using camera raw as a filter?
Thank you
Absolutely! They are in ACR as a filter and many of them can work on JPEGs as well so long as the person who made them set them up that way.
Here we go on another adventure! Just love it. Thank you Blake for keeping us up to date with all of the new features. Just when you think there could be no more improvements – Wham there they are.
Isn’t it so exciting!!!! I love it.
Count me in amongst the little non-plussed by this announcement. (For now)
I am impressed by the technical achievement from Adobe and get that folk are seeing this in workflow terms “a great base to start fron”etc. I suppose the difficulty I’m having in seeing how this is so great is philosophic.
Great I can do a saturation and sharpening setting before importing into Photoshop (but aren’t those the kinds of things you sort out later anyway, and would want to sort of later?)
Okay so I can re-use a profile from previous processed photos (well that’s cool, I guess, but I always thought you edited the photo in front of you not recycled a colour or tone setting from some other photo.)
Okay sure if you want to achieve a certain look or feel or you want some level of consistancy actiss several images but that sounds to me like a special case not basic workflow kinda stuff.
I imagine it’s probably faster too which is no doubt good.
As always Blake’s energy is infectiously appealing and the summary was excellent but I hope in the forthcoming tutorials there is a bit for us “slow-to-see-the-point-of-this”
Because, honestly, I’d like to understand why this so useful and better than what we do already and at the moment I really don’t.
I understand where you are coming from, but it really depends on the profile, how it was built and what you are using it for. As a sat boost, it won’t be impressive, but deliberate decisions made early help set the foundation. These profiles afford that possibility
I have a theory and some ideas going forward. I’ll share when they are ready.
Thanks for sharing. Kudos to Adobe for moving the ball forward. Profiles should be productivity enhancing. They’re already fun to play with.
HOW DOES ONE GET THIS? IS THIS AN UPDATE FROM THE CURRENT VERSION?
go into the Creative cloud app and update ACR and lr. It is not for cs6
Blake, Am I correct that your workflow would be to apply the profile first, THEN do tone and color? Or is the profile a creative adjustment (special effect) that follows tone and color?
I just stumbled upon this and WOW!!
Thanks so much Blake! This will definately change my work flow. I also just watched your lesson from CL and will be processing my BW’s your way!
Pls help! What happened to the toggle on/off check box in ACR 10.3 in the HSL Adjustments Panel to visualize how my image would look in BW? I’m frantic. My CC updated w/out me intending it too. I rely on that box for the color images I shoot that I think I want to process as monochrome. Is that feature someplace else in Raw now. I typically open my dng’s in raw, do initial processing there, then move to Ps CC for my main processing. Can you tell I’m in a panic over that BW box option missing in the HSL Adjustments?
Oh no! no worries, they just changed the location. Now above your profiles there is a Black and White button. It is MUCH better than the old HSL Greyscale button too. The Greyscale button you used in the past was not a very good way to visualize a BW image as it simply desaturated the photo rather than giving you a good look at what BW should be. You will probably be happier with the new BW button on the basic module above the profiles.