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:

  1. Dehaze has been moved to the basic settings
  2. Presets are Active and show on the image when you hover over them
  3. Presets can now be put in folders and organized (thank goodness)
  4. 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.

 

Blake Rudis
f.64 Academy and f.64 Elite are the brainchildren of Blake Rudis. While he is a landscape photographer, he is most passionate about post-processing images in Photoshop and mentoring others.

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!
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