How to Edit a RAW file in PS w/o Saving Adjustments

[danaltick]

I've been reading Bruce Fraser's new book "Real World Camera RAW" (a great book by the way) and he mentioned a way of opening a RAW file into Photoshop CS2 after making adjustments to it in Camera RAW, and not have the adjustments saved back to the sidecar file.  I tested it and it worked.

Now, some of you may be asking, "What does this have to do with DAM?"

The answer is, because Peter's DAM uses DNG's with sharpened full-sized previews for creating proofs; when it comes time to create a Master TIFF file from one of those DNG's using Photoshop, you would be wise to back off the sharpening of the DNG in ACR before handing it off to Photoshop.  The problem is, how do you do that without saving that change back to the DNG; thereby, losing your sharpening for your previews.  Well here's how you do it:

    1) Open Camera RAW hosted by Photoshop; not Bridge
    2) Make your ACR adjustments (i.e. sharpening in this case)
    2) On the Mac hit Command-Option-O
    3) On the PC hit Ctlr-Alt-O
    4) Or hold down Option/Alt and click on the "Open Copy" buttion


Since you will be doing this primarly to make ACR sharpening adjustment to your DNG's prior to creating a Master in Photoshop, opening ACR hosted by Photoshop rather than Bridge should not be an issue.

Dan

[AlanDunne]

Dan,

something else you should consider is you are doing more than one raw conversion at a time ...

Go to the Russell Brown web site at

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

Check out the tutorial on Image Processor Secrets. If you view the tutorial, he describes a technique where you temporarily override any settings in ACR for this specific run of the IP. It is a bit difficult to describe in words so I recommend viewing the QT movie.

Where I use this is as follows. For archiving and proofing purposes, I am saving my DNG's with an ACR sharpening applied (currently 75). For the small subset of images that I take to TIFF masters, I run them through the IP and use the temporary override techique to apply a sharpening of 0. The DNG originals remain at sharpening 75 and the TIFF master starts with no sharpening, and I apply custom layer mask sharpening in the TIFF through a combination of manual techniques and PS actions.

I have not tried this with Rudy's IP, but I presume it would work the same as the standard Bridge/CS2 IP.

Cheers ... Al

[peterkrogh]

Thanks to both of you for posting this.  Most helpful.
Peter

[johnbeardy]

Alan

The key thing about Rudy's is that it runs actions after IP's resizing and other processes. Imagine you have a sharpening action - you want it applied then, at the end, not before resizing as happens with the standard one.

John

[AlanDunne]

John,

my understanding is that Rudy's IP has JS code that is virtually identical to the standard CS2 IP. As you say, some code has been re-positioned to run the action after re-sizing.

Since I had not actually tested Russell Brown's method with Rudy's IP, only with the standard IP, I could not make the claim that it would work (only that it should work). I was afraid of being caught making a claim that I could not validate ... caught by the IT types such as yourself (and Dan)!

Quick question for anyone more familiar with the implementation of both IP flavours ... if I am taking a DNG and making a master, and I intend to make the master at the identical size as the DNG, if I have a sharpening action that can be called from the IP, then the results from either IP should be identical (given that no change in sixe has occurred)?

Cheers ... Alan

[danaltick]

Alan,

Thanks for the link.  I will check it out.  However, currently I don't really have a need for batching out TIFF masters.  I tend to handle those one at a time.

Quick question for anyone more familiar with the implementation of both IP flavours ... if I am taking a DNG and making a master, and I intend to make the master at the identical size as the DNG, if I have a sharpening action that can be called from the IP, then the results from either IP should be identical (given that no change in sixe has occurred)?

As far as I know, yes.

Dan

[peterkrogh]

Alan,
Both IP versions should be the nearly identical for images not resized.

I actually made the change to the script myself (Beardy would be proud - I know I was).

Depending on what you are batching for, it might be faster and just as good to do this from iView.  If the end product is an sRGB file for proofing (web, email, proof prints, contact sheets), then the embedded preview is very good. 

If you are batching out AdobeRGB TIFF files, then you are better off batching using the IP, but it will be much slower.

Rudy's Image Processor is most needed for resizing.  But I would suggest that it should replace the stock IP, and be the only one you use.  Russell Brown was most chagrined when I let him know that the action was run at the beginning of the script.

Peter