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Developer: Adobe
Requirements: Mac OS X v10.6.8 or greater, Intel processor, 1GB RAM
Retail Price: Both come free with any of the Suites that include Photoshop as well as the Creative Cloud.
With Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), it's a whole new ball game. It offers new algorithms to both interpret raw images and to process them, including the ability to work with 32-bit HDR images. ACR continues to amaze photographers who've learned that raw images will lead to significantly better results than letting the camera interpret what's been gathered. Bridge, however, has stalled. This incredibly useful application has barely had any adaptations or improvements beyond upgrading to 64 Bit. Regardless of what hasn't happened to Bridge for CS6, Adobe Camera Raw is reason enough to update your Photoshop.
About Adobe Camera Raw and raw images
The vast vast majority of those taking digital images rely upon their camera to convert the taken image into the JPEG format. The vast vast majority of point and shoot cameras don't really give any other option for the JPEG format but a few do. However, any professional or pro-sumer camera does provide the option to save the image in a raw state and/or as a JPEG image. What's the advantage of either?
The primary advantage of JPEG is that it is universally accepted. You can send ANYONE a JPEG image and they can open the image and look at it. The problem with the JPEG image is that (1) the first and only interpretation of that image was done by the camera without any human judgment whatsoever. Because so many factors are used to balance the tones, hues, and contrasts in an image, if there are any overriding issues, subtle distinctions within the image will be lost. And (2), the JPEG format is a lossy compression format. That is, built-in compression is done every time you save a JPEG image, and since the image compression is a lossy type of compression (that is it looses data every time you save), the quality of your image goes down every time you save that image.
The primary disadvantage of a raw image is just the opposite of the JPEG: only those who have software that can interpret the raw image format can view the image (which means that you have to process them before they can be shared). The advantages of the raw format are also exactly the opposite of the JPEG format: regardless of how the image looks when first opened in any raw software, any alterations made to enhance the image are your choices. Any of these choices are never permanent because all you are changing is how the image is being interpreted. This means that you can alter, change, and enhance the image and never cause any deterioration of the image because you are never changing the pixels.
For example, let's say you had your camera set to fluorescent lighting for the white balance and then walk outside and take more images. If you had saved your images as JPEGs, you would end up with vivid purple images and that's just about all you'd have to show for those images. But with raw images, all you need to do is to tell the software that it should consider those images as taken in sunlight and you are done. Again, you are only looking at an interpretation of those images, not the actual image (or pixels). This gives you a tremendous amount of both freedom and latitude in how you work with your digital images.
In addition, keep in mind that a JPEG image is an 8-bit image while a raw image can be from 12- to 14-bit image. Thus there is considerably greater amount of information in a raw image than the JPEG from which to extract more image data. More on this later.
Now, back to ACR 7. When ACR was first introduced in 2003, its general structure and UI remained mostly the same until 2010 when it received a much needed update in its demosaicing algorithms (these are the calculations done to construct a full color image from multiple incomplete color samples provided by the sensor). However, while the algorithms to extract the image were significantly improved, the general ACR UI was left untouched.
New Controls and Better Highlight Recovery
Now in 2012, not only have the demosaic algorithms been improved once again, but the whole UI has received a welcome bump. As shown below with the 2010 on the left and the 2012 on the right, you can see that the various sliding controls have been shifted around, some removed, others brought in and the sliders locations have been, well, centralized and unified. Focusing on the top six controls (for example) if you slide the Recovery slider to the right, light things got darker but if you slide the Fill Light to the right, dark things got lighter.
Now, everything is unified so that all sliders are centered at "0" in the middle and if you slide the slider to the left, that selection would get darker and to the right, that selection would get lighter. As you might have guessed, what once was called "Recovery" is now called "Highlights" and what was once called "Fill Light" is now called "Shadows." Lastly, "Brightness" is now called "Whites." Each of these do the same things as before, only better.
Besides coordinating the overall UI, the workflow is now expected to be top-to-bottom. That is, as you look at the image, first adjust the Exposure, then the Contrast, then the highlights, etc., etc. It's been my experience that this works, but to a point. I find that what I do with the Highlights/Shadows can effect how I consider the best Exposure point. But these are picky detail points since your observation of your images will be different than mine. Regardless, to achieve best results, do work from the top to the bottom. One thing that will effect your enhancements is that each adjustment will effect subsequent adjustments. By this I mean that the range of (say) Highlights adjustments will be effected by the amount of Exposure adjustment.
One of the features that ACR always had was it's ability to see into shadows and pull information that appeared to have been lost with underexposed sections. For those working without ACR, the Shadow/Highlight adjustments tool has long been a saving lifeline for some images. The issue is that there is more information in the image than can be initially seen. However, the ability to find extra information in the overexposed sections has up to now been extremely limited. As an example to show the improvements to recovering over exposed regions, consider the image below where the left side of the image is simply overexposed.
To fully test the new abilities to recover overexposed regions in an image, I took the above image (originally taken as a raw image), saved it as a JPEG image with the least amount of compression, and I've cropped out a closeup of the palm tree in image "1" below. In image #2 below you see the result of using the aforementioned Shadow/Highlight tool from within Photoshop. In #3, you see the result of opening up the original image in ACR and pushing the "Recovery" slider in the 2010 process as much as reasonable to try to pull as much of the lost image out. Unfortunately I was caught in the bind that the more I tried to recover, the darker I was making the rest of the image. Lastly, in #4 you can see that using the 2012 features I was able to pull much more realistic colors out of the trunk and tree regions of the palm tree.
Keep in mind that Adobe has maintained the previous controls of the 2003 and the 2010 features so that if you ever have to open an old image that you need to process and collect with other previously made images, you can duplicate the look more easily than if you completely lost the previous controls. [Hint: if you wish to do some testing of the different approaches, go into the last tab in ACR and take "snapshots" prior to switching algorithms so you do not lose any adjustments you make in the previous approaches.]
Advanced Brush Tool
Perhaps the greatest jump in feature enhancement is the Brush Tool. Below, I again compare what you had with 2010 and what you now have with 2012.
Chromatic Aberration & Defringing
Another jump in improvement is both Chromatic Aberration and Defringing. Each is caused by a separation of light into component colors and not all bending to the same point on the sensor together. When light is bent we see the visible light being separated into the red, yellow, and blue channels. It's pretty when a prism does this, it's a nightmare when our lens does it. Sadly, ALL lenses do it to some degree (but less expensive lenses do it more than expensive lenses, you do get what you pay for). There are two types of chromatic aberration: longitudinal and transverse. The former causes defringing aberration (color shift around the whole object) while the later causes the "standard" chromatic aberration (color shifts on opposite sides of an object). [For a detailed explanation on chromatic aberration see the article here.]
Not all images will display chromatic aberration because the amount of light, the aperture, high contrast, and you often have to zoom into the subject to see it on the screen. Unfortunately printing is less forgiving than the screen so while you may not see it on the screen, you probably will not miss seeing it when printed.
Below is a comparison of the earlier version of ACR (decreased in size a tad to fit into this article) showing both the Chromatic Aberration repair sliders (which were part of the Manual Lens Correction) and the Defringe options. To the right shows the current iteration, now in it's own tab within the Lens Correction. It's rather ironic that the sliders of the Chromatic Aberration are now reduced to a single check box while the drop-down menu of the Defringing has been enhance to sliders.
Despite all that, they work wonderfully. Shown below is a good example of Red/Cyan chromatic aberration along the vertical parts of the tree trunk. The top image show the original problem. The middle image shows the result of simply clicking the check box for Removing the Chromatic Aberration. That deals with the horizontal problems of CA but mostly ignores the vertical problems of Defringing. The image on the bottom shows that since the problem is a purple overcast in the vertical orientation, by simply pulling back on the purple slider, the Defringe problem is gone. [With the Purple or Green Hue sliders you can focus in on what specific ranges of these colors need to be dealt with.]
HDR Toning
Without a doubt, the ability for ACR to work with 32-bit images is a significant game changer. Not only for ACR but for High Dynamic Range processing in general. For PS-CS5, the new HDR Pro was the first significant improvement to Photoshop's HDR capabilities. Truth be told, I was not a convert. To make an HDR image, one needs to take three or more images, two stops apart of the same image using only the aperture (as opposed to shutter speed). This will give you (at least) one image that is under exposed, one that is over exposed, and one that is "normal." Then from Bridge's Tools menu select Photoshop -> Merge to HDR Pro and sit back for a moment.
These three (or more) images will be combined into a single 32-bit image. If you let PS do it's thing, you will notice that it automatically slips to the Tone Mapping process where it tries to balance the global and local contrasts to mimic what we see with our eyes greater dynamic range capabilities. The trick here is before you do anything in this window, set the image to 32-bit (see below) and then save it as a TIFF image. (This step is sticky so you do not need to do this again for subsequent images processed this way until you want to go back to doing the tone mapping in Photoshop.)
Now, open the image in ACR and do what you want to to make it satisfactory to your eyes, just as one would to when doing any tone mapping. Below is one example:
At this point, using either Photomatix and/or Photoshop, I now have 6 different workflows for creating my HDR images. Since one approach will never work for all images, my handbag of tricks is getting better and better.
Bridge CS7
Bridge is now 64 bit. I can't say the speed of caching has improved but this was helped considerably in CS5. I did notice that they've added Encore as an Opening option (see below) and that's about it.
There's no question that Bridge will not have the same number of engineers working on it as say Photoshop (ACR is part of Photoshop), but apparently, moving Bridge to 64-bit was about all that Adobe could muster with the new time schedule that Adobe has placed on the product managers.
MiniBridge
MiniBridge has a bit of a new look and now has a new "View" menu.
And again, that's about it.
Not to disparage Bridge or MiniBridge, I do love and use them both, Bridge on a daily basis. People do ask me what's so great about either and why use MiniBridge at all? It's simple really, there is no better tool right now to collect and process dozens or hundreds or thousands of images. From making stacks of images for panoramas or HDR images to selecting the images and processing them to Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. For rating, images, labeling them, or running images into PDFs or for web output in a Gallery.
Often what people do not understand is how to use MiniBridge. It's simple really but people often think that it can be used as an alternative to Bridge. Rather, MiniBridge should be used to enhance Bridge AND the application that MB is contained in. From within Bridge, do all of your image processing, whatever you need to do to select, process and finalize your images for your projects. Lastly, give the images a label or a rating.
Then, from either Photoshop or InDesign, open MiniBridge and then select Recent Folders, find the folder that contains your images, filter for the label or rating, and you will only see the images that you've selected for your project. If you drag them into either PS or ID, you will be able to Place them directly into your project as one would use the Place command.
But as far as this release goes, both Bridge and MiniBridge essentially got no love. This is a pity because there's so much that either could do. Think of Bridge as a Project Manager containing all the files one needs for a project. Currently (if you own a Suite) Bridge manages your color profiles for all of your Adobe applications, what else could it coordinate? Why is MiniBridge only in PS and ID and not in Ai, DW, Premiere Pro, etc.?
In Short
In Short, Adobe Camera Raw is reason enough to get the new Photoshop. From the Chromatic Aberration improvements to the new UI to the new demosaicing algorithms, I am having more control on image enhancement than I ever have had before.
But Bridge and MiniBridge are in a bit of a rut in this release. I can only hope that Adobe gives these applications more love in CS-next, they certainly needs it.
Ironically both of these are considered "free" applications. That is, you cannon buy them but you do get ACR with any of the Photoshop based applications (except Lightroom which has its own built-in ACR) and you get Bridge with most of the Design Suite applications and you get Bridge with all but the Productions Suite.
So, for "free" applications I do seem to be grousing a lot, but considering that these are applications I do use every day I'm on the computer, what can you expect? And how do you "rate" something that is so unchanged? I ended up giving it a "3" in that it is no worse than it was, but no better. But now that the conversion to 64-bit is done, let's see what CS-next brings.
Applelinks Rating - ACR
Applelinks Rating - Bridge
___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.
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