With this new plugin by Adobe, users of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements now have access to the original digital data from their camera. This one plugin is likely to sell more new digital cameras to those who already own digital cameras than any marketing dream could possibly hope.

Imagine the limitations if you were trying to get high quality copies of your wedding photos and the only images you had to work with were those that came from the one hour photo in the shopping mall down the street. That's not intended to be a slap at any given one-hour camera store; I'm sure they do wonderful work. But realistically, copies from these images can not compare to any print made from the original negatives. If you consider that all the JPEG images you get from your digital camera have been "worked over" by the software in the camera, the analogy of the one-hour photo store starts to make more sense.

What do I mean worked over? If you save your image as a JPEG, your camera adjusts for white balance, does some sharpening, does JPEG compression, perhaps a few other adjustments, and then the image is saved on the memory card. Most of these adjustments you have limited, or no control over.

While the TIFF image format is not lossy (like the JPEG format), it still has had the same processing of white balance, sharpening, and whatever other corrections have been made "in the camera." [Piece of trivia: Did you know that one of the manufacturer's deciding factors in how large a memory card to place in the camera is the minimum size necessary to save one TIFF file at the largest resolution?]

RAW files are, by definition, just the raw data, and are considerably smaller than TIFF files (but much larger than JPEGs). Probably the biggest bugger with them is not only is the format unique to each camera company, but sometimes to different models of cameras from the same manufacturer.

Leave it to someone like Thomas Knoll to figure this out. After all, he's the guy who originally authored Photoshop. Sadly, at this point, not all Cameras' RAW data can be read by Adobe's Camera Raw, but if you find your camera listed below, ready on. Otherwise, read on with envy.

Because of the proprietary nature of the RAW formats, some manufacturers supply software for free to read the format, others provide software at some cost. However, as most people who are wanting to use the RAW format are likely to want to do some work in Photoshop, the extra software only added cumbersome steps to the correction process.

Now, with the new Photoshop plugin, users can do everything within Photoshop.

One can open a RAW photo via either the File -> Open (Command-o) or the File Browser where the image shows up alongside other images. Regrettably, you can only open one RAW image at a time. An image that is rotated in the File Browser will remain rotated in the RAW work area. Alternatively you can rotate images by clicking on the rotation buttons seen below the lower right corner of the image region.

Probably the most powerful option with Camera RAW is its white balance control. In your camera, you probably have a WB setting for neon, tungsten, sun, cloudy, and auto. What this does is "flavor" the image with a color cast to compensate for the colors (or lack thereof) contained in your light source. As you know, light is composed of the full spectrum of colors and the light from a neon light provides a different range of colors than a tungsten light or sunlight. That's why you might put on some clothes in the bedroom, go outside and wonder why you thought you were wearing a good color combination. The white balance algorithms in Camera RAW are not only better than those in your camera, but you can fine-tune them to your hearts content.

As seen in the upper right corner, once a RAW picture is open, there is a collection of preset options to select from. Starting from the default "As Shot," one can also select "Auto," "Daylight," "Cloudy," "Shade," "Tungsten," "Fluorescent," "Flash," and "Custom." Once you select an appropriate option, you can fine-tune the image to your satisfaction. By sliding the Temperature slider, one can make the image more blue (colder) (to the left) or more red (hotter) (to the right). [The correction was exaggerated here for display purposes.]

Aside from sliding the temperature or selecting one of the pre-set color balance options, one can also set the temperature by manually typing in any desired temperature (if known), or by using the eyedropper (upper left corner) and clicking on a neutral part of the image.

Also note the histogram in the image above. This can be turned on or off by checking a check box and can be easily moved around the image region by mouse-dragging. The histogram provides a live update of the separate RGB channels. Thus, one can easily see balance points in the image and can use the main image and the histogram for double-confirmation of any setting.

If any further color correction is desired, one can adjust the Tint slider to provide more green (left) or magenta (right) to the image.

Once you have your colors set, you have four sliders for correcting how light or dark your image needs to be. These are "Exposure" (settings are in f-stops), Shadows, Brightness, and Contrast. To complete the Hue/Saturation/Lightness set of options, the Saturation slider is provided.

Lastly you have (1) the Sharpness slider which is probably irrelevant if you plan to do any sharpening later in Photoshop as you are better off to do this with "Unsharp Mask..." and (2) the Smoothness slider to remove digital camera noise and provide the type of control that you can't get when this is done "in the camera." That is, you can apply just as much as necessary and no more.

The Moiré Filter does an excellent job of removing the Moiré patterns seen when taking (for example) close-ups of fabrics on an angle.

And lastly-lastly, one can save the image into Photoshop as either an 8-bit or 16-bit image; save it in one of four color spaces (Adobe RGB, ColorMatchRGB, PorPhoto RGB, and sRGB); and the resolution (from the default 240 to whatever you want). You can also change the size of the image, but I don't fully understand the dynamics of this feature. I had one image that was originally 2272 x 1704. I was given two options: sample down to 1365 x 1024 or sample up to 3072 x 2304. On another image that was 2560 x 1920, I had two sample down options (2048 x 1536 and 1365 x 1024) and one sample up option (3072 x 2304). The algorithm Camera RAW uses to sample up seems good, but admittedly, I saw essentially no differences between a photo sampled up within Camera RAW (on the left) and on the right I sampled up (to the same resolution) within Photoshop (on the right). The image is magnified 400%.

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