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Camera RAW Color Spaces

 

“Why do my RAW images look so much worse in Photoshop than they do in the Camera RAW preview window?” Has that been happening to you? If so, let me whisper softly those two words that strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest: “color management.” If your images look less saturated, less vibrant after they’re brought into Photoshop from Camera RAW, your color spaces probably don’t match. Don’t worry, it’s an easy fix.

In the lower-left corner of Photoshop CS’s Camera RAW dialog box is a little pop-up menu named Space. In that pop-up menu you have several color space options. The default (and a fine choice) is Adobe RGB.

If your Photoshop Color Settings dialog box has a different color profile selected as the RGB Working Space, you’re getting a color shift between the Camera RAW plug-in and Photoshop itself.


Regardless of what color profile you use in Color Settings, you can restore your image’s vibrancy with the Image> Mode> Assign Profile command. Compare the following three images:

As you can see, assigning the same color space that was used in Camera RAW produces the image that matches the adjustments done to the original RAW file.

2 Comments

  1. Abu Abdullah said on — April 23, 2010 @ 1:05 pm

    Hello,
    Thanks for sharing.
    In photoshop, I am using a profile created with X-Rite tool. In camera RAW, I can NOT find the same profile created. What shall I do ?

    Thanks

  2. Lájk said on — June 14, 2011 @ 6:17 pm

    It helped me a lot, thanks!
    Lájk

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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