About local adjustments in Camera Raw

The controls in the image adjustment tabs of Camera Raw let you affect the color and tone of an entire photo. To make adjustments to a specific area of a photo, like dodging and burning in traditional photography, you can use the Adjustment Brush tool  and the Graduated Filter tool  in Camera Raw.

The Adjustment Brush tool lets you selectively apply Exposure, Brightness, Clarity, and other adjustments by “painting” them onto the photo.

The Graduated Filter tool lets you apply the same types of adjustments gradually across a region of a photo. You can make the region as wide or as narrow as you like.

You can apply both types of local adjustments to any photo, customizing and refining them to your liking. You can also synchronize local adjustment settings across multiple selected images, and you can create local adjustment presets so that you can quickly reapply an effect that you use frequently.

Getting local adjustments “right” in Camera Raw may take some experimentation. The recommended workflow is to select a tool and specify its options, and then apply the adjustment to the photo. Then you can go back and edit that adjustment, or apply a new one.

As with all other adjustments applied in Camera Raw, local adjustments are nondestructive. They are never permanently applied to the photo. Local adjustments are saved with an image in the same way that global adjustments are saved: in an XMP sidecar file or in the Camera Raw database, depending on what’s specified in Camera Raw preferences.

For a video tutorial on making local adjustments in Camera Raw, go to www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4008_ps.