russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

There is a lot of new stuff in Photoshop CC, but my two favorites are the Shake Reduction Filter and the Camera Raw Filter.

Ever since I set my Canon 550D to save pictures in only RAW files, sometime around January 2012, I have been using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) to process those RAW files. I think ACR is the best picture editor out there. Notice that I said "picture editor," i.e., for doing the standard editing to pictures: exposure compesation, working with highlights and shadows, adjusting colors and white balance, etc. Unfortunately, once you adjusted your picture in ACR and then opened it in Photoshop, if you decided that you needed to do a few more standard adjustments, you either had to start working with layers and masks in Photoshop, or you had to close Photoshop and reopen the RAW file in ACR. Inconvenient at best for the common and theoretically simple things.

On the first Saturday of each month, I write letters to companies, political representatives, etc., giving them a piece of mind, both good and bad. Adobe has received 17 letters, and one item on every letter was always the same: Please give us a way to open a RAW file from within Photoshop. Finally, we have it! Once your file is in Photoshop, simply click on Filter ► Camera Raw Filter!

It even works with JPG, PNG, and TIF. Simply open them in Photoshop and then click on Filter ► Camera Raw Filter. What a convenience that is! It's going to save me a lot of time.

The second item that I really like is the Camera Shake Filter. I saw an Adobe tutorial on it and went to check it out in my Photoshop CC. It's awesome. I find it particularly good on pictures that actually have no camera shake but instead are simply not sharp due to the lens. Click on Filter ► Sharpen ► Shake Reduction and go to work increasing the sharpness of your previously unsharp pictures. It's awesome, extremely easy, and very effective!

Shake Reduction, however, will cost me time because I'm sure I'll be trying it out on virtually every picture I use on the Internet. That's why it came in #2. Things that cost me time and money come in lower on my like list than things that save me time and money...........lol

ecobin Loc: Paoli, PA

I would find those useful also but have no intention to use the cloud rental version. I'm staying with CS6.

tusketwedge Loc: Nova Scotia Canada

As far as opening jpeg in raw it has been a feature since cs4 "from bridge" .Also remember that you are working on the actual picture that will lead to loss of pixels.Where when you use raw files there is none. I'm thinking of upgrading to CC.Not done with research and waiting for feedback from friends that are trying it out.

nikonlad Loc: Venice, FL

I agree that the new filters are great. I signed up for
the $9.99 special for one year. I hope Adobe extends the$9.99
past one year. I'll be spoiled by then, but $240 per year for an upgrade to CS6, for me, is unreasonable.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

Yes, you can open any file in ACR from Bridge by simply holding the control key down while clicking on the file. Unfortunately, I'm not a big fan of Bridge although I have been using it about 95% of the time for the last year. I still prefer Windows Explorer. Bridge is so slow I can go outside and play with the dogs for 20 minutes while Bridge figures out what it wants to do. That totally destroys the thought process and work flow.

Actually, with Photoshop CC and the new Camera Raw filter, it opens the RAW file in ACR, not the JPG that is still sitting there in Photoshop. That's what is so convenient. Now we don't have to close the JPG, reopen the RAW in ACR, and then re-import into Photoshop. Everything is seamlessly automatic.

tusketwedge Loc: Nova Scotia Canada

I'm not getting what your procedure is. Myself if I work on a pic in acr bridge and open it in PS it still is a Raw file and I can work on it and still save it in raw,or save as tiff ,jpeg or whatever other file I want and still save the original in raw.Also I've never had a lag in downloading or processing in bridge.If you are having difficulties I would look into how your performance of the comp. is.I,m processing 24 meg pics and don,t have the problems you are experiencing.That's JMO. Also I must say I've never used windows so maybe it is faster.It all come down to whatever you comfortable with. Good luck and happy shooting.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

Actually, no. Once you leave ACR and open the file in Photoshop, it's a picture of the RAW file, probably a JPG picture but I'd have to ask Adobe about what kind of representation they are using for the RAW file. You can't directly see a RAW file at any time because it's, well, raw. Any RAW file has to be processed in some way in order to see what picture data is in that RAW file.

When you leave ACR and open the file in Photoshop and continue to work on it there, when you've finished you can save it as a jpg, tiff, png, whatever.

Previous to the new Camera Raw filter, you could not go back to ACR without first saving the file as jpg, tiff, png, whatever, closing the file in Photoshop, and then opening the jpg file in ACR. You don't have to do that now. Regardless of what you've done to the picture in Photoshop, without even saving it, just click on Camera Raw filter and you'll open your picture with all its Photoshop adjustments in ACR. Really, really convenient.

Also, Bridge can be extremely slow in reading the files. Maybe it has something to do with having several hundred thousand jpg, RAW, and videos in my picture directory, but I think if Windows Explorer can read the directories instantly, Bridge should be able to. It doesn't, though.

Additionally, if I delete just one file from one of my directories, Bridge can take many, many minutes to update the directory "recursively" (to use Bridge's term). If I start moving files from directory to directory, that recursive updating can really get to be bothersome. I've learned that if I want to move files around, I really just need to go to Windows Explorer to do it. The temptation after each update/upgrade is to see if things have gotten better. I don't know if it has in Photoshop CC yet because I've been so busy having fun with the Shake Reduction filter.