Fix the Tone in JPEGs with Adobe Camera Raw
Posted 11/20/2007 at 11:21am
| by Jason Whong
4 - Detail Tab. For all work in the Detail tab, use a 100 percent view or larger. Start with the Noise Reduction tools, which can help eliminate the grainy appearance of photos taken at a high ISO setting by blurring some of the detail. Careful use of these tools makes the difference between enhancement and obliteration of detail. The Luminance slider smooths the details, and the Color slider reduces color splotches.
If you plan to do more work in Photoshop, skip ahead to step 5, because ideally, sharpening should be done last, and shouldn’t be done to an image that is already sharpened. (If your camera auto-sharpens, you may want to turn that feature off so you can sharpen in Camera Raw or Photoshop.)
The Sharpening controls in Camera Raw are a bit like the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. The Amount slider determines how sharply edges get defined. Oversharpened images tend to get noisy, so play with the slider until you find the right setting for the image. Keep the Radius setting lower for images with fine detail, but feel free to experiment with higher settings for other images. The Detail slider adjusts how much information gets sharpened. Lower settings can sharpen edges, while higher settings can make some textures pop out, which is great for some images, but not always the best for your human subject’s skin.
Masking determines how much of the image gets sharpened. Higher settings keep sharpening away from more of the image, and you can hold down the Option key while dragging the slider to see the areas where sharpening will be applied. Sharpened areas will appear in white, while masked out areas will appear in black.

Working in 100 percent view lets us determine how sharpening affects the cat’s whiskers. Luminance noise reduction made the eyes a bit more natural looking, and Color noise reduction got rid of some of the weird splotches.
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5 - When You're Done. The Done button at the bottom of the window saves all of your changes without creating a new image file. Your changes will be reflected in Bridge. The Save Image button creates a new image. If you don’t change the image’s name, Camera Raw will change it for you to prevent overwriting your original image. You can choose to save the image as a Digital Negative, a TIFF, a JPEG, or a Photoshop file. After you click the Save button, you’ll return to Bridge.
The Open Image button sends the image to Photoshop. You can also hold down the Shift key and watch the Open Image button become the Open Object button, which sends the adjusted image to Photoshop as a Smart Object.

This image of the cat was salvaged from the other file, after fixing exposure and the white point.