Significant Downside to Camera Raw Processing?

[George Tyndall]

I just finished a course on Camera Raw Processing, and the very last comment that the trainer made was

Once you've saved your file as a PSD, you cannot go back and re-edit that file, but you do still have your original file to start over with.

Given that a) a file saved as a PSD with Photoshop (unflattened) does allow one to re-edit the saved PSD and b) one may have spent a significant time performing Camera Raw Processing of the file, isnt that a very significant downside to Camera Raw Processing, notwithstanding its extensive capabilties for editing an image?

[Bob]

Apparently that instructor has never heard of smart objects.

If you press shift while in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), the "open image" button will change to "open object", click it while it says "open object" and the file will open with the image as a smart object. Should you later decide you want to modify the ACR settings, you can open the PSD and double click on the smart object to open it in ACR again and change the settings.

You can also use the "Place" command to add a raw file as a smart object.

So, no, I don't consider that a significant downside. It's your choice whether you want to open as an image or as a smart object. If you anticipate going back to ACR to tweak some more, use a smart object.

Take a look at the "CS5: Smart Objects Basics" tutorial for an example (http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html). It also illustrates how you can have the same raw file with two different ACR settings in the same psd.

[Bob]

While I was looking for something else, I came across this tutorial about smart objects that I thought would be worth adding to this topic. Smart Objects were intoduced in Photoshop CS3 and this tutorial was intended to introduce the capabilities and give ideas for how to use them. It's about 50 minutes long, but I think it's worth watching if you've never worked with smart objects before or just need a refresher. http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-complete-picture-with-julieanne-kost/episode-3/

Enjoy !

edit: correction: smart objects were introduced in CS2, smart filters were introduced in CS3. The tutorial doesn't address smart filters, but is still worth watching.

[George Tyndall]

.... Enjoy!

Thanks, Bob, I will check that out, as I'm really impressed with what ACR can do.