Hola, dekeAmigos. Greetings from Cozumel! We’re here taking scads of underwater photos that will inevitably end up in future Deke’s Techniques. 

In this week’s dry-land, but free, Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke demonstrates how to vastly improve a camera phone photo inside good old Camera Raw. We all know the photos look great on your phone, but when you get them out into the real world, not so much. Deke shows you how to use trusty Camera Raw to solve five key areas where your photo might be falling short:

White Balance: Which is notoriously better in Camera Raw than Photoshop
Exposure: Which Deke discussed in-depth in Deke’s Techniques 294
Noise Reduction: Which Deke discussed in-depth in Deke’s Techniques 231
Spot Cleaning: For instance, fixing schivels other people leave on their tablets
Sharpening: As one does.

And in recent versions of Photoshop, you can apply these Camera Raw filters as a smart filter, so you don’t even need to remember to open your image in ACR to begin with. Smart!

Now, you may not have a photo from Adobe’s Daniel Presedo that features an awesome 3D bull model, but the basic approach Deke uses can be applied to any photo…say, your welcome drink at your hotel in Cozumel. So when someone hands you a blue drink at the check-in desk, you can shoot it with your phone, apply Camera Raw, and see the vast improvement. Here’s what I mean, as viewed from the Before/After view in the Camera Raw 8.4 beta: 

If you’d like to watch some of the supporting movies that require lynda.com membership, remember, you can get a free week’s subscription at lynda.com/deke. Adios, dekeOmpadres!