Have You Used This Cool New Feature in Adobe Camera Raw?

Many people think that Adobe Camera Raw is simply Lightroom's Develop Module inside Photoshop. It is, but it also has its own exclusive features. Have a look at this great new update added to Adobe Camera Raw recently that adds a whole different dimension to selections.

I always felt that Adobe was kind of hedging its bets with the Adobe Camera Raw plugin. For people like me, who learned to edit digital photos in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw was always a kind of bridge into Adobe Lightroom, or a glimpse at some of its features. In its early days, I never looked at the Adobe Camera Raw plugin from within Photoshop and felt it could do anything more effectively than what I already knew how to do in Photoshop. But Lightroom's features have grown so much in recent years, and along for the ride has been Adobe Camera Raw. But Adobe sometimes adds exclusive features in the Adobe Camera Raw plugin just to keep things spicy.

And that brings us to this great video by Anthony Morganti, in which he introduces one of the new features in Adobe Camera Raw that you cannot find in Lightroom. To be totally honest, I'm still not quite clear on why Adobe splits features between its three main photo manipulation software, but it's wise to keep on top of them all because more knowledge means better editing, and of course, better outcomes. This new update relates to selections, tone curves, and masks, and is very handy to know. Let me know your thoughts on this new update. 

Iain Stanley's picture

Iain Stanley is an Associate Professor teaching photography and composition in Japan. Fstoppers is where he writes about photography, but he's also a 5x Top Writer on Medium, where he writes about his expat (mis)adventures in Japan and other things not related to photography. To view his writing, click the link above.

Log in or register to post comments
11 Comments

These selection/masking features in Adobe Camera Raw were added to Lightroom Classic as well, but not Lightroom which I'm guessing you were writing about here.

With that said, I mightily dislike that Lightroom and Lightroom Classic are so similarly named.

Lightroom might get these masking tools eventually, though.

Really well done -- and appreciated the simple explanation. I remain puzzled why anyone would let themselves get captured in Lightroom with its overly complex approach to just about everything, when ACR, combined with Bridge, does everything Lightroom does, but in a user directed way.

I totally agree. ACR and Bridge are so much easier to use than the complex Lightroom.

The new 2023 photoshop sucks, bridge, no longer move to trash button, no way to transfer photos from a camera disk, in Photoshop no longer save as Jpeg. Got to save as a copy. Photoshop has derailed, have they lost their minds. Are you aware of this debacle ?

You cannot save to jpeg if you have open layers. Flatten your image and you should have no problems.

As Dennis said, however if you've already flattened the image and it still forces you to save a copy, make sure to go into Preferences under File Handling and click the checkbox to turn on Enable legacy "Save As"

I fixed it, thanks, any help don Bridge. Get files is gone, only get files from camera!, very bad, I like getting files from disk, adobe really missed it, Now if have to do a work around to do the task that use to take seconds. Adobe headed for the cliff?

I never need to flatten the image before saving as jpg. Try the below settings:

Thanks, I change the preference and fixed it. Any fix for bridge, (get files?) its Gond only get get files from camera? I use a disk reader to get files. I can still get files but have to take extra steps to import.

I don't use Bridge, but, since I was curious, I installed it. Not sure what version you had before, but, "Get Photos From Camera" is the importer. Not a very intuitive naming since you can import other than from camera. Dum dum Adobe.

See below screen capture of the importer.

Also, looks like it's been that way at least since 2021: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKHhV390W4A&t=1477s)

I don't really care for the new Curves tool in Camera Raw.