Believe it or not, Camera Raw is great for creating black-and-white conversions. Start by opening a RAW image, then lowering the Saturation to –100. Adjust the Exposure and Shadows sliders to create a nice contrasty image, then drag the Contrast slider to the right to give the image even more contrast. Now try all the different White Balance presets until you find the one that looks best for your particular conversion. You can even add sharpening if you like by clicking on the Detail tab and adjusting the Sharpness slider. And best of all, you can create a surprisingly good black-and-white image before it actually enters Photoshop CS2.

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The White Balance tool (I) actually works best by clicking on something in your photo that is light gray, rather than clicking on something that is supposed to be white. Once you've clicked on a light gray area, use the Tint and Temperature sliders if you want to tweak the white balance a little bit, but use the White Balance tool to do most of the work.

The fact that Camera Raw has cropping built in should be cool enough, but its Crop tool (C) is smarter than Photoshop's. For example, when you drag out a cropping border in Camera Raw, take a look at the histogram in the top-right corner—it instantly updates to show you the histogram for just the areas that appear inside your cropping border. Sweet!

If you see areas of bright-colored fringe appearing around objects in your RAW photos, you're suffering from Chromatic Aberrations (well, you're not, but your camera's lens is). Under the Lens tab in Camera Raw, there are two sliders (Fix Red/Cyan Fringe and Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe) that let you slide those problems away, but seeing the problem clearly enough to eliminate the fringe is your first challenge. That's why you'll want to know this tip: If you hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) while you're dragging either Chromatic Aberration slider, it will only show the two channels you're adjusting in the preview area, making it easier to see—and repair—the problem.

By default, when you open a RAW image in Photoshop CS2, Camera Raw looks at the EXIF data embedded into your photo by your digital camera to find out which type of camera it was taken with, and once it knows, it applies a set of Auto corrections to the photo's exposure, shadows, brightness, and contrast. If you'd like to see what your RAW image looked like before Camera Raw applied these Auto corrections, just press Command-U (PC: Control-U), and it turns off all the Auto corrections to give you a clear, uncorrected view. Pretty bad, eh? So press Command-U (PC: Control-U) to turn those bad boys right back on.

Default Auto corrections

Without Auto corrections applied

So, have the adjustments you've made in Camera Raw helped or hurt your photo? Just press the letter P and you'll quickly find out. This turns the preview of your changes off, and shows how the original file looked before you started tweaking it. To turn the preview back on, just press P again.

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If you don't like the Auto corrections that are applied to your RAW images by default, you can change things so that when you open photos from your camera, it will no longer perform any Auto corrections. Here's how: Open a RAW image and press Command-U (PC: Control-U) to turn off all the Auto corrections in Camera Raw. Then go under the flyout menu (to the right of the Settings pop-up menu) and choose Save New Camera Raw Defaults. Now, when you open a photo taken with the same camera make and model, it will no longer apply any of the Auto settings.

If you used the White Balance tool (I) to set the white balance in your image, and you don't like the results, you can undo your white balance setting by double-clicking on the White Balance tool in Camera Raw's Toolbox.

In Photoshop CS2, the Color Sampler tool can give you readings from up to four different places, but the Color Sampler in Camera Raw is more powerful and monitors even more areas for you. Each time you click the tool, another set of readings appears at the top of the Camera Raw dialog, and although it looks like six is the maximum number of color samplers you can add to your image (because the top of the Camera Raw dialog looks full), you can actually add three more (for a total of nine color samplers). Try it, and you'll see the six samplers squeeze to accommodate three more samplers. Now, I have to say, if you need to monitor the color in nine different areas of your image, perhaps working with RAW images shouldn't be your biggest concern.

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If you're going to be using CS2's new Highlight and Shadow clipping warnings, here are two shortcuts you'll need to know: Press the letter O to turn on the Highlight clipping warning (everything that appears highlighted in red is clipping), and press U to toggle on/off the Shadow clipping warning (everything that appears in blue is clipped to solid black with no detail).

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If you're using the Crop tool (C) in Camera Raw, and decide you want to cancel your Crop, just click on the Crop tool, then press the Escape key on your keyboard.

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The Straighten tool (A) and the Crop tool (C) in Camera Raw are pretty much tied together. So much so, in fact, that if you want to cancel your straightening, you have to first click on the Crop tool (if it's not active by default after dragging with the Straighten tool), then press the Escape key on your keyboard.

Many pros prefer to apply their sharpening in Photoshop itself, using Unsharp Mask or the Smart Sharpen filter, rather than in Camera Raw. If that sounds like you, wouldn't it be nice to just see what the sharpening would look like, even if you don't apply it? Of course, you could simply adjust the Sharpening slider (under the Detail tab) for a moment, look at the image, then slide it back—but there's a better way. While you have an image open in Camera Raw, press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to open the Camera Raw Preferences. When the dialog appears, change the Apply Sharpening To pop-up menu so it shows Preview Images Only. That way, any sharpening you apply in Camera Raw will only be applied to the preview you see onscreen in Camera Raw, and not the photo itself, so you can apply it later in Photoshop.

Camera Raw in CS2 has its own curves adjustments (under the Curve tab), but adding a point to the curve is different in Camera Raw than it is in Photoshop. To plot a point on your curve in Photoshop, you just click the Eyedropper on the spot in your image you want plotted. But in Camera Raw, you have to Command-click (PC: Control-click) the Eyedropper instead.

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Save yourself a trip up to Camera Raw's Toolbox the next time you need to rotate an image. Just press L on your keyboard to rotate to the left or press R to rotate to the right. To rotate completely around, just keep pressing either letter.

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Want to crop just one RAW image and have that exact same crop applied to a number of similar RAW images at once? In Adobe Bridge, just Command-click (PC: Control-click) on all the RAW images you want to crop, then press Command-R (PC: Control-R) to open them in Camera Raw. Next, click the Select All button in the top-left corner of the Camera Raw dialog. Now press C to get the Crop tool, drag out your cropping border within the image in the preview area, and as you drag it out for the current photo, all the other selected photos will get the same cropping treatment, which will be reflected immediately in the list of images on the left side of Camera Raw.

If you haven't renamed your photos, and you're busy processing them in Camera Raw, don't sweat it—you'll have an opportunity to rename them when you save them. In fact, when you choose Save in the Camera Raw dialog, the Save As screen that appears lets you batch rename the photos as they're saved. Just type the name you want in the first field, then the numbering scheme you want to use (after all, they can't all have the exact same name, right?).

If you want a larger preview window in Camera Raw, you're only one click away. Just turn off the Show Workflow Options checkbox in the bottom-left corner of Camera Raw, and those options will be tucked out of sight, and your preview area will be expanded.

If you want to change the size of your preview window in Camera Raw, you can use most of the same keyboard shortcuts you already use in Photoshop. For example, to zoom in press Command–+ (Plus Sign) (PC: Control–+), and to zoom out press Command–- (Minus Sign) (PC: Control–-). To jump to Fit on Screen view, double-click on the Hand tool. To jump to 100% size, double-click on the Zoom tool. To temporarily get the Hand tool, press-and-hold the Spacebar, then click-and-drag within the preview area.

Here's a new viewing option—it's called Fit in View. It's found in the Zoom pop-up menu in the bottom-left corner of Camera Raw's preview window, and when you select it, it displays your entire photo as large as it can in the preview area.

If you decide that you want to create JPEGs from all your RAW images, the entire process is automated in CS2, but you don't do it from Camera Raw—you do it within Photoshop. You start by going under Photoshop's File menu, under Scripts, and choosing Image Processor. When the dialog appears, choose your folder of RAW photos, then choose the folder where you want the new JPEGs saved. In the third section, you choose the file type and the size you want your images to be. Do you want just JPEGs, or also TIFFs and PSDs as well? It's up to you. If you like, you can apply an action to your images and a copyright while you're at it. Once you've entered your preferences and clicked Run, Image Processor automatically creates separate folders (inside the folder you indicated in section two) for each type of file (JPEG, TIFF, or PSD).

If you're shooting only in RAW (and not RAW+JPEG), then you don't have to worry about changing the color space in your digital camera to match the edit space in Photoshop. That's because you'll actually choose the color profile that will be assigned to the photo right before you process the RAW file—it comes in “untagged.” It's RAW after all, right? So choose your color profile from the Space pop-up menu in the bottom-left corner of the Camera Raw dialog before you open the image in Photoshop. (Note: If you don't see the Space menu, turn on the Show Workflow Options checkbox.)

Another advantage of working with RAW images comes when you need to make your image larger than the original. Of course, this is generally thought of as a big no-no because making a photo bigger than its original usually means a major loss of sharpness and quality, but if you're shooting RAW, well…not so much. Well, not nearly as much. So, all you have to do is go to Camera Raw's Workflow Options (in the bottom-left corner of the dialog), and from the Size pop-up menu choose a larger size (make sure you also choose 8 Bits/Channel for your depth), and you'll get much better results from your forbidden upsizing than you would have if you tried to do the same thing in Photoshop using the Image Size dialog (under the Image menu).

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If you're providing photos to magazines, websites, or really just about anybody, you might want to strip out your metadata, or anybody with Photoshop will be able to learn a lot about you. For example, they'll know what kind of camera and lens you have (including make and model), what day you took the photo, edited the photo, and so on. Luckily, stripping the data out is easy, because you don't really strip it out. Just do this: Open the photo in Photoshop. Press Command-A (PC: Control-A) to select all, then press Command-C (PC: Control-C) to copy the photo into memory. Press Command-N (PC: Control-N) to create a new blank document in the same size, color mode, and resolution of your copied photo. Don't change anything; just click OK. When the new document appears, press Command-V (PC: Control-V) to paste your copied photo into your new document. Press Command-E (PC: Control-E) to merge this image layer with your Background layer, and save the file. The embedded EXIF data is left behind, giving you a clean image with no personal data attached.

If you've made a number of adjustments in Camera Raw, and you're not happy with them and just want to get back to where you started, go to the Camera Raw Settings pop-up menu (it's just above the White Balance pop-up menu) and choose Camera Raw Defaults. That'll put the photo back to how it looked when you opened it.

If you've been processing images and you want to quickly save a file with the settings you've just applied, you don't have to have the whole Save As dialog appear, which just takes up time and space. Instead, hold the Option key (PC: Alt key), and then click the Save button. It will simply save your image and apply the settings you selected without closing the Camera Raw dialog. It's faster, it's funner, and it's all gooder as well.

When most of us think about sorting or rating images, we think about Bridge, but believe it or not, you can pretty much do the same thing right within Camera Raw. For example, let's say you open 60 images in Camera Raw. You can toggle through the different images by clicking on the left/right arrows in the bottom-right side of the preview window. To delete any image you don't like, click on the Trash icon in the Toolbox (it only appears when you have multiple images open). To add a star rating to a file, just click on it in the list of images on the left side of the dialog and drag out your rating below the image's thumbnail.

Double-clicking on a RAW image in Bridge opens that image in Photoshop's Camera Raw, but if you'd prefer to always have RAW images processed by Bridge's Camera Raw instead, just press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to open Bridge's Preferences, and in the list on the left side of the dialog, click on Advanced. When the Advanced options appear, turn on the checkbox named Double-Click Edits Camera Raw Settings in Bridge.

When you open multiple RAW images in Camera Raw, if you press Command-A (PC: Control-A) to select them all, any change you make to the top image in the list will be made to all the other selected images. But what if you'd prefer to edit the fourth or fifth image down, and have all the rest adjusted the same way (rather than having to adjust the first photo in the list)? It's easy—once all the photos are selected, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the photo along the left side that you want to base all your edits on. That photo will now appear in the preview window, and changes you make to it will also be applied to all other selected RAW photos.

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If you've got a number of photos open in Camera Raw, and you make some edits to one of those photos, and you think to yourself, “Hey, that doesn't look bad,” you can quickly apply those same edits to other images. Here's how: Once you've made your edits to an image, Command-click (PC: Control-click) on the photos along the left side of the dialog to which you want to apply the same edits. Then click on the Synchronize button in the top-left side of Camera Raw. This brings up a dialog with a checkbox list of all the edits you can do in Camera Raw. If you want all the changes you applied to the first image to be applied to your selected images, choose Everything from the Synchronize pop-up menu at the top of the dialog. If you only want a few edits applied, uncheck the checkboxes beside the options you don't want.

If you've edited a RAW photo in Camera Raw, you'll see a little round two-slider icon below the RAW photo's thumbnail in Bridge. If you want to remove those edits, and return the image to the original unedited version (like it just came out of your camera), Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the thumbnail and choose Clear Camera Raw Settings.

If you've opened multiple images in Camera Raw, you can apply cropping to one of those images and then have that exact same cropping applied to as many other open images as you'd like, in just two clicks. First crop your selected image in the preview window using the Crop tool (C). Now select the other photos you want to crop by Command-clicking (PC: Control-click) on them in the list of open photos on the left side of the Camera Raw dialog. Then click on the Synchronize button. When the dialog appears, from the Synchronize pop-up menu at the top, choose Crop and click OK. All your selected photos will be cropped the same way you cropped the first photo.