Snapshots in Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe Camera Raw is a powerful editing tool with many features we often overlook.  With its ability to transform a RAW image it is easy to gloss over the techy things that we can do with our pictures.  One of those lesser known functions of ACR is Snapshots.



Snapshots allow you to save your work as you edit your image.  After saving a snapshot, you can bounce back and forth between saved looks.  The snapshots are saved right in the XMP sidecar file of the RAW image and will be there anytime you open your photo.

I like to use Snapshots as 'detour' opportunities.  I will often make a look I like on a RAW file, but want to test another look or take a detour into the effects world of ACR.  No problem!  Before detouring into another area, I can take a snapshot of the settings I like and not fear losing my work.

How do these Snapshots differ from presets?   Glad you asked. They are very similar but differ in where they are saved and what is saved.  With a Snapshot, you are saving every instance of your settings directly into the Raw sidecar data of the image.  A Preset allows you to save various settings into the database of ACR.  Think of it like this; Snapshots are image specific settings saved in the sidecar file of the raw image and presets are handpicked settings saved directly into the ACR database.

For more information and to see these Snapshots in Action, watch the video below.  And don't forget to check out my new Photoshop course on Creative Live!

You may also like: Three Dramatic Black and White Processing Techniques

This article and all the images were originally published  on f64 Academy

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