Edit JPEGs in Camera Raw

George Cairns explains how to apply standard RAW editing tools to a regular JPEG image

Tweak a JPEG file in the most popular RAW editor – it’s easy!

The processing tools in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) are designed to work with uncompressed RAW files, but you can also apply them to compressed JPEGs. JPEGs lack the extra colour and tonal information that’s in a RAW file (see Nikopedia, page 72), but you can still use Camera Raw’s tools to work on them.

By editing a JPEG in Camera Raw you have a cleaner image-editing environment. The RAW editor is designed to help you improve the colours, tones and composition of an image quickly and easily. It places the most useful photo-fixing tools close to hand, so you can work more quickly when processing your images. The RAW editor’s histogram also enables you to identify clipped areas more easily, so you can restore missing tonal detail in seconds.

Finally, the RAW editor provides a quicker and easier way to increase midtone contrast than the standard editor, so it’s well worth taking a look at, even if you don’t shoot in RAW.