Working with camera raw image files

The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in lets you open a camera's raw digital image files so that you can edit them in Photoshop or ImageReady. As you open the camera raw image files, you can quickly apply adjustments such as exposure compensation or tonal adjustments without compressing the image or losing any of the original image data. The camera raw image file can then be brought into Photoshop and saved in a final format such as PSD, JPEG, Large Document Format (PSB), or TIFF. By default, Camera Raw settings are stored on a per-image basis in a Camera Raw database file. You can choose a preference to have the settings saved in sidecar XMP files (files that accompany the original camera raw image file in the same folder) instead of a Camera Raw database.