Normally people use Adobe Camera Raw Editor for editing raw files. All the editing tools like exposure, white balance, sharpness, vibrance, saturation, blacks, fill light, noise reduction, spot healing, crop, histogram etc are available at one place. So it is an easier method to apply editing with the consolidated tools from one dialog.
The most important advantage of using Camera raw editor is that it edits an image non destructively. What does this non-destructive editing means? It means that you are not loosing any image information while you are editing your image. Whenever an image is edited (unless we save it as version set or a new copy), the original image is overwritten by new changes unless you do it at the expense of your hard disk space. Adobe Camera Raw editing is a solution which allows you to revisit your changes you made previously in the same file and make further changes from the point you left editing earlier.
Here are the steps to edit a jpeg file in Camera Raw dialog.
1. Launch PSE Editor.
2. From File menu>Select “Open As”.
3. From the browser dialog shown, select a jpeg file and from the dropdown for “Open As”, select “Camera Raw” as shown below and click “Open”. This will open your jpeg file in Adobe Camera Raw Editor.
4. Apply the edits you like from the top tool baar options and the right editing pane.
5. If you click “Done”, the changes are saved and the file gets closed. If you open the same file again with the same steps illustrated above, you would find the changes still saved in the Camera Raw dialog in which you can make further editing if required.
If you click “Open Copy”, the image will get opened in Editor. However if you save the file now, then the file will be saved normally without saving the camera raw settings which you changed. So next time when you open this saved file in camera raw dialog, it will open it as a new file.
Here is the screenshot of a jpeg opened in camera raw dialog.
Hope this helps some of you!