As promised, here’s a quick tutorial video that I recorded demonstrating the use of Adobe Camera Raw in my matte painting work.
Due to the poor audio recording, here’s a list of stuff that I always do when processing RAW images.
Quick checklist of steps in preparing RAW images for matte painting:
- Reduce chromatic aberration (CA)
- Undistort the image due to lens distortion
- Reduce the ISO noise
- Tweak exposure/vibrancy/saturation
For those who do not have access to Adobe Camera Raw, you can utilise the Lens Correction filter in Photoshop (CS2 and newer) to perform the CA and lens distortion correction.
I nearly forgot to mentioned that Adobe Lightroom can do all the above stuff if you prefer to work with it. Just remember to bring your processed image into Photoshop before you start your actual matte painting work!
P/S: Alternatively, remember you can try the full version of Photoshop CS2 for free since it is no longer supported by Adobe after they disabled the activation server for CS2 products. Here is the link to the download site (requires Adobe ID account).
