There are times when, at the very outset of editing, you’ll know the dimensions of the image you want to create. In this post we’ll take a look at the Workflow Options in Adobe Camera Raw that can set this out for you.

What’s Wrong With Cropping?

Nothing. The Crop Tool is great, but you’ll notice that it works in ratio and not pixels or measurements.

acr_workflow_options_01

There may be times that you would like to constrain the image to Pixels, Centimetres or Inches, when wanting to post to Facebook for example.

That Little Link

In Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) there’s a link at the bottom of the image;

acr_workflow_options_02

In itself it gives information about the image;

acr_workflow_options_03

  1. The image’s colour space
  2. Its bit depth
  3. The image’s dimensions in pixels
  4. The data size of the image
  5. The image’s Pixel by Inch resolution

Clicking on the link opens a new dialogue box.

The Workflow Dialogue Box

In the Workflow Options dialogue box the images parameters that are listed above can be changed;

acr_workflow_options_04

  1. Using this drop down menu you can change the color space of the image to one of plethora of options;

acr_workflow_options_05

2. Here you can change the bit depth from 16 to 8 bit

acr_workflow_options_06

3. By selecting the checkbox here you can then enter the maximum width and height for the image. In this example I’ve resized for Facebook with a maximum of either of the two dimensions at 960 pixels.

acr_workflow_options_07

As you can see I could have chosen to resize using one of 6 options.

4. As a consequence of changing the dimensions of the image the data size has changed. This can be seen here;

acr_workflow_options_08

5. Finally in this section you can change the resolution, by typing a new figure.

Save The Preset

If the settings you use are ones you’ll want to return to again it’s a good time saver to save them as a Preset.

From the drop down at the top of the dialogue box, select New Workflow Preset;

acr_workflow_options_09

Name it and click OK

acr_workflow_options_10

Click OK in the main Dialogue box

Getting Sticky

This next part will either please or annoy you depending on the current job you’re doing. But, if you click Done on this image the settings become ‘sticky’. (Cancelling reverts the settings back to the default)

This means that the next image will have these settings applied to them by default until you change them back through the link.

acr_workflow_options_12