Just beginning with raw

1) raw seems designed to make global changes to an image…I had hoped to be able to avoid Photoshop but from what I gather raw is what I work with first before I open Photoshop and make local edits. Is that true?

By @joelh33703351

It was true for many years, but no longer true after Adobe started adding masked adjustments to Camera Raw and Lightroom. Masked adjustments let you apply changes to specific areas of the image, the areas not blocked by the mask. It is similar to using layer masks in Photoshop. Need to balance exposure from left to right in Camera Raw? Drag a Gradient Mask from left to right, adjust Exposure, and if needed adjust the angle and distance of the graduated exposure adjustment. You can apply Radial Gradient and freeform Brush masks too.

This has gotten more powerful in the last year because Adobe added range masks (restrict adjustment based on luminance, color, or depth), and AI-powered subject/sky masks, along with options to add/subtract/intersect different types of masks.

There are many types of local edits that required a trip to Photoshop 5 years ago, but now you can do them completely in Camera Raw, preserving full raw quality the whole time. The number of images I pass on to Photoshop has dropped dramatically.

Read about Camera Raw masks here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/masking.html

One thing Camera Raw cannot do is stack images to create composites. It can merge image sets to create panorama or HDR images, but you can’t freely layer different images; that is still a job for Photoshop.

Secondly I often stack images because with parts of my scene having different focal lengths, I need to align and blend them. What is the work flow? Do I open the different images in Photoshop, align and blend and THEN use the raw filter?

By @joelh33703351

A simple workflow in Photoshop is to choose File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack, add the files you want to layer to the list, and click OK. Each file becomes a pixel layer (no longer raw) in one Photoshop document, and now you can do whatever you want with layer masks and other compositing tools.

If you want to preserve raw editing capability for each imported raw image, a more advanced and powerful workflow is to create a Photoshop document of the dimensions you want, then use the File > Place Linked or File > Place Embedded command to bring in raw files as Smart Object layers. A Smart Object layer encapsulates the imported raw file into a Photoshop layer, preserving the raw data. This means you can double-click a Smart Object, and Camera Raw opens to let you continue editing that layer as a raw file, not a pixel layer.

So you can have a Photoshop document containing Smart Object layers of 5 camera raw files, using Photoshop masking, blending, and other compositing features to combine them, and if needed, the ability to double-click any of them in Camera Raw to make further nondestructive raw-level adjustments.

Place Linked references the original raw file stored independently, so changes to the original raw file made outside Photoshop will be updated in the Photoshop document. Place Embedded makes a copy of the original inside the Photoshop document, increasing the Photoshop document file size and cutting it off from the original, but the advantage of embedded is everything is in one document (no external dependencies). If you drag and drop a raw image into Photoshop, that’s the same as Place Embedded; for Place Linked the shortcut is to drag a raw image and hold down the Option (macOS) or Alt (Windows) key as you drop it in the Photoshop document.

The one thing you usually do not want to do (for this workflow) is select a formerly raw layer in Photoshop and choose Filter > Camera Raw Filter. That filter is for applying Camera Raw features to non-raw layers. It is missing some Camera Raw features because the filter version of Camera Raw edits only a Photoshop pixel layer, not a true raw original.

Ideally you want to stick with the raw data. The JPEG engine that processes the raw massively clips and compresses highlights. We often don't when editing the raw. This compression can clump midtones as much as 1 stop while compressing shadow details! People incorrectly state that raw has more highlight data but the fact is, the DR captured is an attribute of the capture system; it's all there in the raw but maybe not in a camera proceed JPEG.

A raw capture that's 10 or 11 stops of dynamic range can be compressed to 7 stops from this JPEG processing which is a significant amount of data and tonal loss! So when we hear people state that a raw has more DR than a JPEG, it's due to the poor rendering or handling of the data to create that JPEG. The rendering of this data and the reduction of dynamic range is from the JPEG engine that isn't handling the DR data that does exists as well as we can from the raw! Another reason to capture and render the raw data, assuming you care about how the image is rendered!