About Camera Raw 4.1

Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.1, and rather than a small update just for new cameras, this one is major. New features and new functionality are showing up in a long awaited upgrade of Camera Raw’s sharpening controls, a new control called Clarity, enhanced noise reduction and two new defringing controls in lens correction. All told, there is a surprising amount of “new” in Camera Raw 4.1.

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[Editor’s note: it should be noted that Jeff Schewe was personally involved in the development of Camera Raw 4.1. This article is not an independent review of Camera Raw 4.1 but an explanation of the new tools. Jeff explains at the end of the article how he came to be personally involved. It should also be noted that all the figures contained in the article are available at full size by clicking on the image. You don’t need to click on EVERY image-just those you want to see full sized. PSN regrets that fact that our story formatting requires inline images to be so small]

On the main panel, only the new control called Clarity is visible and I’ll cover that new control later. The big news is the new sharpening functionality in the Detail panel of Camera Raw 4.1 (as shown below).