The new Preview feature in Camera Raw

We recently introduced a new Preview feature in Camera Raw 8.4.  The new Preview feature enhances the before and after preview in the following ways:

  • provides a side by side view of changes.  This gives you a real time before and after preview.
  • allows you to set the ‘before’ state.  This gives you control over what you are comparing.

With the new functionality, you still have the functionality that you previously had, such as comparing before and after.  You can do this by tapping the keyboard shortcut P to toggle between the before and after.  Now, you can also set the before state using the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option P. If you want to preview changes only in a specific panel (such as the Detail panel), you can do this by visiting the panel, setting the before state (press Alt/Option P), making the desired changes, and comparing before/after (press P).  Note that this approach lets you do before/after comparisons for groups of changes in different panels, too — for example, tone changes made in both the Basic panel and the Tone Curve panel.

We just released Camera Raw 8.4.1, which fixed a bug that caused Camera Raw to forget the “Before” settings when switching from image to image in the filmstrip, thereby preventing the new Preview feature from working. This bug only affected customers using multiple images with Photoshop CC.