Life after Photoshop’s Photo-editing A-Z

R

• Radial filterA circular/elliptical selection, or mask, which you can move around the photo and resize to get just the effect you want. Typically, you can adjust the area inside the radial filter or outside it. It’s a quick and effective way to ‘relight’ a photo or concentrate attention on the main subject.
• Radial gradientA tool in Lightroom and some other photo editing applications. The centre of the gradient area is left unedited, and the editing adjustment you make are blended in progressively towards the edges of the picture. You can change the size of the gradient, its position and how progressively the adjustments are blended in. The gradient can also be inverted so that your adjustments are applied in the centre and areas outside the gradient area are unaltered.
• Radial maskA circular or elliptical mask shape with can be resized and repositioned, and with an adjustable 'feather' zone around it for blending in adjustments smoothly. Radial masks are typically used to lighten or enhance the center of the image or darken the edges for a highly controllable 'vignette' effect.
• RadianceAn adjustment in some HDR programs that has a somewhat vague and undefined effect, in a technical sense. In Aurora HDR, for example, it adds a kind of soft ‘glow’ which goes well with the supersaturated, other-worldly feel of most HDR images.
• RAID driveRAID drives are a high-end desktop storage system that offers extra speed and security, but in larger drive units that are also considerably more expensive (and noisier) than regular types. They use two or more hard disk drives working in unison to offer data ‘rendundancy’, so that if one drive fails your data is still stored across the others. They can also offer much faster data transfer rates than regular hard drives, which can be especially useful for video editing.
• Ratings
• RAW+JPEGCameras with the ability to shoot RAW files will almost always offer a RAW+JPEG option too. Here, the camera shoots a single image but saves two versions – the RAW file and a JPEG processed and saved with the current camera settings. The JPEG is useful because you can share it with other people straight away and it also offers a useful benchmark when you’re processing the RAW file later.
• RAW fileUsually when you take a picture the camera will process the data captured by the sensor into an image file. More advanced cameras can save the image in its unprocessed state – a RAW file – so that you can do the processing yourself later on your computer.
• RAW processingA RAW converter is software that processes RAW files from a camera and converts them into regular image files. Not all RAW converters are the same. The closest analogy is the different developers used to process film. Examples include Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One Pro and DxO PhotoLab.
• RAW processing (in-camera)Some cameras now let you process RAW images and save them as new JPEG files on the memory card. That might sound a bit pointless when you could shoot JPEGs in the first place, but it does mean you can try out different white balance settings, picture styles and more.
• Recipes (Color Efex Pro)
• Red filterUsed in black and white photography to darken blue skies and lighten skintones and foliage. It can produce dramatic, high-contrast images.
• Referenced filesImage cataloguing programs which use a central database to keep track of all your photos store both a representation of each photo and its location on your computer. Some programs will offer to import the photos into a central, ‘managed’ library, but usually they will simply ‘reference’ your files in their current location.
• Reference View (Lightroom)A new view in Lightroom that lets you place a ‘reference’ image alongside the one you’re working on, so that you can match the overall look and feel – this could prove very useful if you’re trying to achieve a consistent ‘look’ across a series of pictures.
• RelightingA software technique for changing the appearance of the lighting in a photo, and a variation on classic dodging and burning techniques. For example, you can use the Radial Filter tool in Lightroom to create a ‘spotlight’ on your principle subject, darkening the rest of the frame, or the advanced Lighting filter in Affinity Photo.
• Repair tool (DxO)The DxO PhotoLab Repair tool works by replacing an area you want to repair with a same-shaped nearby area containing 'source' pixels for covering up the object you want to remove. It's similar to the Spot Healing Brush in Lightroom and can be used to remove sensor spots or small unwanted objects or distractions from the scene.
• Replace Color
• ResamplingChanging the pixel dimensions of a photo, usually to reduce the file size for sharing or online use. Resampling is irreversible because it changes the pixels in the photo. If you resample an image down to a smaller size, there’s no way to return it to its original form – the pixels discarded in this process can’t be restored.
• Resizing‘Resizing’ and ‘resampling’ sound the same but they’re not. ‘Resizing’ an image means usually means changing the size at which it will be printed, not changing its actual pixel dimensions. So for example you can ‘resize’ a photo to print it as a 6″ x 4″ or a 12″ x 8″. The only thing that changes is the number of pixels per inch in the final print. Some programs blur the distinction between ‘resampling’ and ‘resizing’ so it’s important to make sure you understand what they’re about to do.
• ResolutionThis can mean one of several things depending on the context. Camera resolution is the number of megapixels on the sensor, lens resolution is how well the lens is able to resolve fine detail. Screen resolution is the number of dots on the screen and therefore how sharp/clear it looks.
• RetouchingImage retouching can be as simple as removing a couple of sensor spots from a sky or cloning out a few scraps of rubbish in a landscape shot. It can also be a highly-valued professional skill in the fashion and advertising industry.
• RGBRGB stands for red, green and blue, the three colour ‘channels’ that go to make up all the colours in a digital image. It comes in two varieties – sRGB is a ‘universal’ RGB that can be used and displayed by any device, whereas Adobe RGB is a more specialised alternative for pros.
• Round-trippingThis is where you temporarily send a photo to a different image-editor or plug-in to carry out adjustments you can’t do in the software you’re using. When this external editing is complete, the picture is returned back to the original program – a ‘round trip’.
• Rule of thirdsA ‘rule’ of composition that says that pictures look best if objects are placed one-third of the way in from the edge or top/bottom of the picture, rather than being placed directly in the centre. It can be helpful, though calling it a ‘rule’ gives it more importance than it deserves.