I’ve been doing client photo work long enough to have a folder on my desktop called “fixes” that contains folders called “actual fixes” and “please work.” A lot of what lives in that folder is me trying to do localized adjustments in Photoshop the old way: painting on layer masks, nudging curves, wrestling with luminosity masks, and generally adding complexity that compounds every time the client says “can you also just…” So when I stumbled onto the idea of doing brush-based edits directly inside Adobe Camera Raw, it genuinely changed how I approach a certain class of image problems.

This tutorial from Kelvin Designs walks through exactly that workflow, using a set of purpose-built RAW brushes that work inside the Camera Raw filter. If you do any portrait, landscape, or product retouching, stick with me.

Why Editing with Brushes Inside Camera Raw Is Worth Your Time

Here’s the thing most Photoshop tutorials skip: Camera Raw isn’t just for processing RAW files anymore. You can run it as a filter on any layer, which means you get access to its full suite of tone, color, and texture controls, including its masking and brush tools, on JPEGs, smart objects, anything. The RAW brush approach Kelvin demonstrates takes this a step further by packaging specific Camera Raw settings into loadable brush presets. Instead of manually dialing in five or six sliders every time you want to dodge highlights on skin, you load a preset brush, paint, and you’re done. Non-destructive, fast, and reversible.

Installing the RAW Brushes (Don’t Skip This Part)

Before you get anywhere near an actual image, you need to get the brushes installed. Kelvin’s brushes are available at kelvindesigns.com/photoshop-raw-brushes. Once you’ve downloaded the file, here’s the installation path.

Open Photoshop and go to Filter, then Camera Raw Filter. This opens the ACR interface. In the toolbar on the right side, find the Masking tool (the icon looks like a dotted circle). Select “Brush” from the masking options. At the top right of the brush panel, click the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines) and look for the option to import presets or manage presets. This is where you point Photoshop to the downloaded brush files. Once imported, they’ll appear in your preset list and you can apply them with a single click before painting.

If the import option isn’t obvious, Kelvin covers exactly where to click in the video, which is genuinely useful because Adobe has a gift for burying things in menus that should be front and center.

Walking Through the Actual Edit

With the brushes loaded, the workflow goes like this. Open your image in Photoshop, convert the layer to a Smart Object (so the Camera Raw filter stays editable), then run Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

Inside ACR, go to Masking and create a new Brush mask. Choose one of the loaded RAW presets from the list. The presets Kelvin includes cover common retouching needs: brightening shadows, pulling back highlights, enhancing skin texture, adding clarity or dehaze to specific regions. Each one is a pre-configured cluster of ACR slider values that gets applied wherever you paint.

Paint over the area you want to affect. The brush behaves like any ACR brush: you can adjust size and feather with the on-screen controls, and you can use the “Show Overlay” toggle to see exactly where you’ve painted. If you overshoot, hold Alt (Option on Mac) to subtract from the mask. When you’re happy, hit OK. Because the layer is a Smart Object, you can double-click the Camera Raw filter in the Layers panel at any time to go back in and adjust or repaint.

The real payoff is that you can stack multiple brush masks in one Camera Raw session. One pass brightens the eyes, another reduces shine on a forehead, a third adds localized contrast to fabric texture. You’re not juggling six adjustment layers; it’s all contained inside one smart filter.

Where I’d Push This Further (and Where It Gets Awkward)

The workflow Kelvin outlines is solid for single-subject work. Where I’ve found it gets a little slippery is on composites with multiple light sources, or anywhere you need to match adjustments across several images consistently. RAW brush presets applied by hand are inherently imprecise, which is usually a feature, not a bug, but if you’re building a product shot where three images need identical treatment on the same surface, you’ll want to also document your slider values and not rely on painted brushwork alone.

My personal extension of this technique is to use it alongside Photoshop’s built-in luminosity selections. I’ll run a Camera Raw filter pass with painted brushes for the broad strokes, then use Select > Color Range or a luminosity plugin to create a precise mask for any edge-critical areas. The two approaches cover each other’s weaknesses.

The Habit That Actually Makes This Useful

None of this matters unless you make Smart Objects your default habit. If you’re flattening layers before running Camera Raw, you lose the ability to go back in and repaint, and the whole non-destructive advantage evaporates. Convert to Smart Object first, every time, no exceptions.

The single biggest thing I took from Kelvin’s tutorial is that Camera Raw’s brush masking system is an underused retouching environment, not just a RAW processing step. Once the presets are installed, the speed improvement for localized adjustments is real and noticeable.

Watch the full Kelvin Designs tutorial for the visual walkthrough of both the installation and the editing process. Seeing where the menus live in ACR makes the written steps above click into place much faster.