A little help from PS gurus please?

[tygr1]

I need some basic help with the nomenclature of the basic adjustment controls in ACR.

Perhaps you folks could give brief explanations of what they mean and how they correlate to one another and work together.

The terms I'm referring to are:

Exposure
Recovery
Fill light
Blacks
Brightness
Contrast
Clarity
Vibrance
Saturation


...and maybe what specifically these have an affect on and what they don't:

Highlights
Lights
Darks
Shadows


I'm thinking that this may help many of us who are new/inexperienced with PS ACR.

Any help greatly appreciated!

 

[o hey tyler]

I need some basic help with the nomenclature of the basic adjustment controls in ACR.

Perhaps you folks could give brief explanations of what they mean and how they correlate to one another and work together.

The terms I'm referring to are:

Exposure - The amount of light in the photo, how long the image was exposed for. Generally a global increase or decrease in values across the image
Recovery - Helps retain blown out areas that are too bright
Fill light - If my memory serves me correctly, this lightens the mid tones mostly. Simulating the use of a reflector to illuminate the focal point
Blacks - The strength of the shadows in the photo
Brightness - Useless for the most part. I never touch this
Contrast - Come on, you know what contrast is, right?
Clarity - Slight detail enhancing feature. I like to use it to bring out some depth to my photos.
Vibrance - Less in your face way of saturating a photo
Saturation - Use sparingly, over saturated photos are the bane of the photography community.



I'm thinking that this may help many of us who are new/inexperienced with PS ACR.

Any help greatly appreciated!

The best thing to do is to load a photo and play around with them. It won't hurt anything.

 

[tygr1]

Good stuff o hey tyler!

 

[KmH]

The first 6 sliders are tone mapping tools.

The Exposure and Blacks sliders can be used in 'Clipping Mode" by holding down the Atl key when adjusting the slider.

The last 3 sliders are for adjusting a photos 'presence'.

The Clarity slider is an adaptive tool that adjusts the mid-tone contrast using a mask, which is why it seems to enhance detail. (The Fill slider is also a mask based tool).

Vibrance increases the saturation of unsaturated colors more than it adjusts already saturated colors.

Instead of the Saturation slider, I use the HSL/Greyscale tool because it offers many more options.

I recommend the Real World book Camera Raw by Bruce Frazer & Jeff Schewe