Lightroom exposure question

[kirbinster]

What is the difference in Lightroom in using the "Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks" sliders versus making adjustments using the Tone curve or "Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadowns" sliders under the curve.

[Photologyst]

It’s general tweaking vs. specific via TC.

Watch the histogram when moving the sliders and you will see the difference.

[ravncat]

My understanding - I may be incorrect here or there.

As far as I know, there`s no real quality difference between brightness / contrast and the tone curve itself. Though I recall reading somewhere that the contrast/brightness adjustments are applied first in the processing pipeline (order that stuff happens behind the scenes) I think there is a reason that is important, but i`m not sure what it is. (I think that it has to do with the mathematical rounding - order of operations etc)

I think that the tone curve is easier for me to make broad overall adjustments - and quickly, and I find that the brightness and contrast sliders themselves are more useful for subtle and precise control. I think there`s nothing wrong with using either - and you can certainly apply them in any order as you work. (it will be calculated by the machine in the order of sliders then tone curve though) Use whatever works for you =D.

As for Exposure, (afaik) You can think of brightness adjustments as sliding your histogram (midpoint) to the left or right , while exposure, moves the histogram right. So if you for example, increased exposure by a stop and then decreased brightness by "a stop" you`ll have a different appearance. Exposure affects how the histogram stretches from left to right

Highlight recovery and blackpoint are almost opposites of eachother. Blackpoint just moves the black point to the right - and the values get "compressed to black" - The highlight recovery tries to decompress the data stuck at the white end of the scale ( usually using the individual channel data. ) The highlight recovery and black point kinda move just the left and right part of the histogram leaving the other end fixed. (fill light is more like the opposite of highlight recovery actually)

Hopefully that makes sense =D. It`s been a while since I read it, but I found a real world guide to understanding camera raw - very useful for denoting how the tools worked - and what they were "for" so to speak.

Here`s a thread elsewhere that has some neat graphs which show some difference http://photography-on-the.net/forum/...d.php?t=283208