Raw Shooting - Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 for Photographers - page 159

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Local contrast control: The Clarity slider is used to
alter the local contrast or the contrast of details with-
in the photo. It works well with photos that have been
photographed with diffused light or on a cloudy day.
Use Clarity and Contrast sliders together. You can now
also apply negative Clarity values to soften details or
provide a diffused look to your images.

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Vibrance adjustment: Unlike the Saturation slider,
which increases the strength of all colors in the photo
irrespective of their strength in the first place, Vibrance
targets its changes to just those colors that are
desaturated. Use this control to boost the strength of
colors in the photo with less risk of posterized results.

Saturation control: The strength or vibrancy of the
colors in the photo can be adjusted using the Satura-
tion slider. Moving the slider to the right increases
saturation, with a value of +100 being a doubling of
the color strength found at a setting of 0. Saturation
can be reduced by moving the slider to the left, with
a value of -100 producing a monochrome image.

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To sharpen or not to sharpen: ACR contains four
sharpening controls. Use the Amount slider to deter-
mine overall sharpening strength. The Radius is used
to control the number of pixels from an edge that will
be changed in the sharpening process. The Detail and
Masking sliders are both designed to help target the
sharpening at the parts of the image that most need
it (edges) and restrict the sharpening effects from be-
ing applied to areas that don't (skin tone and smooth
graded areas). The Masking control interactively ap-
plies an edge locating mask to the sharpening process.

Reducing noise: ACR contains two different Noise
Reduction controls. The Luminance Smoothing slider
is designed to reduce the appearance of grayscale
noise in a photo. This is particularly useful for improv-
ing the look of images that appear grainy.
The second type of noise is the random colored pixels
that typically appear in photos taken with a high ISO
setting or a long shutter speed. This is generally re-
ferred to as chroma noise and is reduced using the
Color Noise Reduction slider in ACR.
The noise reduc tion ef fec t of both features is increased
as the sliders are moved to the right.