Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
The next thing I fix (after adjusting the white balance) is the photo's exposure.
Now, some might argue that this is the most essential adjustment of them all, but
if your photo looks way too blue, nobody will notice if the photo's underexposed
by a third of a stop, so I fix the white balance first, then I worry about exposure.
However, exposure in Camera Raw isn't just the Exposure slider. It's actually five
sliders: Exposure (midtones), Blacks (deep shadows), Shadows (regular shadows),
Highlights (well-named), and Whites (extreme highlights).
Step One:
I recommend (and so does Adobe) start-
ing with the top tonal slider in the Basic
panel (Exposure) and working your way
down through the other sliders in order,
which is a different workflow than in pre-
vious versions of Camera Raw, where it
didn't matter too much which slider you
moved when. However, in CS6, it works
best if you start by getting the Expo
sure
(midtones) set first, and then if things
look kind of washed out, adding some
Contrast (the contrast slider in CS6 is way,
way better than the one in CS5 and ear-
lier, which I generally avoided). This photo,
well, it's a mess. Taken in harsh, unflatter-
ing light, it needs some serious Camera
Raw help.
Step Two:
Start by adjusting the Exposure slider.
This photo is way overexposed, so drag
it to the left to darken the midtones and
the overall exposure. Here, I dragged
it over to -1.25 (it looks a lot better al-
ready), but the image is still kind of flat
looking, and that's why your next step
should be to adjust the contrast (by the
way, although you can drag the Contrast
slider to the left to make things less
contrasty, I can't remember an occasion
where I wanted my image to look more
flat, so I don't drag to the left. Ever.
But, hey, that's just me).
