Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Seven:
Before we leave the Shadows slider, we
need to switch to another image for just
a moment (we'll come back to the other
image shortly), because I want to point
out that one of the most common times
you'll use the Shadows slider is when your
subject is backlit like this one, where the
sky is pretty well exposed, but the fore-
ground is really dark. When I was standing
there, of course my eye compensated
perfectly for the two vastly different ex-
posures, but our cameras still aren't as
sophisticated as the human eye, so we
get shots that look like this. In previous
versions of Camera Raw, I'd reach for the
Fill Light slider to fix this problem, but of
course, it created its own problems (if you
bumped it way up, your image started
to look a bit HDR-like, but not in a good
way). Now, in CS6, the Shadows slider
works with the Exposure slider to give
you better results than the old Fill Light
slider alone could give. Start by bumping
up the Exposure, and then the Contrast
(the Shadows slider will work much better
when you tweak these first).
Step Eight:
Now, drag the Shadows slider way
over to the right to open up those rocks
and the foreground, so the whole image
looks more balanced (here, I dragged
over to +90). That overprocessed Fill
Light look from previous versions of Cam-
era Raw is gone. Instead, we have a much
more natural-looking edit. Believe it or
not, bumping the Shadows up this much
created some highlight clipping in the
Red channel (I saw the red highlight
warning triangle appear in the upper-
right corner), but that's an easy fix—I just
dragged the Whites slider a little bit to
the left (to -17, as shown here) to re-
duce the brightest highlights. Now we
can jump back to our original image.
(Continued)
