LR: what does the recovery slider do?

[azpix]

LR: what does the recovery slider do? I can see the effect on the picture but what is it actually doing to the photo?

what's it intended use?

[TheHoff]

Recovery brings your blown out highlights down from pure white. It recovers some of the extra dynamic range that is present in the 16-bit RAW. It can lower the overall contrast and pop of the photo so use it sparingly.

[René Damkot]

Recovery brings your blown out highlights down from pure white. It recovers some of the extra dynamic range that is present in the 16-bit RAW. It can lower the overall contrast and pop of the photo so use it sparingly.

First; the CR2 is 12 bit in most Canon DSLRs. 14 bit in the new ones ;)
Second: The recovery uses some of the info in the not blow channel(s) to "restore" the blown channel(s). Pure white (255, 255, 255) will not get any detail back AFAIK.

Click (http://www.outbackphoto.com/CONTENT_2007_01/section_hdr_and_tonemapping/20070819_HighLightRecovery/index.html)

[Glenn NK]

LR: what does the recovery slider do? I can see the effect on the picture but what is it actually doing to the photo?

what's it intended use?

Aside from the correct answers already given, it saves my butt.;)

But as TheHoff noted, be careful with it.

(translation): get your exposure as close as possible to the right without blowing out a channel or two or three. Use the RGB histogram if you have one, and understand that it's a guide and not perfect.

One should experiment and learn how to interpret the camera's RGBH, because it's based on a JPEG, and thus has been processed by the camera to some extent. You may find, for example, that the histogram indicates no clipping but when you look at the image in Lightroom, one or more channels are "off the edge", and require some Recovery.

I suspect that many of us "chimp" to check the framing of our image, but neglect to use the histogram to check exposure in the three channels (RGB).

[PixelMagic]

Actually the opposite is true. When shooting raw, your in-camera histogram is likely to show clipping in one or more channels when in reality none exists. There is usually more head room than is shown in the histogram that is based on a JPEG.


Aside from the correct answers already given, it saves my butt.;)

<snip>,,,

One should experiment and learn how to interpret the camera's RGBH, because it's based on a JPEG, and thus has been processed by the camera to some extent. You may find, for example, that the histogram indicates no clipping but when you look at the image in Lightroom, one or more channels are "off the edge", and require some Recovery.

I suspect that many of us "chimp" to check the framing of our image, but neglect to use the histogram to check exposure in the three channels (RGB).

[René Damkot]

When shooting raw, your in-camera histogram is likely to show clipping in one or more channels when in reality none exists. There is usually more head room than is shown in the histogram that is based on a JPEG.

That all depends on what the in camera parameters are set to.
That's why mine are below 'default' on most settings ;)

[Shooting]

Use CS3 and you can use ALL the raw sliders when working on jpegs, even the recovery slider so now you are not limited to raw only.

[rfreschner]

Use CS3 and you can use ALL the raw sliders when working on jpegs, even the recovery slider so now you are not limited to raw only.

Yes, but there has to be data there to work with and a jpeg image has much less of it than RAW images. Less data, more artifacts when doing serious post-processing.