LR: use of exposure or brightness

Still figuring out LR and photography in general . Can anybody explain when it is best to change exposure setting as oppose to the brightness setting in Lightroom?

You can also try the 'fill light' slider if you want.
I find it usually leaves the blacks alone with the fill light slider.

I tend to use the fill light a bit too much too, its a rather handy slider

In the LR manual, on page 64 (I quote):

"Exposure sets the overall image brightness, with a greater effect in the high values. Adjust the slider until the photo looks good and the whites are at the right level". (my comment - the last sentence is a bit subjective).

"Brightness adjusts image brightness, mainly affecting the midtones. Set the overall tonal scale by setting Exposure, Recovery and Blacks. Then set the overall image brightness. Large brightness adjustments can affect shadow or highlight clipping, so you may want to re-adjust the Exposure, Recovery or Blacks sliders after adjusting Brightness."

In Martin Evening's book, there is an interesting and informative bit about Highlight Clipping and Exposure Settings. He goes into handling reflective highlights and non-reflective highlights. He says, "I usually try to set the Exposure to clip the reflective highlights, but I do carefully check the non-reflective highlights as well and ensure that I nudge back a little on the Exposure slider so that they have a lightness value that is a little less than the brighest value".

I infer this to mean that reflective highlights are completely blown, and can't be salvaged, so why try to, but non-reflective highlights contain some valuable information.

Glenn NK wrote in post #3419242
...Adjust the slider until the photo looks good and the whites are at the right level (my comment - the last sentence is a bit subjective).

....I infer this to mean that reflective highlight are completely blown, and can't be salvaged, so why try to, but non-reflective highlights contain some valuable information.

To quantify this a bit, I try to set the brightest significant highlight at 240 - 245 (on the 8 bit scale) which leaves a little headroom for subsequent editing and maintains highlight detail.

I tend to use exposure more... but then that's probably a hangover from RSP workflow. Still really getting to grips with LR RAW processing... did 100 images last night but that was the first concerted effort to develop using LR (still 700 to go to clear backlog! )

I rarely use the brightness slider. Typically my midtones are exposed properly and just my highlights and shadow areas need adjustment. To go along with that I don't use the contrast or saturation sliders either for the reasons that other parts of Lightroom do a better job.

Pick up Scott Kelby's book for Lightroom. There are a lot of great tips and tricks in it.

Mike,

I agree, using the curve takes some getting used to but in-image curve adjustments I'm really starting to like. Also, last night was playing with selective colour contrast and saturation sliders... great!

Anke wrote in post #3418958
I tend to use the fill light a bit too much too, its a rather handy slider

I havn't had time to really check in LR, but in RSP, use of too much fill light would really highlight any noise.

EOSAddict wrote in post #3420159
Mike,

I agree, using the curve takes some getting used to but in-image curve adjustments I'm really starting to like. Also, last night was playing with selective colour contrast and saturation sliders... great!

Yes I also started playing with the saturation adjustment tool where you click on a spot in the photo and drag up or down to increase/decrease the saturation in that area. Wow, I love it. So much easier than what I used before.

I was processing some from last autumn (Fall for you septics ) (yes I AM that far behind on my processing!) and selective saturation increases for the sky and leaf colours worked great!

EOSAddict wrote in post #3420176
I was processing some from last autumn (Fall for you septics ) (yes I AM that far behind on my processing!) and selective saturation increases for the sky and leaf colours worked great!

Nice effects too on portraits (if used sparingly) if you desaturate all sliders then Selectively saturate an area using the TAT (target adjustment tool... I think that's what you guys are talking about).

Ie: you can make blue logo on shirt, and blue jeans really POP out of an image... and add just a nudge of color to skin. (Like I said though, "sparingly"; if used once in an album of images it really stands out.

Be nice when they get around to adding selective "area" adjustments in Lightroom, it'll be even better then. (That's not slated till v.2.0 or later, though from listening to podcasts.)

Generally I start with Exposure and Blacks and Recovery if necessary and then use the Target Adjustment tool for making adjustment to the Tone Curve.

Mike

There seems to be an infinite number of work styles. I had been pushing brightness over pushing the exposure setting around. But it is valuable to know, per GlenNK's comment, that Exposure biases the high and low tones and brightness biases the midtones. Thanks everyone.