Using Exposure slider in RAW photo bridge

Hi,

When I open my shot from Photobridge to the RAW editor I always slide the above back and forth untill im happy with the look. Nothing wrong I thought........but in some mags i was reading they never seem to touch that slider - only the brightness and contrast.

Any reasons for or against anyone?

In general, the Exposure slider can be considered to be the software equivalent of changing the ISO on-camera -- you are changing the amplification applied to your base exposure, so you are shifting things linearly back and forth between darker and brighter.

Brightness with some software applies a bit of a curve -- it brightens darker and midtones but tries to apply less to highlights. Contrast basically makes brights brighter and darks darker to "stand out" against each other.

I adjust Exposure when it's called for, typically to the point where highlights are not blown (although a few little spots my show up as blown) and I use the highlight recovery tools to tone the highlights down to show detail and tonal variation.

If need be, I use some shadow fill. I'll use brightness if need be. I'll usually use a fair amount of contrast. Usually at some point I'll revisit those things to balance things out, including setting the "black point" to some pleasing place. Saturate to taste, sharpen, cook until well done, and out comes an image!

From what I have read, the exposure slider is what sets where the whites clip on the histogram (which goes in line with what tony said), while the brightness slider expands/contracts the histogram in different areas to change realitve brightness.

Supposedly one should use the exposure slider first, then the brightness. I've been doing it this way and it seems to work well...

I'm not sure I agree with Tony's view of the exposure slider.

The exposure slider sets the white point, basically it moves the right hand side of the histogram. The brightness slider moves the middle of the histogram. I use both.

tim wrote in post #9110216
I'm not sure I agree with Tony's view of the exposure slider.

The exposure slider sets the white point, basically it moves the right hand side of the histogram. The brightness slider moves the middle of the histogram. I use both.

I seem to remember something about that, and checking out a shot it looks like you're right -- Exposure is biased toward moving the bright and midtones, and then Recover pulls back highlights and Fill is biased toward moving the dark tones lighter. Brightness is biased toward moving the midtones. Blacks is used to pull some darker areas back toward black (unless you use the small left-side margin to lighten the darker areas). They overlap in different ways.

It does tend to be a juggling act to get the right balance, because all these controls interact with each other, and then you toss in some Contrast which can mess with your highlights and dark tones and you may need to retweak, and then there is the Tone Curve and sliders...!

Yeah each slider works on a different portion of the curve, but exposure does affect the whole histogram more than most of the others.

tonylong wrote in post #9110972
I seem to remember something about that, and checking out a shot it looks like you're right -- Exposure is biased toward moving the bright and midtones, and then Recover pulls back highlights and Fill is biased toward moving the dark tones lighter. Brightness is biased toward moving the midtones. Blacks is used to pull some darker areas back toward black (unless you use the small left-side margin to lighten the darker areas). They overlap in different ways.

It does tend to be a juggling act to get the right balance, because all these controls interact with each other, and then you toss in some Contrast which can mess with your highlights and dark tones and you may need to retweak, and then there is the Tone Curve and sliders...!

Humm, I thought that Exposure stretches the entire histogram equally, versus brightness which is biased towards the midtones? Brightness shouldn't affect the white clipping point much.

Yes - I'm in ACR right now processing a wedding I did this past weekend. I'm working on a shot where things were underexposed by 1-stop. Moving the exposure slider to the right stretches the entire histogram to the right.

Playing with brightness slider..... hmm...appears to be the midtones? Actually hard to tell. I just eyeball the image and suit to taste.

Grimes wrote in post #9111120
Humm, I thought that Exposure stretches the entire histogram equally, versus brightness which is biased towards the midtones?

The exposure slider does "stretch" the whole histogram, but notice that the dark tones at the far left are less affected than the bright tones. You can move a "white point" by, say, a stop but the darker tones aren't as affected.

Try this: Move the exposure slider say two stops brighter on an image with a lot of dark tones right against the right side of the image. You should see a lot of dark tones still lumped to the left. Then, double-click your slider to reset it and then move the Fill slider up a fair amount -- you should see the whole range of dark tones move toward the right (with much less effect on the highlights).