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Maximize Dynamic Range

The next step is to begin optimizing the tonal values in the image, with particular emphasis on maximizing the dynamic range. That means defining a black and white point within the image, and ensuring the middle-tone values fall nicely in between.

The Exposure slider allows you to adjust overall brightness of the image, effectively applying an exposure compensation factor after the capture. While this can help save a bad exposure, I always recommend starting with the best exposure possible. Instead of thinking of it as a brightness control, I prefer to think of the Exposure control as a white point adjustment. This is underscored by the fact that the Exposure control includes the ability to use a clipping preview to help ensure you don’t lose any highlight detail in the process of adjusting the image.

Hold down the Alt key (PC) or the Option key (Mac) while clicking and holding the Exposure slider to see a clipping display for the highlights.

To use the clipping preview with the Exposure slider, simply hold the Alt key (Option key on Macintosh) while adjusting the slider. This will cause the image to appear entirely (or mostly) black. As you increase the Exposure setting, colors will start to appear, representing the channel (or channels) losing detail. Anywhere you see color, one or more channels have lost detail. White indicates that the area has been blown out to pure white, with absolutely no detail.

In general, you’ll want to adjust the Exposure slider to a point just before you start to lose highlight detail. In other words, you’ll increase the Exposure control until you start to see white pixels, and then back off slightly to avoid losing that detail. In some cases, you may want to back off considerably more, so you don’t lose significant detail on a color channel that represents a major component of the image. For example, with a photo of a red rose you wouldn’t want to sacrifice too much detail on the red channel.

Keep in mind that specular highlights (such as those created by reflections from glass or metal objects) don’t have detail by their nature, so you won’t be able to darken an image to recover that detail.

The Shadows control behave similar to the black point slider in Levels. As with the Exposure control, you can use the clipping preview to make an informed decision about how much shadow detail you’re willing to give up in order to optimize contrast in the image. My recommendation is to maximize the dynamic range in the image, so that the result will contain maximum detail. If you want to sacrifice shadow detail to improve contrast in the image, save that work for a Photoshop adjustment layer.

Hold down the Alt key (PC) or the Option key (Mac) while clicking and holdingthe Shadows slider to see a clipping display for the shadows.

To use the clipping display, hold the Alt key (Option key on Macintosh) while you adjust the slider. The image will appear entirely (or mostly) white. As you increase the value for the slider, color will start to appear, indicating the channel (or channels) that have lost detail in the dark shadows. If black pixels appear, that indicates that the pixels have been shifted to pure black with absolutely no detail.

Similar to the approach recommended for the Exposure slider, adjust the Shadow slider with the clipping preview so you are getting black pixels in the very darkest areas of your image, without losing significant detail.

With the black and white points for your image adjusted to produce maximum dynamic range, you’re ready to fine-tune the overall brightness of the image. Use the Brightness control to adjust overall brightness, which will predominately affect the middle tones within the image.

I recommend that you don’t adjust the Contrast control. If you have properly set your black and white points with the Shadows and Exposure controls, respectively, you shouldn’t need to adjust contrast at this point. Doing so will either reduce the dynamic range in the image (which you could always do in Photoshop if you really wanted to) or cause clipping in highlight and/or shadow areas. The Exposure and Shadows controls allow you to make an informed decision about the contrast in the image thanks to the clipping preview display. I simply never use the Contrast control in Camera Raw. Likewise, I save the Saturation adjustment for a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop.

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