March 21, 2009
Exposure and Brightness adjustments
In this movie I wanted to explain the difference between using the Exposure and Brightness sliders. The first section shows a basic introduction where I use the Exposure slider first and then fine-tune the remaining Basic panel settings. I then go on to demo the use of a strong negative Exposure adjustment. This is followed by an example of why an Exposure led image adjustment will produce an image with better image detail in the midtone to highlight areas compared to a Brightness slider led adjustment.
Please note this video is in Quicktime format. A player can be downloaded from apple.com.
Martin
Did you realize in the picture of the shore and the flower you had the Fill Light slider set at 39?
Tim
Yes I did. All I wanted to emphasise here was the effect of Exposure and Brightness. Rather than go through how I achieved all the adjustments and end up with a long movie, I just focussed on these two.
Off Topic: I have heard that using the secondary display option can slow down lightroom considerably. Anyone know if this is true?
Martin,
In your book you recommend using the curve control instead of brightness and contrast, saying that these are only there for legacy reasons.
Could you explain the difference between the two approaches? Are there any situations when it is more benefitial to use brightness/contrast?
Also, why does Lightroom’s Auto Tone feature often make very heavy use of the brightness and contrast sliders (imho usually with poor results)?
In the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0 book I took the view that the new Tone Curve offered much improved contrast and brightness control compare to the Brightness and Contrast sliders and I still feel the same now about this. However, since my early testing with Lightroom 1.0 and having used Lightroom for several years, I have now moderated that view to say that the Brightness and Contrast sliders are actually still useful as an easy way to fine-tune the brightness and contrast, but must be adjusted after setting the Exposure slider first.
To summarise, there is no real quality issue between the brightness and contrast sliders and the Tone Curve, although it is important to understand that the Brightness/Contrast adjustments are applied first in the pipeline before the TC. Tone Curve is just as valid a tone adjustment, but does offer more flexibility and there is nothing wrong in using Brightness and Contrast and Tone Curve all together. Use whatever works for you.
As for Auto Tone this is the result of ongoing progress to find the auto adjustment tone logic that works best for any picture. It has been improved with Lightroom 2 compared to Lightroom 1, but you will inevitably see results that are not as good as what you might expect to see if adjusting manually. Typically I find that studio lit shots never process well using Auto Tone.