Photograph © George A. Jardine
A few days ago, I received one of those digital-photo-advice e-mail newsletter things from one of the more respectable sources. The question du jour was regarding Lightroom’s new 2012 Process Version controls, and in the answer our friend stated that “The key difference is that the Whites and Blacks sliders affect a narrower range of tonal values than the Highlights and Shadows sliders do.”
Reading this kind of nonsense online simply upsets me. And there is all too much of it. After a bit of testing, I’ve discovered a few things about the way the new controls do work. It all started with the exposure testing that I wrote up in a blog posting on the Zone System that can be found here. A simplistic description of the Whites and Blacks controls would be that they are just clipping controls. But since they now go both directions, you gotta ask yourself, what happens if I push this the other way?
On top of that, the not-so-subtle differences between the way Highlights and Shadows actually work relative to Whites and Blacks, makes for an interesting exploration into how they all relate. Meaning, how you might use them together, to bend and shape your photo corrections in ways that you simply could not achieve, using the old tools.
So here’s a new tutorial on 4 of the most interesting new controls in Lightroom. It’s free, just for the asking. Simply drop your e-mail address here, and I’ll shoot you the link to the online tutorial.
Total running time for this video is a little over 20 minutes.
To view the tutorial on an iPad, the link provided in your e-mail will serve up video that is custom formatted for that device, too. And if you think it looks good on your iPad, wait until you see the tutorials on your HDTV!
Finally, this video is just a taste of the in-depth coverage of the entire Develop module that you get in my Develop video series for Lightroom 4. You can check out the chapter titles and details, by clicking here.
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