Camera Raw Blacks

[Pantoned]

Maybe it's a dumb question and maybe I have been processing all my images in the wrong way but, why would somebody want to clip the shadows before retouching? I mean I usually leave "blacks slider" to 0 and push down the shadows either with parametric or point curves, this way I can recover shadow information in a later stage if I need to. Shouldn't this be the reasonable workflow? Why does adobe put this control there? Is just for people who don't retouch later (sending photo to print)? Or there is another reason I don't know and I should be using it instead of curves for some reason?

Arnau

[mahleu]

I don't know why it's there but I use it when i'm on exceptionally tight deadlines (festivals and press work) and I have to get material up fast.

[Schewe]

It's there so you CAN do a black point adjustment...if the scene you shoot is within the dynamic range of the camera sensor (low contrast), you would do well to adjust the blacks to just at clipping. You can do so by holding down the option (Alt) key while adjusting.

Not using the blacks slider would be considered a failure to understand the whole concept of tone mapping...in my book.

:~)

[Pantoned]

Isn't it he same as setting black point with the lower left point of the curves in the ACR dialog? Wich one should be better to use?

Thanks for your time. Sorry I don't have your book yet. But your softproofing explanations and black generation in Camera to Print videos where very useful.


Arnau.

It's there so you CAN do a black point adjustment...if the scene you shoot is within the dynamic range of the camera sensor (low contrast), you would do well to adjust the blacks to just at clipping. You can do so by holding down the option (Alt) key while adjusting.

Not using the blacks slider would be considered a failure to understand the whole concept of tone mapping...in my book.

:~)
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[digitaldog]

In addition to what Jeff said, some folks want to clip black, either for a preferred rendering (look at the style of work done by Greg Gorman) or to help remove noise.