Problem with Shadows/Highlights Adjustment

[ChuckZ]

When I applied the Photoshop CS5 Shadows/Highlights adjustment to a high contrast image to tonedown the highlights, the shadows and midtones in the image were also darkened significantly even tho I set the tonal width to 10% and started with a low amount.  I varied the radius, but that did not have much effect.  I've applied the adjustment to this file and other Nikon D300 files I've shot in nef, dng, and jpg formats, but get the same results.  During my attempts to figure out this problem, I attempted the adjustment on a image that my girlfriend shot of the same scene with her D40.  The adjustment worked as expected by toning down the highlights and leaving the other tones relatively uneffected.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how to get this adjustment to work on my files in the way I think it is suppose to.
Thank you, Chuck

[nemophoto]

Chuck,

A better way to approach this is to create your own contrast mask which opens shadows and reduces highlights. I actually created my own action for this. The formula is fairly simple:

1) duplicate the image on a new layer
2) desaturate the new layer
3) invert the layer (so it's a negative)
4) apply a gaussian blur of about 20 px (you may want to play with this setting)
5) change the blending mode to overlay and adjust opacity as needed. You can also use soft light to create a punchier version

I have an older plug-in called Chroma that use to do some this contrast masking, but I'm not sure it's around anymore.

Nemo

[ChuckZ]

Chuck,

A better way to approach this is to create your own contrast mask which opens shadows and reduces highlights. I actually created my own action for this. The formula is fairly simple:

1) duplicate the image on a new layer
2) desaturate the new layer
3) invert the layer (so it's a negative)
4) apply a gaussian blur of about 20 px (you may want to play with this setting)
5) change the blending mode to overlay and adjust opacity as needed. You can also use soft light to create a punchier version

I have an older plug-in called Chroma that use to do some this contrast masking, but I'm not sure it's around anymore.

Nemo

Thanks,  I'll try it out.

[nemophoto]

I took the liberty of applying the contrast mask to your image as well as adding saturation and sharpening to show you how the mask might look on your image.

Nemo

[BobFisher]

It's difficult to see the problem you're experiencing without a side by side, before and after for comparison.