Basic Adjustments VS. Tone Curve: Explained?

[Phil Indeblanc]

As i get more familiar with LR4, I still have some ambiguity in my processing "style"....
I know LR expects you to go from top down in the Dev features, and it makes sense...But perhaps someone can enlighten us on some things that sound like they overlap.

This likely had some in LR3, but I had a better handle of as things happened "under the hood". Now that there is more control....
I'm still unfamiliar with the relation and differences of the top adjustments;
Highlights/Shadows/Whites/Blacks

VS

The Tone Curve settings:
Highlights/Lights/Darks/Shadows

Does Highlight in Basic = that of ToneCurve? as well as Blacks = Shadows?, or is this more of Shadows=Shadows :-)

Perhaps they affect a different channel to adjust?

Anyone have thoughts on this?

[CatOne]

Lightroom doesn't "expect" you to do things in any particular order, FWIW.

Note that in Lightroom there are at least 3 ways you can get the same adjustments.

1)  You can actually click on the histogram itself and drag things around (mouse around up there… You will see that Lightroom actually labels the sections as black, shadows, exposure, highlights, and whites… this may be a clue to something ;-)

2)  You can use the basic brick.  Watch the histogram at top as you move the sliders, and see which sections of the histogram they affect...

3)  You can use the tone curve and again easily tweak the whites and blacks and set points to a

You don't need to use all 3.  In fact, for many things you could probably get by just using the tone curve, though the way it would affect each region might be different than #1 and #2 which are pretty much identical.

[Tony Jay]

If memory serves although the adjustment ranges are the same in both the basic adjustments and the tone curve if one directly adjusts in the basic panel the curve in the curves panel does not move.
Direct adjustments in the curves panel does not change any of the settings in the basic panel.

In both cases it is possible to achieve the same changes to the image.

If one does adjustments in the basic panel and the curves panel the effect on the image is additive.

Hope this helps

Regards

Tony Jay

[Schewe]

Anyone have thoughts on this?

Yeah...I think you need to learn how to use PV 2012...really, if you think that the Basic panel adjustments relate in some way to the Parametric Curves, you really don't grok what's going on.

The basic panel does a lot of high tech math to achieve the results you can get, the curves panel (parametric or point curves) are designed for fine tuning adjustments.

If you want to learn LR4 (and PV 2012) let me suggest you buy and download the LR 4 video tutorial?

You want this stuff for free? I'm gonna limit my responses to 25 words or less :~)

And...since my word count is over 100, I'll now shut up.

[John R Smith]

Well . . .

My thoughts are (and they are not going to be popular) -

That if you absolutely need all this high-tech math, and image adaptive processing, and zillions of sliders, and blah blah blah blah blah -

Then you really don't know how to take a photograph. Years back, we could shoot colour transparency stock with a DR of about 5 stops and no possibility whatever of doing anything to the slides after the fact, and come up with fine results. I've got neg files full of them.

I think that what is happening is that folks are spending hours in front of their PC, rescuing shots which in the film era we would have just binned straight off. And should be binning now.

I still aim to do as little as I possibly can to my images in software other than a little fine-tuning to contrast and brightness, essentially. The real work is done in the camera, out in front of the subject.

John

[stamper]

John if you do as little as you say to your images then you have wasted your money on Lightroom? I take it you bought it for it's ability to catalogue images? Then again how did you catalogue your colour transparency stock? Harping back to the "good old days" doesn't help. The poster was wanting some help in understanding the program.

[William Wilson]

Phil you mention your style in the OP that's the key, you don't need to follow any set rules in your processing style as that is unique to you, just as John mentioned there was little we could do without our own darkroom where like PS & LR we could manage elements of the print and create our own vision. LR is basically that your digital darkroom, work on your images in which ever way you like and don't worry about it being an approved workflow.

[Hans Kruse]

Well . . .

My thoughts are (and they are not going to be popular) -

That if you absolutely need all this high-tech math, and image adaptive processing, and zillions of sliders, and blah blah blah blah blah -

Then you really don't know how to take a photograph. Years back, we could shoot colour transparency stock with a DR of about 5 stops and no possibility whatever of doing anything to the slides after the fact, and come up with fine results. I've got neg files full of them.

I think that what is happening is that folks are spending hours in front of their PC, rescuing shots which in the film era we would have just binned straight off. And should be binning now.

I still aim to do as little as I possibly can to my images in software other than a little fine-tuning to contrast and brightness, essentially. The real work is done in the camera, out in front of the subject.

John

If you don't want to do any post processing of your images, then you could as well just take JPG in your camera and select the picture style that suits you (like velvia or whatever) and set the preferred contrast and sharpening.

When you post process in Lightroom (and Photoshop)  it is not to rescue pictures but to enhance and edit pictures to your personal liking and style. I don't know why you think that it is to rescue pictures that should have been binned. I think you already know that if you take a RAW file from your camera that is exposed ETTR and take this into Lightroom with default settings that this is really far from the look you would get from e.g. Agfa transparencies in the film days, right? Especially for a high contrast scene. So if for example you liked that look then you would have to make some adjustments in exposure, contrast, color temperature, etc. to get such a look. For certain scenes you may be able to create some presets that will almost take to there and then only minor changes to get to the desired result.

[Pete_G]

Well . . .

My thoughts are (and they are not going to be popular) -

That if you absolutely need all this high-tech math, and image adaptive processing, and zillions of sliders, and blah blah blah blah blah -

Then you really don't know how to take a photograph. Years back, we could shoot colour transparency stock with a DR of about 5 stops and no possibility whatever of doing anything to the slides after the fact, and come up with fine results. I've got neg files full of them.

I think that what is happening is that folks are spending hours in front of their PC, rescuing shots which in the film era we would have just binned straight off. And should be binning now.

I still aim to do as little as I possibly can to my images in software other than a little fine-tuning to contrast and brightness, essentially. The real work is done in the camera, out in front of the subject.

John

John,

While I agree in some ways with what you're saying, that we may be in a situation where "fix it in post" becomes the important mantra, many great photographers have spent
not hours but days in a chemical darkroom dodging and burning, printing and reprinting, Ansel Adams and W. Eugene Smith come particularly to mind. I don't see a difference between that and spending a significant amount of time in LR/PS to produce a final image. Of course, it only makes sense if you have a good picture to start with, there is an awful lot of tarting up going on.

[Phil Indeblanc]

_William, Thanks for seeing through my post....Yes, I'm looking for a better understand of the differences as I don't want to harm, or limit the adjustments by doing one over the other...I was thinking that maybe there is a general order.

I don't use LR for rescue.

CatOne, I guess it doens't, expect an order, but as you say...."The way it would effect each region"....I was wondering if the tools sets effect specific regions differently....Or if an order of making adjustments makes sense to not botch the file.

_Tony, Your mention of it being additive is is something one should consder and helps.

_Schewe, You maybe right that I may need the tutorial. And although I likely know most indepth, I think more so, I confuse myself when working with different characteristic image files.
I'm  new to LR in general specially PV2012(as anyone is)... although I'm no novice to ACR (Besides using C1).  Where is the link to LR4 tutorial?

_John, I guess your statement was more to just get something off your chest... I know what you mean.

I haven't shot jpeg in years. My first D"SRL" was the Oly 2500CL

_Hans, Yes, I use the presets all the time, and try to label them with useful info..the Navigation window is super for this.

_Pete, Yes I do sometimes take a hour or two to see the limitation of the file in many different ranges of the files adjustablility... This maybe that, although I walk into a shoot with a basic set of ideas, I am always open to interpretations of how that will play out as I work the file. So if I had planned to shoot in BW, and I used film, I may have just forgotten about color ...But in the digital age, our interpretations and our intentions of the outcome are vastly increased....This surely will not guarantee a "better" outcome for everyone.

_Stamper, yes, just a few examples of what experiences some have had and how the files react and suggestions on attack.  

Over exposed files(high key, I don't mean out of range) approach...underexposed files(low, dark key, I don't mean out of range)...approach.  There maybe a better approach on how to handle these two different extremes.

[digitaldog]

Then you really don't know how to take a photograph. Years back, we could shoot colour transparency stock with a DR of about 5 stops and no possibility whatever of doing anything to the slides after the fact, and come up with fine results. I've got neg files full of them.

But when you shot transparency film, you had to pick one a color rendering preferred, (Velvia or Ektachrome etc) and what you got, you got. Shooting raw is more akin to shooting a color neg and deciding at print time how you want to render that print. See: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/prophotographer/pdfs/pscs3_renderprint.pdf

As others have said, you could just shoot JPEG and get the ‘transparency’ rendering the camera manufacturer builds for you. All those sliders and the math availalbe in LR and ACR are like the fliter packs in a color enlarger should you want to decide how you want to render the image. On steroids.

[CatOne]

The difference being, the slide film had a huge amount of saturation and contrast in it.  WAY more than a RAW file has.

So sure, if you want to add +35 to saturation and make a colossally beefy S-curve to it, and apply those as an input preset, you're good.  But the RAW file out of camera is going to look hopelessly flat if you don't do a little tweaking.

Plus, with the slide film, you accepted black shadows.  With RAW files, if you want, you can get detail out of them.  Can you imagine?   

[Phil Indeblanc]

FWIW, I've been using drum scans from 67 to 4x5 since 90's, and haven't developed film for at least 2-3 years now. (was doing some fineart stuff with 67 E6 about a couple years ago).
Since the 90's...I've been doing all sorts of adjustments in PS.

I ask more to get an idea of what people tend to notice and what maybe working better for them specifically in LR4.

As mentioned the additive effect. Also what Schewe said about the main calcs being done in Basic then tweaking the Tone Curve....maybe this is general, but a good base.

[bjanes]

That if you absolutely need all this high-tech math, and image adaptive processing, and zillions of sliders, and blah blah blah blah blah -

Then you really don't know how to take a photograph. Years back, we could shoot colour transparency stock with a DR of about 5 stops and no possibility whatever of doing anything to the slides after the fact, and come up with fine results. I've got neg files full of them.

I think that what is happening is that folks are spending hours in front of their PC, rescuing shots which in the film era we would have just binned straight off. And should be binning now.

I still aim to do as little as I possibly can to my images in software other than a little fine-tuning to contrast and brightness, essentially. The real work is done in the camera, out in front of the subject.

The art in photography resides largely in the composition and the rendering of the print. One can affect composition somewhat in printing by cropping and perspective control, but it is best to get these things right in the camera. The art of rendering the print is discussed by Karl Lang in an excellent essay on the Adobe web site. Much of the high tech math in the sliders is concerned with rendering a high contrast scene referred image (the raw file) into something that can be printed. In the studio, you can use fill light, etc. However, in landscapes much of much of the work is in post processing. Have not you read accounts of Ansel Adams' making of the prints of his Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico negative. Most of his work was in the post processing.

Regards,

Bill

[MBehrens]

The essay published here (LULA) today seems to cover this topic very well. Explains the similarly named but very different controls between Basic and Tone Curve panels.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/techniques/tonal_adjustments_in_the_age_of_lightroom_4.shtml

9 May, 2012 - Tonal Adjustments in the Age of Lightroom 4

[s4e]

Very interesting and informative article! 

[Phil Indeblanc]

Thanks MBehrens....reading!

Bjanes....yes indeed, and interpretation in between is ...just that, personal interpretation....yes, I am ok with stating this.(loosely) :-)

[CapStarlight]

Let me add my thanks to MBehrens - great reading. Also a comment that I am finding and seeing in other people's use of LR4:  setting adjustments like highlights and shadows to their limits at +100 or -100 happens quite a bit, and often leaves you wanting the sliders to be able to go further.

[Phil Indeblanc]

Super!
And special many thanks to Charles Cramer!!!