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Recovery
The Recovery adjustment provides a way for you to recover highlight detail that has been lost based on the Exposure adjustment or in the original capture. As I mentioned in the Exposure section, I recommend adjusting that setting so no detail is lost, which might make it seem that the Recovery adjustment is not necessary. However, it can still be helpful even when no detail has been lost because it can help tone down bright areas that got too bright with the desired Exposure adjustment.
The way I normally work with the Recovery adjustment is to first set the Exposure setting to produce the best result as previously discussed. Then I move the Recovery slider to the right to darken the brightest highlights to help recover detail there. The other situation where Recovery can be helpful is when the exposure was particularly bright and highlight detail was actually lost in the original capture. In those situations, I'll actually start by increasing the Recovery value before adjusting the Exposure value. Even though Exposure is designed to compensate for a poor exposure, the Recovery adjustment can do a better job of rebuilding lost detail in the image.
Fill Light
The Fill Light adjustment is similar to the Recovery adjustment except that it operates on the shadows instead of highlights in your image. It will brighten up the shadow detail in the image without brightening any pixels that are actually completely black. Move the slider to the right to brighten up shadow areas and reveal more detail. Even if you don't think you'll want to have shadow detail revealed significantly in the final image, I recommend brightening up shadows with the Fill Light adjustment to help maximize the amount of detail in the converted RAW image. You can always increase contrast to darken shadow detail later, but my preference is to start with as much visible detail in the image as possible.
Blacks
The Blacks slider is used for setting the black point in the image, very similar to the behavior of the Black Point slider in the Levels adjustment you'll see in Chapter 5. When you know how to use the Exposure slider, the Blacks slider is suddenly easy to master as well, because it works in virtually the same manner.
As with Exposure, make sure the Shadows Clipping display is enabled with the button in the histogram display. You can then use the Clipping display (which shows up as a blue overlay) while making your Blacks adjustment to see when you lose shadow detail in your image. As discussed for the Exposure adjustment, you can also hold the Alt/Option key to get a more-detailed clipping preview, with the image appearing completely white until pixels are clipped, and then a color (or black) showing where detail has been clipped.
Although it is often beneficial to sacrifice some shadow detail to optimize contrast in an image, I don't recommend giving up this detail during the RAW conversion. Instead, I recommend saving that sort of adjustment for your full workflow in Photoshop. Therefore, the basic process is to adjust the Blacks slider to the right until blue pixels (or any pixel values if you're using the Alt/Option key to see the more detailed clipping preview display) start to appear (slide show, image 8). Then move the slider back to the left until the pixels disappear. This will ensure you have maximized tonal range for the image without clipping detail in the shadows.
Brightness
The preceding methods discussed for tonal adjustments will expand the tonal range and detail within your image but may not produce optimal overall brightness. The Brightness slider allows you to correct that problem. You may already be familiar with the Levels adjustment (which will be covered in great detail in Chapter 5), and the Brightness slider is like the Middle Tone slider in Levels. In most cases, you'll find that the tonal adjustments covered previously will enable you to produce a good adjustment, so you won't generally need to use the Brightness adjustment. However, it is a simple way to fine-tune the overall brightness of your image if you find that necessary.
Contrast
Many photographers like to boost the contrast of their images, and in fact many images benefit from an increase in contrast. However, in the case of a RAW conversion, I don't recommend boosting the contrast to the point that the image seems ready to print, simply because it means you are sacrificing too much information in the image at this early stage. Also, you've already established a basic contrast adjustment for the image by adjusting the Exposure and Blacks sliders as outlined earlier. Therefore, I recommend that you not adjust the Contrast slider at all. Doing so will only undo the careful work you did to expand tonal range with the Exposure and Blacks adjustments.
Color Adjustments
Below the tonal adjustments in the Basic section for Camera Raw, you'll find some color adjustments. The first is a checkbox to convert the image to grayscale. However, I do not recommend that you use this option. Instead, perform your grayscale conversions using the new Black And White adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 and discussed in Chapter 11, "Creative Adjustments."
Vibrance
The next color adjustment is the Vibrance slider. This slider is very similar to the Saturation slider, except it produces a more subtle adjustment so you don't have to worry too much about oversaturating the image and producing posterization or artificial colors. It also does an intelligent job of adjusting the colors, producing a less intense effect with skin tones, for example. To increase the vibrance of colors in your image, simply move this slider to the right.
Saturation
The Saturation slider allows you to adjust the intensity of the colors, but it isn't as sophisticated as the Vibrance adjustment. Therefore, I recommend that you not use the Saturation adjustment, instead work with the Vibrance adjustment. If the Vibrance setting doesn't produce a strong enough effect, I still wouldn't use the Saturation slider. Instead, wait until the image is converted and then use an adjustment layer to boost the saturation.
For more information on RAW capture, see JPEG vs. RAW: The Advantages and Disadvantages Explained. For more info on Tim Grey's Photoshop CS3 Workflow, visit the Wiley Publishing Website.
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