In time, you may find that you prefer to double-click a thumbnail and
have it open in Camera Raw in the Bridge. If so, press Esc to return to the
Bridge, choose Edit→Preferences (Adobe Bridge CS5→Preferences on
the Mac), click General, and turn on the Double-Click Edits Camera Raw
Settings in Bridge check box. Now click OK, double-click the Checkers.
dng thumbnail, and watch the image open in Camera Raw in the Bridge.
- Adjust the highlights, shadows, and midtones. The Basic panel
includes a collection of sliders that allow you to control the
exposure and overall brightness of your images. Very briefly,
here’s how the options work:- Exposure gives you control over the highlights of an image,
much like the white slider triangle in the Levels dialog box
but with two big differences. First, Exposure is computed in
f-stops. For example, raising the Exposure to +0.50 simulates
opening the lens aperture of the camera a half-stop wider.
Second, because a raw image includes colors beyond those
rendered in the preview, you can sometimes use Exposure
to recover blown highlights, as we will shortly. - Recovery allows you to darken your highlights, reining
them in from the extremes without affecting the exposure
of the entire image. - Fill Light brightens the shadows independently of the high-
lights. Recovery and Fill Light work much like the Amount
values in the Shadows/Highlights dialog box. - Blacks sets the black point of your image, permitting you
to set the clipping point for shadows. It works just like the
black slider triangle in Photoshop’s Levels dialog box. - The Brightness value controls the midtones. It’s computed
as a percentage of an image’s original linear luminance
data. This data requires lots of darkening, which is why
the default value is 50 percent. Values below 50 percent
compress shadows and expand highlights, thereby lighten-
ing an image. Values over 50 percent do just the opposite,
darkening the image. - Increase the Contrast value to exaggerate the difference be-
tween shadows and highlights, creating a valley in the center
of the histogram. Decrease the value to converge shadows
and highlights into the midtones, so the histogram looks
more like a central mountain.
- Exposure gives you control over the highlights of an image,
308 Lesson 9: Pro Photography Tools