In PE I think it's still possible to use the Curves dialog. It's
just much harder to locate than the brightness/contrast one. Try
Help. Or try Cmd-C and see if it comes up. I suppose on a PC it's
Ctr-C. Keep experimenting.
Curves is much more controllable than b/c. You can pin any place
along it to hold that factor steady while you adjust others. With
b/c you're pretty much stuck with crude adjustments.
If you can't find Curves, Levels will also give you somewhat more control.
As a final resort try dodging and burning, especially for complicated
places like eye sockets. But that's the final step.
The biggest problem with these adjustments in PS/PE is that they
always leave your histogram with big combing - places where data is
just lost.
That's another wonderful thing about RAW. When you do all those
adjustments in the RAW dialog, you don't end up with a combed
histogram.
As for clipping the ends of the histogram, be careful. It may make
the picture look snappier, but it may take something out that you
want. For instance, last night I was shooting the moonrise over a
harbor, and it was pretty foggy. The wind has been howling here for
a week and the surf has been blown all over everything making lots of
moisture in the air, not to mention the deluges we've had falling out
of the sky.
Clipping the dark end of the histogram cleared all that out. But it
was no longer the foggy moonrise over the harbor. It was now a clear
moonrise over the harbor.
Useful when you've gotten mist on the lens but not necessarily what
you saw or wanted to record.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
