Your picture is probably looking pretty good at this point, but ACR has many more tricks up its sleeve for fine-tuning your adjustments.
We still have a few more tools in the Basic tab to cover. If you'd like to add a little midtone contrast to your image, try moving the Clarity slider to the right. This provides a little "snap" to your image, but it doesn't affect the very bright or dark areas.
Vibrance is another intelligent control that boosts color in areas of lower saturation. What's nice about this control is that it does a decent job of protecting skin tones while adding saturation to other elements in the composition.
And if you want to increase or decrease the saturation of all the colors in the image, use the Saturation slider.
Setting | Result |
|---|---|
Clarity | Provides a midtone contrast boost with mild sharpening |
Vibrance | Boosts low-saturated colors; protects skin tones |
Saturation | Applies an across-the-board saturation boost |
Some images may require more precise tonal adjustments that go beyond the work you did in the Basic tab. Fortunately, the Tone Curve tab is designed for that. You can use the traditional "point curve" approach, but I prefer the newer parametric controls that let you adjust your curve using four properties sliders: Highlights, Lights, Darks, and Shadows. Let's start there.
The first thing that jumps out at you in the Tone Curve tab is the big graphical area that shows the histogram for your image in gray with a grid superimposed over it. This histogram is for reference, representing all the tones in your image—darks on the left, spanning to lights on the right—and it doesn't change shape as you make your adjustments. (The histogram at the top of the interface is active and will show you your changes.) A diagonal line goes from one corner of the Tone Curve histogram to the other. As you move the four sliders at the bottom, the diagonal line changes shape to represent your tonal adjustments. The lower end of the diagonal represents dark tones and the upper end is for light tones.
At the base of the grid are three "region markers" that let you determine the sizes of the areas affected by your changes. For the time being, you don't have to worry about this. The current positions of the region markers will serve you just fine as you get comfortable working with curves. By default, they divide the histogram equally into four tonal sections (from left to right): shadows, darks, lights, and highlights, as indicated by the vertical grid lines. However, you can resize those equal proportions by moving a region marker to the left or right. So, for example, if you want your highlights adjustment to affect a larger area, move the highlight region marker (the one on the right) to the left. Now, when you move the Highlights properties slider, it will affect a greater area of your image. As I said, this isn't something you would need to play with at first. But keep it in your back pocket for the future.
What you do want to focus on are the four properties sliders that let you perfect your image's tonal adjustments. As you move the Highlights triangle to the right, you'll see changes to the brightest areas of your photograph. You'll also see the shape of the diagonal line bow outward at the top. If you move the Shadows slider to the left, you'll see the shadow areas of the image get darker and the diagonal line bow out in the opposite direction. You've now made a classic "S" curve adjustment, which increases the contrast of your image.
The nice thing about curves, unlike the Contrast adjustment in the Basic tab, is that you can play with just the shadows or just the highlights instead of having to change them in tandem. The Tone Curve controls are also very precise and provide graphical feedback as you manipulate them. And if you create settings that you want to keep and apply to other images, just choose Save Settings from the Settings pop-up menu and give your custom adjustment a descriptive label. That custom adjustment will then appear in the Settings pop-up menu for use in the future.
Even though there is no "right way" to use the Tone Curve tool, you do want to keep a few things in mind. Generally, these are subtle adjustments with gentle curve patterns. You should avoid "cliffs" and "plateaus" in your curve, because such patterns result in unnatural tone distribution and your picture won't look right. I also tend to stay away from adjustments that move the line parallel to the top and bottom of the graph, because that means I have clipping in the highlights and shadows.
If you're more comfortable adjusting your curve using points, click the Point tab, choose a starting profile from the Curve pop-up menu, and drag the points on the curve to fine-tune your adjustment.
Figure 4-10. The bottom histogram shows my original image. In this case, it's lacking information in the highlight area as indicated by the pointer. So I moved the Highlights slider to +65. The top histogram shows my adjustment with information in the highlights.
If you want to work on a specific area of the image, put your mouse pointer on that tonal area, hold down the ⌘ key (Ctrl on Windows), and click. A point for that area will be added to the curve graph, and you can now move the point to adjust that specific tone. I like to use the up and down arrows for this adjustment because that's easier than dragging the point marker. If you want to remove a point, click it once and press the Delete key.
I've found that it's easier to control curve adjustments with fewer points. I generally work with three or four points on a curve. Even though I prefer the parametric adjustments for the bulk of my work, I do use points when I want to target a specific tone.
Just as the adjustments in the Tone Curve tab let you fine-tune your lights and darks, the sliders in the HSL/Grayscale tab let you work on specific colors. You have eight color types to work with: reds, oranges, yellows, greens, aquas, blues, purples, and magentas. The first three color types are those we usually find in skin tones.
Once you start working with a color type—reds, for example—you can tweak its hue, saturation, and luminance. That's where the HSL part of the tab gets its name:
Hue Lets you adjust the character of a color. Do you want your yellow to be more orangish or greenish?
Saturation Lets you adjust the intensity of the color.
Luminance Determines how bright or dark the color will be.
At first, you may wonder, "Well, how am I going to use this?" I'll give you a practical example. Let's say you have a landscape shot with a blue sky, clouds, and some foliage in the foreground. The sky looks nice, but you want a little more drama.
Start with the Hue tab to adjust the Blues slider so that the sky is the exact color you want (sometimes the Cyan is a better choice; experiment as needed). Then go to the Saturation tab and increase the intensity of the Blue. Finally, hop over to the Luminance tab to darken the sky a bit, thereby making the clouds jump out more. The effect you've just created in the HSL tab is very similar to what you could've achieved with a polarizing filter, if you happened to have one with you that day. Had you forgotten it, then you have ACR to help you reenact a similar effect.
Another popular use of HSL is to fine-tune skin tones. By working with the Reds, Oranges, and Yellows sliders, you can correct or even improve the appearance of your subjects. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that if those colors appear in other areas of the image, those areas will also be affected. So, if your subject is wearing a yellow shirt while you're adjusting her skin tones, the color of her shirt will change too.
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