DPP Exercise12 - Managing Tone

The image began as raw file and was converted using the raw converter in Adobe Bridge. All sliders were set to zero prior to any adjustments.

The white point was established by using the Exposure slider moving it to the right until highlight clipping was first shown. The slider was then moved to the left until the highlight clipping warning disappeared.

The only shadow clipping was shown to be in the wheel arch of the tractor and in small areas of the tractor engine. Moving the Exposure slider failed to produce a satisfactory result not least because in order to remove the shadow clipping the highlight clipping became worse affecting much of the image. I therefore used the Adjustment tool to lighten the wheel arch and engine block sufficiently to remove the clipping warning.

Set the White Balance of the image by using the White Balance tool picking a neutral area (R G & B values all equal) in the tyre wall.

The tone curve was used to increase the contrast particularly in the area of the cut wheat stalks. Getting this 'correct' required further adjustment to the shadows in the wheel arch but this was minimal and it is questionable whether the area was important enough to warrant further adjustment.

I have found through a great deal of use of the raw converter that it is an iterative process where there is a need to return to adjusted areas to achieve the best overall balance. 

I cropped the image in Photoshop and changed the mode to 8 bits and then saved it for the Web as a jpg.

Although the Course material suggests doing this exercise twice once with a raw image and again with a TIFF or JPEG image I could not see what value this would have because the raw converter I use works on TIFF and JPEG files. Although there would have been minor differences in the values of the sliders in the JPEG file and possibly the TIFF file the same actions would have been carried out.

This is the first time that I had come across the terms white point and black point. I made the assumption that these were synonymous with 'shadow' and 'highlight'.