Brightness vs. Exposure

[Crabbe]

Super discussion!! However, I am VERY non-technical. I can follow directions, but when it comes to photos, I mess around with PS7 until it looks good and then print. Brightness and exposure are taken care of via curves, levels, and the use of layers. This thread is an example why I like CiC. Keep it up.
Charley

[Tim]

I found this video to be very helpful when trying to understand the effect of the Exposure and Brightness sliders. The image that he uses as an example illustrates things perfectly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cWsiqunvJU

Tim, currently in Kuala Lumpur

[Simon Garrett]

Just to make life interesting, the sliders will change in LR4 (and I assume ACR whatever in Photoshop CS6). All the basic exposure-related controls have been redesigned. Hey ho...

[Colin Southern]

Just to make life interesting, the sliders will change in LR4 (and I assume ACR whatever in Photoshop CS6). All the basic exposure-related controls have been redesigned. Hey ho...

Oh boy

[Glenn NK]

Oh boy

Oh joy - now I'll have to buy a book on LR 4.

I'm sure there is no collusion between Adobe and the authors?

Glenn

[Colin Southern]

I'm sure there is no collusion between Adobe and the authors?

Oh there absolutely is ... I've watched recorded meetings of the late Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe (Real world series) in a meeting with Thomas Knoll & others.

[herbert]

Just to make life interesting, the sliders will change in LR4 (and I assume ACR whatever in Photoshop CS6). All the basic exposure-related controls have been redesigned. Hey ho...

I've been trying LR4 for some photos to see if the changes are worth it. The new sliders for the exposure controls are a fundamental change. However if you know what you want to do to your photo there is no doubt that the new system can do everything the old system can. So it will not take very long to learn and I don't see the need to get a book for it.

However since I run windows I cannot open LR4 and LR3 at the same time. So I cannot do a true head to head between versions to see if the new system is easier and/or more powerful (although we are told it is). As is usually the case a lot of testing and use will lead me to believe that Adobe know what they are doing.

At current I am sticking with LR3 since I do not trust beta software. I'll let others iron out the bugs before I jump.

Alex

[Simon Garrett]

I agree about not trusting beta software. Adobe make it quite clear this isn't safe on production work, and should be used only on copies of photos.

However, you can install LR4 beta on Windows without removing LR3. Unlike production software, this beta doesn't replace previous versions. It won't let you run both at the same time, but in LR4 you have access to both the new "PV (Process Version) 2012" and the old "PV 2010" sliders and processing. I've done a relatively few tests and the sliders certainly work very differently, but I think the overall result varies from "no difference" to "better". It seems a lot better at preserving highlights, for example.

[DanK]

If I am not mistaken, this is all changing in LR 4 anyway, which I think is a good thing. I found that not having a simple white point adjustment and gamma adjustment just made things harder.

[berryhalle]

Do you know the difference between brightness, fill light and exposure? When editing your photos in Lightroom, Photoshop, ACR, etc. it can seem that playing with certain sliding bars all produces the same result: your photos get brighter. But what’s actually happening and how do you know which to choose?

Exposure – Shifting your exposure is like changing the in-camera settings in post-production. To be more technical, it scales the settings up and down by a constant multiplying factor. Moving this slider either increases or decreases all of the elements that go into obtaining the correct exposure at once.

Brightness – Brightness is commonly known as the slider that adjusts the midtones. And although many people think that this is all the brightness sliders do, there’s a little more to it. All of the settings still change when utilising the brightness slider, but it preserves the highlights better than simply dialing up the exposure. And it affects the midtones more nicely than pumping up the exposure.

Fill light - The fill light slider brightens the dark bits and pretty much leaves everything else alone unlike brightness and exposure which lighten everything at once. Adjusting fill light can be a good way to lighten a photo without clipping the highlights.

Knowing how different adjustments are affecting your work will give you more power to make informed decisions about how to treat your shots in post-production. Have fun!

[Simon Garrett]

Agreed, but of course it all changes with the new processing in LR4 (and the equivalent new ACR for Photoshop CS6). Judging by comments on the Adobe LR4 forum, we've got some re-learning to do!

[ergodus]

great discussion about the exposure and brightness.

as all the mentioned tools manipulate the curve would it make sense to leave the exposure, recovery, black, fill and brightness alone and to manipulate the curve in ACR ?

or is a workflow using exposure, a bit of black and curves in acr better ?

(i deliberately mentioned the curves in acr, and not PS)

whats your position on that ?

[Colin Southern]

great discussion about the exposure and brightness.

as all the mentioned tools manipulate the curve would it make sense to leave the exposure, recovery, black, fill and brightness alone and to manipulate the curve in ACR ?

or is a workflow using exposure, a bit of black and curves in acr better ?

(i deliberately mentioned the curves in acr, and not PS)

whats your position on that ?

From a "results" point of view, it's probably "6 of one & a 1/2 dozen of the other" - but from a "what's easiest perspective", doing initial adjustments to exposure / clipping points / brightness etc is going to be far faster and easier to achieve using the basic ACR sliders.

In reality, I only use curves in ACR when I have "one of those images" that I just can't get right using the basic controls.

Keep in mind too though that if you start with basic adjustments and then add further adjustments via the curves controls from within ACR, you're NOT doing "one adjustment on top of another"; ACR simply combines all of the adjustments into one when the image is passed off to Photoshop (or saved as a JPEG etc).

Hope this helps

PS: I usually find curves in Photoshop give me better results than curves in ACR for some reason (probably due to gamma encoding having already been done).

[Simon Garrett]

Additing to what Colin says, some of the LR4 experts (including Adobe's Eric Chan) suggest there are things you can do in the LR4 basic panel that you simply can't do with curves alone. I certainly find it easier to use the basic panel. The basic panel makes a better job (than I can) of altering one part of the curve while protecting other parts, for example.

[Glenn NK]

Additing to what Colin says, some of the LR4 experts (including Adobe's Eric Chan) suggest there are things you can do in the LR4 basic panel that you simply can't do with curves alone. I certainly find it easier to use the basic panel. The basic panel makes a better job (than I can) of altering one part of the curve while protecting other parts, for example.

Oddly enough, I've found the same thing. I'm going over images in LR4 that were developed in LR3, and getting results I couldn't get before. See my comment Post No.19: Lightoom Users

Glenn

[DavidG]

Re: Brightness vs Exposure, all the responses are talking about brightness & exposure corrections in software.
I use a Nikon D300 & D700. Both have the ability to adjust BRIGHTNESS or EXPOSURE.
I don't get the point.

Dave

[Graystar]

Re: Brightness vs Exposure, all the responses are talking about brightness & exposure corrections in software.
I use a Nikon D300 & D700. Both have the ability to adjust BRIGHTNESS or EXPOSURE.
I don't get the point.

Probably has to do with the fact that the OP asked about software...

"...explain to me the difference between the effect of Brightness vs. Exposure sliders in LR"

[nimitzbenedicto]

I saw in a recent LR4 youtube tutorial, LR4 now treats brightness and exposure as one - exposure?

[AltayHan]

I saw in a recent LR4 youtube tutorial, LR4 now treats brightness and exposure as one - exposure?

Yes ... exposure slider is a tool for controlling total image brightness.

Increasing it squeezes the tones from midtones to highlight tones (as a result it decreases detail in highlights) and provides more room for the tones from dark to midtones ... that is, it has similar effect with pulling the curves upward from the midtones in the curves adjustment tool in Photoshop. But, exposure slider is treating the middle point differently for each image by looking at the tonal distribution.

[RonH]

Great thread, thanks all.
But I have to say that whilst I am usually bright I am presently suffering from a bit of exposure up here in the north. Might be having an effect on my learning ability