Re: Trying to understand histogram/cache
OK, just a few things that I thought of. Most of it is pretty straightforward, so I apologize in advance if it seems like I'm underestimating your ability. With Photoshop's ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) plug-in, the default setting for the "Shadows" slider is 5. Solving your shadow-clipping problem could be as simple as running this slider back down to 0. With the default setting, I too generally find it clips the shadows a bit. If you still see clipping in the shadows with the slider set to 0, then the problem will have to be corrected in the camera settings. I take mine one step further, however. I've created a preference with every slider set to zero, called (you guessed it) zero. I then set that preference as the "default", so clicking the default tab automatically sets all tabs to zero. Combined with turning off all in-camera adjustments, this gives me the unaltered view of what the camera captured. I've learned a lot by doing this. In the beginning, my exposures were WAY underexposed, and the Auto tab in ACR always corrected them. Nowadays, my images need must less adjustment- always a good thing. One more tip. Instead of simply opening a Raw file, Create a new document with the same pixel dimensions the image has. Make sure you choose the 16-bit option in the dialog box. Once you have the new document open, go to File> Place, and choose your Raw file. The advantages outweigh the tediousness. Once opened, you can double-click on the placed layer to re-open the ACR settings and change them. You can also place the Raw file more than once, say to adjust for highlights and shadows separately, then blend the two layers with the Blend If: sliders under the Layer> Blending Options menu. This is, in fact, the first step in hand-merging HDR images, an incredibly tedious, yet wholly fulfilling task. You eliminate a LOT of the overprocessed surreal look. - Joe U.