Comments on: Lightroom – Exposure vs. Brightness

By: Essex Wedding Photography

Essex Wedding Photography — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 18:16:04 +0000

I found this very informative, it’s an issue I have often experimented with, quite often I will reduce the exposure and at the same time increase the exposure to improve the overall ohoto.

By: Andrew Graeme Gould

Andrew Graeme Gould — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 02:23:36 +0000

Really well explained with those images. Thanks for all the hard work you put in on this.

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:17:12 +0000

“Exposure” sets the white point.
“Blacks” set the black point.
“Brightness” adjusts midtones.

That’s the Bruce Fraser way

By: Blaine

Blaine — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:04:00 +0000

Great post, Matt, and fabulous comments, y’all! I have wondered about that color shift a few times and this helps give me some understanding on how best to deal with it, while getting the maximum the file is capable of.

By: Ronan O Keeffe

Ronan O Keeffe — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:25:18 +0000

Thanks to both Matt and Page for these great tips!

By: Miro

Miro — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:13:05 +0000

That’s very helpful study, absolutely!!! Thank you.

I want to ask you about the brightness and contrast sliders:

when I open a RAW file (Canon CR2) in Develop module the brightness and contrast are set to default at respectively +50 and +25. Even if I change these and then double click on “brightness” and “contrast”, they come back to +50 and +25.
The weird thing comes when I go to Library module and double click on “brightness” and “contrast” – that resets both sliders to 0 (you now can see both zeroed in Develop module).

So what are the base values for contrast and brightness in RAW files – +50 and +25; or 0 and 0.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:53:57 +0000

Prior to watching a video where you increased the brightness to brighten an image, I had always just used exposure, but now I tend to lean toward the brightness slider, especially w/ the brush tool. Thanks for all the tips!

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:04:10 +0000

Hi Matt,

I included the first image in this post to answer a question on photo.stackexchange.com (see http://bit.ly/dpFLJD). I also included a link to this page since you obviously hold the credit for providing us with this great information. If you don’t agree with me using the image I will remove it.

Thanks,
Marc

By: Jim Camelford

Jim Camelford — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:51:02 +0000

There’s a very straightforward explanation … And if you open an image or create a grayscale with a histogram that looks has lots of space on the left and right with all the gray spiked in the middle you can see it clearly. Like an upside down U.

When you adjust exposure to the left or right it will march the histogram right off the left or right edges. It looks pretty linear. The bits drop right off.

When you adjust brightness it crashes the values up on the left or right side and doesn’t run them off the chart – so it has the effect of retaining or protecting the bright or dark values.

By: Alan Hough

Alan Hough — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:38:06 +0000

Thanks for passing on the Brightness tip.
Went and adjusted last photo shoot and there certainly is a nice difference.
Thanks.