Mystery Shadow adjustment

[Joe]

I guess in their infinite wisdom, Adobe that is, figured 35% is a good starting point. But I agree 0% would be a good place to start. I mean that is where most of the other tools start. :laugh:

[frailer]

I thought I'd tripped over a hidden, unapplied, adjustment. Not so.    Well, Abode's blanket one, not the customer's...   :laugh:

[Fontaholic]

BTW, I use S/H a lot and if you use it on color images, it tends to alter the colors, often in a bad way. To get around this, I like to apply the S/H adjustment I want, then immediately go to Edit>Fade... and change the setting to Luminosity. This brings the colors back to where they were, but still keeps the S/H adjustment.

 

I shall have to remember this!

Mostly I use S/H for grayscale images (less altering of the image's colors), but sometimes we get stuck with a color photo where the people are barely visible because of the bright sky/background, and I have to monkey around with the color settings to try and get the skin tones to something approaching human...

Cheers, John the Fontaholic

[DCurry]

Another drop in my PhSh knowledge bucket. Distinct ping as it hits the 2" at the bottom.  :laugh:
Now, why is there a 'phantom default' in there at all? Is it assumed that most pics will need that, on average. Why is it not zero, therefore for user-defining as needed? 

The number it starts at is arbitrary. 35 is simply a starting point so you can see some sort of change, then it is up to you to manipulate the settings as you please. Nothing is actually applied and whatever number it defaults to has no effect on the image whatsoever until you hit OK.

[t-pat]

BTW, I use S/H a lot and if you use it on color images, it tends to alter the colors, often in a bad way. To get around this, I like to apply the S/H adjustment I want, then immediately go to Edit>Fade... and change the setting to Luminosity. This brings the colors back to where they were, but still keeps the S/H adjustment.

 

I shall have to remember this!

Mostly I use S/H for grayscale images (less altering of the image's colors), but sometimes we get stuck with a color photo where the people are barely visible because of the bright sky/background, and I have to monkey around with the color settings to try and get the skin tones to something approaching human...

Cheers, John the Fontaholic

Is this affected or helped in any way by setting the "color correction" slider in s/h to none?

[Fontaholic]

Is this affected or helped in any way by setting the "color correction" slider in s/h to none?

Honestly, it varies from photo to photo, but usually moving the "color correction" slider doesn't help much.

I've found that most people "in shadow" have a heavy blue cast to their skin after enough S/H has been applied to make their features visible.

Cheers, John the Fontaholic

[swampymarsh]

Although 35% is the default, one can hold down OPT/ALT when applying S/H and the last used value in that open session will populate in the field, this is common for many Photoshop commands with the ellipsis marks...