# difference between highlight and shadow slider VS Tone curve



## alaios (Jan 25, 2016)

Dear all,
what is the difference between the sliders, white, black,shadows and highlights compared to the tone curve.
I do not think that these two are exactly the same think.

Any ideas?

Regards
Alex


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## Victoria Bampton (Jan 25, 2016)

You're right, they're not the same.

The Highlights and Shadows sliders in the Basic panel build a mask to limit the effect of the slider to part of the tonal range. This means that brightening the shadows has the greatest effect on the darkest shadows, tapering off to a minimal effect on the highlights and vice versa. 

The tone curve, on the other hand, doesn’t build a mask. There’s always a trade-off. If you increase the shadows to see more detail, you also brighten the highlights. If you then pull the the highlights back down, you flatten the contrast in the midtones. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad tool to use, but it’s different.


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## davidedric (Jan 26, 2016)

Another difference is that Shadows doesn't just increase the tone separation in the darkest tones, it also add a kind of "inverse gradient" to help the tones appear more separate.

You can see this if you look at an image of a grey step wedge.  Before any processing, each step in the wedge is represented by a single vertical line in the histogram.  Pull up the Shadows, and you will see the lines broaden out.  Look at the image and you can see the gradients between the steps.

Clever stuff!

Dave


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## Jimmsp (Jan 26, 2016)

davidedric said:


> .....
> 
> Clever stuff!
> 
> Dave



Yes it is.

And one of the features that I use a lot is the shadows or highlights with the adjustment brush. This ability to use it locally is very complementary to the curves adjustment which is global in area (as well as tones).


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 27, 2016)

Back when most editing was in Photoshop, and Curves was the best tool we had, most contrast adjustments were Curves early and often, and we manually masked them off for different areas.

But now the Shadows, Highlights, and Clarity sliders can do the big moves more easily, so a lot of images don't need a Tone Curve at all. If a very specific tonal range needs a bit of snap then I'll apply a Tone Curve tweak last, after the Basic sliders. I think that's why Lightroom is designed with the Basic sliders before the Tone Curve.

One thing you can do with the Tone Curve that you can't do with the Basic sliders is adjust each RGB channel separately.


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## gpsmikey (Jan 29, 2016)

I have not had a chance to play with it much in LR yet, but at least in Camera Raw, be aware that bringing up the shadows slider also tends to increase the noise so you have to adjust for that (you have to zoom in on the image to see the noise - they say to 100%) since the noise tends to lurk in the shadows.  You get bitten on that backlit image of someone when you bring them up to correctly exposed.


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