What does 'fill light' do in ACR...

... and how does it differ from the 'shadows' bit of Shadows/Highlights?

I mean, I can see that they both make the dark bits lighter.

But 'fill light' seems to work a lot better on very underexposed areas, in the sense that the result isn't as unnatural.

I'll post a couple of examples when I get a sec, but in the meantime I'm interested in what the controls actually do.

Hi Chris,

I use fill light, especially now I have the K5, but am starting to move more towards "shadows" in photoshop - the problem I find with fill is that there isn't enough control and it lifts areas of the photo that i don't want it too, the shadows option has much more fine tuning control.

Simon

Chris you can see in the histogram a bit what it does.
Fill light seem to move a lot more in the photo to make it more graduate, the option in the curve menu are far more restricted.

@Simon, in lightroom 3 you can use the "selective brush" too pull things up selectively.

Simon, if you use a layer you can "paint" on/off where you want or don't want the adjustments.

Surely you only have layers once you leave ACR though? By then the fill light has done it's job and acted as a fill light.

I only have Elements so my ACR is different but fill light is supposed to do what it says and act as if you had used a fill light when you took the photo. Obviously it isn't as good as a fill light would have been but it's not bad if used carefully. Don't use it to lift very dark shadows - play with the other controls for that.

Yes you don't have layers in ACR but in the newest ACR and lightroom you can apply adjustment selectively.

I'm using CS4 so don't have the ability to tweak fill in ACR - 2 option I guess, either stick with shadows in photoshop or upgrade to CS5

3th option is to buy lightroom 3.

ACR ?

Adobe Camera Raw, the RAW converter built inot Photoshop.

It's available with Elements 9, too. Version 6.4.1.

Does the "tone adjustment" tool in LR not do the same as "shadows" in photoshop?

Here are a few versions of a picture I've applied different lightening effects to. I've done nothing other than what's stated, apart from resizing to a height of 600 px.

Here's the original - just opened from ACR with no changes:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-orig.jpg[/IMG]

Next, Fill Light to 80%:

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-FL80.jpg[/IMG]

Shadows adjustment (Amount 60, Tonal width 28, Radius 30):

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-shad-602830.jpg[/IMG]

And finally levels adjustment. Since on the histogram, the bright window is a bump at the extreme right hand end, I moved the middle slider down to the right hand edge of the big bump corresponding to the dark area at the left hand end of the histogram.

[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Technical/IMGP0214-600-lvls-mid.jpg[/IMG]

Of the three edits, the Fill Light version is the most realistic, closely followed by the Levels version - based on my memory of the scene. I was in Edinburgh on Tuesday - this is the interior of St Giles cathedral on the Royal Mile.

If anyone is interested enough to play with the DNG themselves, let me know and I'll put it online somewhere.

Does LR3 allow "actions" to be used Stefan - I have quite a few set up in photoshop to speed up the workflow?

Lightroom use ACR aswell.

Lightroom is different to photoshop, the stuff you've with ACR you also have in lightroom to edit with but not much if any more.
You don't really have actions they more come down to presets and you can make your own.

Here you can download presets to give you an idea.
http://lightroomkillertips.com/category/presets/

Lightroom replace ACR in your workflow with photoshop and adds to that also a catalogue system and a print module, so basicly you can manage your photos with lightroom, it also opens PSD.

Most of the edits i do with the photo are now done in lightroom only if i need to do a bit more, i go into photoshop.
LR works quite fast compared to PS, it just much more convenient it's ACR and bridge build into one.