Shadows in Camera Raw??

[stephen]

Am i doing something wrong because my "shadows" slider in Camera Raw is always on the very left and i cannot move it any more that way to lighten the shadows if i need to.Does this mean i am underexposing all my shots?. Thanks in advance Stephen

[DaveB]

Yes it sounds like you might be underexposing your shots, but you should be able to tell that simply by looking at the histogram. Ideally the tweaks to the ACR controls will only be subtle.

By moving the Shadows control to the right you can stretch the dark end of your exposure down closer to black.
By manipulating the Exposure control you can move the other end of your exposure (by stretching the histogram you will see it also affects the shadows a bit). The Brightness control can be used to brighten the shadows also (essentially by changing the slope of the conversion curve).

But if you have to boost the shadows you'll be boosting the area of your images most likely to contain noise...