Effects vs Local adjustment

Steven Kurzrok

• March 06, 2023 18:45

I typically do local adjustments by masking an area and applying an effects filter. Some do similar work by applying a masked local adjustment. Is there any reason to work predominantly in effects or local adjustments (or both) or is it just two different ways of doing the same work?

 

Steve

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  Brian Lawson Community moderator

  • March 06, 2023 19:19

  It can make a difference where you do the edits - Local Adjustment vs Effects. It has to do with the Editing Pipeline which is the order in which the program applies the edits to our images (see page 74 in the User Guide).

  As an example, add a Tone Enhancer Effect. Set its Blending Mode to Multiply. This will make the image very dark and saturated. Now try to remove some of that darkness with the Tone Enhancer's sliders. You won't see much affect. Reset them to 0 then add a Local Adjustment. Invert the mask so what you do will have an affect on the photo. Now use the Black, Shadows, and Exposure sliders to remove some of that darkness. You'll see you have much greater control over the look of the image. This is because Local Adjustments are handled before Effects and that is affecting how the Multiply blend is done. (It's like a double-exposure or stacking to pieces of film together.)

  You'll also notice there are different controls in the Tone Enhancer than in the Local Adjustment. LA has Midtones, Saturation, and Vibrance sliders that TE does not. The TE has some controls that LA does not.

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