Exercise: Managing tone

This exercise looks at managing the tone in an image by setting the black and white points, adjusting midtones/brightness/contrast and any other local adjustments.

I have to do this to the JPEG image and the raw image and compare the two.

JPEG

I set he black and white points and then adjusted the midtones slightly.  I adjusted the exposure by -0.30.  I also cropped the image to remove distracting objects in the corners of the image.

Raw

With the raw image I set the black and white points, I adjusted the contrast to +30 (+5) and the brightness to +43 (-7).
I cropped the image to remove distracting objects in the corners and made local adjustments using the brush tool to the jackets the people were wearing to bring out more of the detail.

I experimented with the tone curve and found that any adjustments made the contrast using this tool would have to be very subtle.

From this exercise, I learnt how to optimise and make adjustments to JPEGs.  I usually only do this level of adjustments to raw files.

I think that the raw conversion is slightly better than the JPEG but this may not be down to the file format and the conversion alone but also to the fact that I am more comfortable working with Raw images.