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Adobe Camera Raw 8.4.1 - part 6 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published 01/08/2014

The original tones are shown in the centre of the patches and the outer parts are adjusted with 20 Vibrance points. Note the difference in effect depending upon the starting tone.

What do the Presence Sliders do?

Clarity

This changes the mid-tone contrast and 'appears' to sharpen up an image. In the composite diagram the levels in Clarity have been incremented from zero to 100 in steps of 20. By the time you get to 100 the effect is a little surreal and akin to an HDR processing filter.

We applied a Clarity value of 100 to a test target then super-imposed the original, unaltered tone values as stripes down the middle. Two things are striking; the saturation values are reduced by around 20% and the patches become darker. The changes are related to surrounding tones - note the

'fingernail' cuticles on the grey patches and the slight haloes around the transitions.

A value of 30 used to be regarded as a starting point for Clarity settings on a landscape. This needs review in line with the knowledge that the strength of the new version is doubled.

Even so for the very dull landscape shot in the example, we pushed the Clarity up to 38 points without ill effect.

Clarity can rescue an otherwise dull, flat scene. It will never overcome a lack of really good light but that is not always available

Vibrance

Vibrance enhances the saturation of tones, on a sliding scale. The saturation is increased more on nearer-neutral tones while bright vibrant ones are left untouched. This is to prevent

clipping of the colours out wide in the gamut field.

Vibrance is useful in bringing up the skin tones in a portrait without oversaturating the surrounding colours from say clothes, flowers and so forth.

Saturation

This slider increments all the tone saturations by similar amounts regardless of the starting saturation. Those tones starting with high saturation values are driven to clipping straight away.

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1st Published 01/08/2014
last update 09/12/2022 14:50:49

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