So I've found that I LOVE the clarity slider in ACR. What exactly does it do? Shadows and highlights?

local contrast, I believe.

It's awesome for some things. Others I don't like it.

I have found it a good way to do some minor smoothing of skin.

From Adobe.com:

Clarity, Saturation, and Vibrance controls in Camera Raw

You can change the color saturation (vividness or color purity) of all colors by adjusting the Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation controls on the Basic tab. (To adjust saturation for a specific range of colors, use the controls on the HSL / Grayscale tab.)

Clarity Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast. This setting is similar to a large-radius unsharp mask. When using this setting, it is best to zoom in to 100% or greater. To maximize the effect, increase the setting until you see halos near the edge details of the image and then reduce the setting slightly.

Vibrance Adjusts the saturation so that clipping is minimized as colors approach full saturation, changing the saturation of all lower-saturated colors with less effect on the higher-saturated colors. Vibrance also prevents skin tones from becoming oversaturated.

Saturation Adjusts the saturation of all image colors equally from ‑100 (monochrome) to +100 (double the saturation).



The cool thing about Vibrance is it's like a smart Saturation slider. I don't ever touch the Sat. slider anymore and I never boost saturation after converting to jpg after learning this.

good to know! thanks

Originally Posted by tardypizza

wordwordswords

Originally Posted by Markitos

local contrast, I believe.

Originally Posted by Markitos

Don't blame me that my copy/paste helped more than your terse response.

Tersy McTersynstein.

Originally Posted by tardypizza

Don't blame me that my copy/paste helped more than your terse response.

Tersy McTersynstein.

yeah, clarity has found it's way into my workflow as well as vibrance since I've been using RAWs on and off.