HOW IT WORKS PICTURE CONTROL

Adjust a photo’s colour, sharpness and tone fast using presets and sliders

01 Picture Control

To summon the Picture Control panel with its colour, tone and sharpness-tweaking sliders, click on this icon in the Edit palette’s tool list.

02 Pull-down menu

You can quickly access a range of Picture Control presets from this dropdown menu in the Edit palette’s tool list. There’s also an identical dropdown menu in the Picture Control image adjustment palette below. The Standard and Neutral presets produce fairly desaturated colours and low-contrast shots, enabling you to use the sliders in the Picture Control panel below to boost saturation and increase contrast manually. You can always reset the image to Recorded Value to view the results of the in-camera Picture Control settings. If you want a more colourful print, try the Vivid preset. The Monochrome preset removes all colour information. You can then fine-tune the results using the image adjustment palette. The DXMODE presets produce similar results to the corresponding Color Mode settings for D2x and D2xs cameras. The Portraits preset will help produce natural-looking complexions without oversaturating skin tones and making them look too orange.

03 Check box

You can make as make as many changes to a Picture Control’s attributes as you like, to experiment with different looks. To quickly hide the changes and see the image as it was captured, simply untick this check box. Tick and untick it to toggle between a before and after version of the image.

04 Fly-out menu

By clicking here you can undock the Edit palette and place it anywhere on the screen. Clicking it again will dock the palette in its locked-off starting position.

05 Latest Picture Control

If you have an old camera you can still apply newer Picture Control settings to your photographs (such as Flat) using this dropdown option. To use the same Picture Control settings as your camera, choose Camera compatible.

06 Quick Adjust

This slider provides a quick way to fine-tune the results of a Picture Control preset by allowing you to dial down the intensity of its results by dragging it to the left, or increase the intensity by dragging it to the right.

07 Sharpening

Give your subject more impact by increasing the contrast around edges so that they stand out more and appear sharper. This is especially worth doing if you’re planning to print your processed image.

08 Clarity

This slider increases midtone contrast, which is an effective way of teasing out texture and detail and creating a print with more punch.

09 Contrast

Give an image more impact and make textures stand out by creating blacker blacks and whiter whites with this slider.

10 Hue

When using colour Picture Control settings, subtly adjust the colour Hue with this slider. This slider will be greyed out if you choose the

Monochrome Picture Control.