Enhance Lighting Help, PLEASE

[tomlaronge]

I find that if I am printing photographs taken in bright sunlight that the "Enhance Lighting-shadows/highlight" adjustments of the PSE 4.0 Standard Edit function is most helpful to reduce shadow density, balance midtone contrast and minimize excessive highlights. What i do not understand is what is the purpose of the eyedropper that shows up when the curser is on the image and off of the adjustment window?

What is a good workflow for using the "Enhanced Lighting" adjustments?

With appreciation,
Tom

[Byron Gale]

..."Enhance Lighting-Shadows/highlight" ...what is the purpose of the eyedropper ...Tom,

I'd never noticed that before. When using the Shadows/Highlights feature, the Eyedropper tool on the toolbar becomes the active tool, and the cursor changes to the Eyedropper when you move it over the image window.

If you click with the eyedropper during this time, it samples the image to set the Foreground color. But I cannot see that this has anything at all to do with the Shadows/Highlights feature.

My guess is that "big" Photoshop has additional options in the Shadows/Highlights feature which make use of the Eyedropper, but those options are omitted from the Elements version - and the behavior of the cursor is a left-over artifact that means nothing.

Of course, I could be all wet. :p

Byron

[tomlaronge]

Byron,
Thanks much. Your observations are the same as are mine. I really felt curious and stupid when I realized the eyedropper appeared. I have been using the "Enhance Lighting" tool for a wide variety of overall image contrast modification without color shifting. I truly like this technique as it is close to the old fashioned darkroom paper/developer selection process for contrast control. To me this is a photographic printing control as opposed to what i think of as a graphic artist's tool. In my pea brain thigoes along with the KISS Principle. I try to print with the absolute fewest possible image altering maneuvers and I concentrate on getting good exposures and well-cropped images in the camera.
Thank you once again for your comments.
Regards,
Tom