Editing Raw files: the Basic tab

This section includes a more detailed description of what the many Camera RAW tools offer the photographer. To achieve significant changes and improvements to your images, concentrate on the following:

• White Balance: Using this, you can easily reset your white balance setting to whatever you need (that is, reset from Shady to Daylight, Tungsten, Flash, or even back to Auto). It also allows you to refine the color using the blue/yellow or magenta/green sliders.
• Exposure: This is also called brightness. It's used to brighten/darken the initial exposure if needed. (Note: this does not recover tones if the file is grossly over or underexposed.)
• Contrast: Quite different from Exposure, Contrast darkens the darker parts of the file while lightening the lighter parts of the image, resulting in fewer midtones.

Use it to add visual punch to your images. Too much contrast loses valuable details in the shadows and highlights...