Questions: Using Photoshop to post process RAW images

[gameboyz]

I bought my D5000 today but I have some questions regarding PP my RAW images...

I'm more familiar with opening a JPG and bringing up the adjustment window... so you can imagine my shock when I opened the NEF file and the PP window was totally alien to me...

So some questions:

1) What's the diff between vibrancy and saturation?
2) There're so many slider bars in each tab, and so many tabs... for a beginner which do I play with?

3) To be updated as I explore

 

[J-Chan]

1) Vibrancy only saturates the duller colours of the photo whereas Saturation saturates the whole photo regardless. Vibrancy is useful when the photo is already saturated with a main colour, ie a photo of a red flower, and you want to boost the saturation of the leaves. If you just adjust Saturation, you'll find the red channel would clip and you would loose details in the flower.

2) WB/Tint and Exposure are main sliders you can start with, much more room for adjustments compared to Jpegs.

 

[giantcanopy]

2) There're so many slider bars in each tab, and so many tabs... for a beginner which do I play with?

Usually i just tweak the white balance if needed, and the recovery slider to get more details out of the highlights mainly.

u can try sliding the other sliders to see what they can do to the photo

happy shooting and trying

ryan