When to use shadow/highlight

[Risici]

Hi
I was thinking about when do you guys use the shadow/highlight feature, if at all. Mostly im thinking about before or after alot of cloning work. Im leaning towards after cloning as i will have less details to wory about perserving while cloning. Or does it really make a difrence?
If you dont use the shadow/highlight feature in cs2 because of other reasons than working with an older version of photoshop i would also like to hear why?

/Lasse -Risici

[chazcron]

It can be a good general tool, but I shy away from it because it isn't non-destructive like an adjustment  layer.

[Risici]

Your right about the non destructive part, i would love for it to be useable as an adjustment layer. That is also why i usually only does it once in a workflow and always on an dublicate of the image or layer.
Actually sometimes i also use it before anything else at all, kranking the values up high, just to see how much info there is to work with. then hit cancel and start my work :)

[happyheart]

I tend to use it when not much detail is visible, or when people's faces are deeply in shadow and you can't really see their features.  Dan Margulis' book on the LAB colorspace suggested running it on the L channel only, as this is where the luminosity data is at.  I usually convert a copy of my image to LAB, run the filter on the L channel, and then convert back to RGB.  Then I can copy the whole layer into my working document as a separate layer.

[Bulldoggie]

As I understand it, it was developed primarily to handle high contrast images where detail of interest is in both the bright and dark areas. When that isn't the case, I don't use it.

Regarding its destructive nature, make a new layer that is a copy of work up to that point and work from there. It does add to the file size, but one can always go back.