Chapter 5The Digital Zone System

We have discussed how cameras and meters “see” light, how exposure works in the digital world, and which tools are used in the Digital Zone System. We can now move on to looking at how to optimize our digital images with the DZS.

I’ll toss in a caveat now. This editing methodology does create some large files. If your computer is short on RAM, performance will be slower. Both RAM and hard drive space are relatively inexpensive, and processing power is abundant with the dual-, quad-, six-, and eight-core processors available today, so there is really nothing to fear with large image files.

The DZS uses what are called luminance masks to separate areas of different tones or brightness in an image. The concept of ...

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