What's Wrong With Brightness/Contrast, Anyway?

Dear Debbie,

Photoshop “experts” are always telling me not to use the Brightness/Contrast sliders, but they seem to work fine to me. What gives?

All the best,
Dumbfounded in Helena, MT

***
Dear Dumbfounded,

The Brightness and Contrast sliders may be slightly less work, but they sure are sloppy. Yeah, Brightness brightens, but it casts an ugly fog over your images. Try to correct it with Contrast, and you’ll soon lose shadow and highlight detail. Try it yourself, and compare your results to changes you make with Curves or Levels. I suspect you'll abandon those seemingly-slick sliders in no time.

Comments

[Chuck E]

I am new to Adobe Photoshop. I try to combine one or two files to another file as well as their names to the file I wish to keep. How do I do it?

[Geo-Photo]

Having just completed 2 years in a GIS Master's program, I am very much interested in geotagging images with geographic metadata (geocoding in GIS lingo). However, from what I read this is only possible with PS-Elements. I just upgraded to CS2 from PS-7. Can I geo-tag my files with PS-7 and if so how?

Do you think this is going to "get big" (re: Flickr web site) in the landscape/travel field of Photography? Finding a way to combine my GIS skills with love of photography would seem, like a dream job.