Basic

The Basic group is the first thing you'll touch on most photos. It controls overall brightness, contrast, and the recovery of detail at the bright and dark ends of the image.

Open the Adjustments panel with D if it isn't already.

Tone Mapper & Exposure

At the top of the panel, RapidRAW shows a Tone Mapper switch with two options and an Exposure slider beneath. Click the Tone Mapper label to reset both back to defaults.

Control	What it does
Tone Mapper → Basic	Standard tone curve.
Tone Mapper → AgX	Film-like tonemapping. Smoother roll-off in the highlights, slightly more contrast in the midtones.
Exposure	Stops of light. +1.00 doubles the brightness of the image (one stop). Operates on the linear scene-referred RAW data.

New to this? What's a "stop"?

A stop is a doubling (or halving) of light. +1 stop is twice as bright; −1 stop is half as bright. It's the same unit your camera uses for exposure compensation. Sliders that operate in stops give you very precise, predictable control. Bumping Exposure +0.33 is one-third of a stop, exactly what you'd dial in on a camera body.

The six tonal sliders

Below the Tone Mapper, RapidRAW exposes the standard six-slider tonal model. All six use the same range and step so they're easy to develop muscle memory for.

Slider	Range	What it does
Brightness	−5 to +5	Overall luminance shift in stops, applied after tone mapping. Gentler than Exposure, affecting the midtones more than the extremes.
Contrast	−100 to +100	S-curve contrast around the midpoint. Negative flattens; positive steepens.
Highlights	−100 to +100	Compresses or lifts the upper tonal range. Pull negative to recover detail in a blown sky; push positive to brighten clouds.
Shadows	−100 to +100	Compresses or lifts the lower tonal range. Pull positive to open up dark areas; pull negative to deepen them.
Whites	−100 to +100	Sets the white point, the brightest tone before pure white clipping. Use to reclaim or push the brightest pixels.
Blacks	−100 to +100	Sets the black point, the darkest tone before pure black clipping. Use for richer blacks (negative) or to lift crushed shadows (positive).

How they differ from each other

Exposure vs Brightness: Exposure is a true linear-light multiplier. One stop of Exposure is one stop of light, evenly across the image. Brightness is a perceptual lift weighted toward the midtones. Use Exposure for "overall too dark/too bright"; use Brightness for "the midtones look murky."

Highlights/Shadows vs Whites/Blacks: Highlights and Shadows are soft, range-limited compressions. They squeeze the bright or dark end without changing the absolute extremes. Whites and Blacks are endpoint controls. They move where pure white and pure black sit. A typical workflow:

Set Exposure for the overall brightness.
Use Highlights/Shadows to recover detail at the extremes.
Use Whites/Blacks to set the final endpoints (often watching the histogram).
Use Contrast for global punch.

Working in masks

When you create a mask, the Basic controls available inside are Exposure, Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks. The Tone Mapper itself is global; it's not exposed per-mask. This means you can lift or recover one part of the image independently of the rest, but the underlying tonemap is shared.

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