Contrast slider in ACR?

I think that by the answers here, that you can accomplish the same thing by using the other sliders. I should have clarified in my original question, that I'm speaking only of the home panel that comes up first when opening an image in ACR. I'm doing my curve adjustment in Photoshop and not in the tone curve panel in ACR because I prefer that interface and it's what I'm used to. It's also were I do my color correction after first pulling it into the ball park as well as I can in ACR's first panel.

To me, the contrast slider seems redundant in a way that's unique to all of the other sliders in that panel and I wondered why it was there. I virtually never use it while all of the other sliders are used on virtually every image.

Thanks for your input Gary and Conrad

My impression of the Contrast slider is that it's essentially a simple S-shaped tone curve that's anchored at the midtone. I'm not sure if that's really all it does, or if the engineers have given it some unique “secret sauce” (as they definitely have with Shadows and Highlights). But if it is just an S-curve then you don't necessarily need to adjust Contrast, since it can also be done with the Tone Curve.

When I want a contrast curve adjustment I usually need it somewhere other than anchored at the midtone, so I’ll adjust the Tone Curve instead, and typically I leave Contrast unchanged at 0. But there's nothing wrong with using Contrast as a general adjustment, especially for users who aren't comfortable adjusting the Tone Curve.

Hi Ultrachrome,

i would say say that it arrives at a different result regardless of what other sliders you are using. Look at the histogram as you are sliding things around and see how they are doing different things depending on the tool used.

I’m away from my computer now so I can’t take any screenshots that better explains my points but each of those sliders does different things to the image and depending on each specific image is how you might choose to select which tool and/or how much.

What at is the look you are trying to achieve here that is initiating this question?