What is the difference between "Fill Light," "Lighting Shadows," and "Lighten Shadows"?

[jamboree7123]

There are three different editing sliders in Elements that all seem to do the same thing -- brighten dark areas only. But do these three sliders do the EXACT same thing, or are there subtle differences between them? The three sliders are:

1. Fill Light. 

If you open any image from within Elements in the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) format, you can edit the image with different editing sliders not otherwise available in Elements. One of these sliders us called "Fill Light," which seems to add extra illumination to dark areas only, like shining a flashlight into the shadows. If you then save the edits and flatten the image, it's just like a normal edit has been performed. 

2. Lighting > Shadows

In the Edit > Quick side panel, under the "Lighting" category, one of the sliders is called "Shadows," which seems to do the same thing as Fill Light -- brighten dark areas only. 

3. Lighten Shadows

In the Edit > Guided side panel, under "Color and Lighting > Lighten or Darken," there is a slider called "Lighten Shadows," which has the description "Affects only the dark areas."

All three of these editing commands SEEM to do the exact same thing, but I want to make sure before I use them interchangeably. Thanks. 

[99jon]

You must be using quite an old version. Fill light & recovery in camera raw have been replaced with highlight & shadow sliders with improved underlying algorithms. But yes you are correct the different workspaces for quick, guided and expert offer different workflows for achieving similar results.