Chapter 25 — Quiz
Twenty-six self-check questions on mobile editing: multiple choice, true/false (with justification), short answer, and a few "what's wrong with this edit?" seeing-questions. Answer before checking the key at the bottom. Aim to explain each answer, not just pick it — the explanation is where the learning is.
Multiple choice
Q1. A phone RAW file (ProRAW / DNG) looks flat and dull straight out of the camera compared to the JPEG. This is best described as: - A) a defect of phone RAW that desktop RAW doesn't have - B) a sign the photo was underexposed - C) the expected, desirable state — the flatness is recoverable latitude the JPEG already spent - D) proof the JPEG is the better file
Q2. In the global develop order, which control should you set first? - A) Saturation - B) White balance - C) Contrast - D) Texture / Clarity
Q3. The two governing laws of the develop order are: - A) "Color before tone" and "local before global" - B) "Tone before color" and "global before local" - C) "Sharpen first" and "crop last" - D) "Saturation first" and "exposure last"
Q4. You want to brighten a too-dark foreground while leaving a correctly-exposed sky alone. The natural tool is a: - A) global exposure slider - B) radial mask centered on the sky - C) linear/graduated mask, fading to nothing at the horizon - D) global contrast slider
Q5. A preset primarily sets which aspect of an image, leaving you to finish the rest by hand? - A) The exposure of each individual image - B) The crop and aspect ratio - C) The style — color, contrast, mood - D) The output sharpening
Q6. You're exporting a finished image for an Instagram feed. The most sensible long-edge resolution is roughly: - A) 640 px - B) 2,048 px - C) 8,000 px - D) as many pixels as the file has, always
Q7. Output sharpening is best understood as: - A) the same as the sharpening you do while developing, just repeated - B) a final, destination-specific pass that counteracts the softening caused by resizing or by ink spreading on paper - C) a way to fix an out-of-focus photo - D) only ever needed for the web, never for print
Q8. Of the four kinds of mobile photo app, the one you'll spend most of your editing life inside is the: - A) camera app - B) developer (the darkroom) - C) specialist - D) publisher (the social platform)
Q9. "Non-destructive" editing means: - A) the app can't crash and lose your work - B) your edits are stored as a reversible list of instructions on top of the untouched original - C) you can only make gentle adjustments - D) the file can't be deleted
Q10. You upload a 7,000-pixel JPEG to a social platform and it looks worse than a friend's 2,048-pixel version of the same edit. The most likely reason: - A) your edit was bad - B) the platform re-compressed the over-large file more aggressively and crudely than a right-sized one - C) your phone's screen is broken - D) RAW always beats JPEG
Q11. Vibrance differs from Saturation in that vibrance: - A) affects only the shadows - B) lifts muted colors more and already-saturated colors less, and usually protects skin tones - C) is destructive while saturation is not - D) does nothing on a RAW file
Q12. Which aspect ratio is the standard for most photographic prints (e.g. a 4×6)? - A) 1:1 - B) 9:16 - C) 3:2 - D) 4:5
True / False — justify your answer in one sentence
Q13. A preset bought from a photographer will make your photos look exactly like the examples on their sales page. T / F?
Q14. You should crop your image to the destination's aspect ratio yourself, in your editor, rather than letting the platform crop it. T / F?
Q15. Because RAW lets you reset white balance after the fact, the direction and quality of light don't matter when you shoot — you can fix all of it in post. T / F?
Q16. Feathering a mask makes a local adjustment more obvious to the viewer. T / F?
Q17. The exported JPEG you post is your master file, so it's fine to delete the RAW afterward. T / F?
Q18. A print needs more output sharpening than a web image, and matte paper needs more than glossy. T / F?
Short answer
Q19. Name the four categories of mobile photo app and give the one-line job of each.
Q20. Write the seven steps of the global develop order, in sequence.
Q21. Explain why the rule "global before local" exists — what goes wrong if you do detailed local masking before you've set the whole image's exposure and contrast?
Q22. You've applied one preset to a ten-image set and the look is consistent, but the brightness lurches from image to image. What did the preset not do, and what's the fix?
Q23. A friend shooting a phone-only travel set asks why you bother shooting RAW when the JPEGs "look fine on the screen." Give the strongest one-paragraph case for RAW and the honest cost.
Seeing questions — "what's wrong with this edit?"
Q24. Read this described edit and name the single biggest error and its fix:
text "Beach sunset, over-cooked" [constructed teaching example] A sunset over the sea. The editor's first move was to push Saturation to +70. The sky is now a band of radioactive orange with hard color banding where smooth gradient used to be; the few people on the sand have gone bright orange; and the editor is now struggling to bring the exposure and white balance under control but every change makes the color worse.
Q25. Read this described edit and identify what makes the local adjustment look amateurish, and how to fix it:
text "Spotlit portrait, haloed" [constructed teaching example] A portrait where the subject's face has clearly been brightened with a local mask — but there's a visible bright oval outline around the head where the brightened area meets the darker background, like a faint glowing border traced around the person. Up close, the mask's edge is a hard line.
Q26. Read this described export problem and diagnose all three symptoms to specific causes:
text "Posted and ruined" [constructed teaching example] A photographer's image looked crisp and well-framed in their editing app. After exporting and posting it to a social feed: (1) it now looks noticeably soft; (2) the bottom of the subject's feet has been cut off; and (3) the image is slightly muddier and less punchy than the app showed.
Answer Key
Q1 — C. Phone RAW is deliberately unprocessed; the flatness is recoverable latitude (more highlight/shadow detail and bit depth) that the JPEG already committed. Not a defect, not underexposure.
Q2 — B. White balance first: the color temperature of the light tints everything, so setting it wrong means every later color decision is built on a wrong cast.
Q3 — B. "Tone before color" (contrast changes apparent saturation, so settle tone first) and "global before local" (set the whole image before painting on parts).
Q4 — C. A linear/graduated mask fades the brightening across the band and falls to zero at the horizon — the digital graduated ND. A global exposure slider would brighten the sky too.
Q5 — C. A preset sets the style (color, contrast, mood). It can't know each image's correct exposure; you finish that per frame.
Q6 — B. ~2,048 px (roughly 2,000–2,560) is crisp on a phone screen and small enough that the platform won't re-compress it harshly. Over-large uploads look worse.
Q7 — B. Output sharpening is a final, destination-specific pass counteracting the softening from resizing (web) or ink spread (print). It's separate from develop-stage sharpening and is needed for both screen and print, in different amounts.
Q8 — B. The developer is your darkroom — global and local tone/color, presets, export — and where you live. The whole mobile workflow can run inside it.
Q9 — B. Non-destructive = edits stored as a reversible instruction list on top of the pristine original; nothing is baked into the pixels until export.
Q10 — B. The platform re-compresses an over-large file more aggressively and crudely than a right-sized one, so the giant upload often comes out worse.
Q11 — B. Vibrance lifts muted colors more and saturated ones less and typically protects skin tones — the smarter, gentler color control. (Both are non-destructive on a RAW.)
Q12 — C. 3:2 — the classic camera/print frame (a 4×6 print is 3:2). 4:5 is the portrait feed; 1:1 the square; 9:16 the vertical full-screen.
Q13 — False. A bought preset is tuned for the seller's photos and light, and their examples were hand-finished after it; on your differently-lit images it's at most an adaptable starting point.
Q14 — True. Crop deliberately in your editor so you control what's cut; otherwise the platform crops to its shape with no regard for your composition.
Q15 — False. RAW genuinely lets you reset color temperature later, but the direction, quality, and quantity of light are baked into the capture — flat light stays flat, blown highlights from bad light may be gone. You can recolor light, not re-aim or re-shape it.
Q16 — False. Feathering softens the mask's boundary so the adjustment fades in invisibly; it makes the edit less obvious. An unfeathered (hard-edged) mask is what looks amateurish.
Q17 — False. The exported JPEG is a delivery copy. Your master is the RAW plus the non-destructive edit; keep them so you can re-edit or re-export at any size later.
Q18 — True. Resizing for web softens an image (modest sharpening); printing softens it more as ink spreads into paper (stronger sharpening), and matte paper spreads ink more than glossy, so it needs even more.
Q19 — Camera (capture — exposure, focus, RAW); Developer (the darkroom — global/local tone and color, presets, export); Specialist (one job done well — e.g. B&W, healing, panorama); Publisher (the social platform itself — which re-compresses, resizes, and crops what you upload).
Q20 — (1) White balance, (2) overall exposure, (3) recover highlights/shadows (then whites/blacks), (4) contrast/tone curve, (5) presence (texture/clarity/dehaze), (6) color (vibrance, then HSL), (7) then local adjustments + crop.
Q21 — Contrast and exposure changes alter how every area of the frame looks, including brightness boundaries; if you mask and finesse local areas first and then change global exposure/contrast, you shift everything underneath your masks and have to redo the local work. Set the whole image, then direct attention within it.
Q22 — The preset set the style identically but couldn't set each image's exposure, which varied shot to shot. The fix: after applying the preset, go through and adjust each image's exposure individually so they match in brightness.
Q23 — Case for RAW: it preserves far more highlight and shadow detail and more brightness levels (bit depth), so you can recover blown skies and crushed shadows and push color and tone much further than a JPEG allows — and travel light often means harsh, mixed, once-only light you'll want that latitude for. Honest cost: RAW files are much larger (storage, transfer) and they require developing — they look flat out of camera and aren't shareable until you finish them.
Q24 — Biggest error: doing color first and globally — Saturation slammed to +70 before exposure and white balance were set. It caused banding in the sky, oranged the people, and now fights every later change. Fix: reset saturation; develop in order (WB → exposure → recover → contrast → texture → then color), and use Vibrance modestly instead of global Saturation so muted tones lift and skin/already-vivid colors are protected.
Q25 — The local mask is unfeathered — a hard edge — producing a visible bright halo where the brightened face meets the darker background. Fix: feather the mask so the brightening fades gradually into the surroundings; reduce the strength if needed; zoom in to clean the edge. A good local edit is invisible.
Q26 — (1) Soft = exported too large (or with no/wrong output sharpening), so the platform re-compressed and softened it — export ~2,048 px with screen sharpening. (2) Feet cut off = the image wasn't cropped to the platform's aspect ratio, so the platform cropped it — crop deliberately to the destination's shape (e.g. 4:5) in the editor first. (3) Muddier/less punchy = the platform's re-compression and color handling on a mis-sized file — right-sizing it (symptom 1's fix) and exporting high-quality JPEG largely prevents this.
Topics to review by question
- App categories & non-destructive editing (§25.1): Q1, Q8, Q9, Q19
- The RAW develop order & latitude (§25.2): Q1, Q2, Q3, Q11, Q20, Q21, Q23, Q24
- Local adjustments (§25.3): Q4, Q16, Q25
- Presets & consistency (§25.4): Q5, Q13, Q22
- Export, resolution, sharpening, aspect ratio (§25.5): Q6, Q7, Q10, Q12, Q14, Q17, Q18, Q26
- White balance / light as creative choice (cross to Ch.3, Ch.5): Q2, Q15
- The complete pipeline (§25.6): Q23, Q26
If you missed more than a few in one cluster, reread that section and redo the matching exercises before the Portfolio Checkpoint — the full pipeline assumes all five are second nature.