Shadow Recovery
The brightening of dark areas to reveal detail recorded but not visible in the default rendering.
Measured in
stops
In depth
Recovery is limited by the noise floor rather than by the file format: the data is there, but so is the read noise, and lifting one amplifies the other. Modern sensors tolerate three or four stops of shadow lift cleanly, beyond which banding and colour blotching become the limiting factor rather than the missing detail.
Examples in practice
Lifting the shadows of a backlit portrait by two stops reveals the face fully, with only slight noise in the darkest folds.