The Mix tab sheet is available in Novice and Expert Mode. In Novice Mode it only has the upper three sliders displayed. The Mix tab sheet is for blending the dynamic, adaptive and local contrast effects together and combine the advantages of the contrast effects.
The Arrow-Down Button
Clicking on the arrow-down button will display a menu with various local presets. These local presets are useful settings for the controls of the current tab sheet. Each tab sheet has its own arrow-down menu with different presets. Only the "Reset" option is the same. It sets the controls of the tab sheet to their default values.
Dynamic, Adaptive and Local Sliders
The Dynamic, Adaptive and Local sliders determine the intensity of the individual effects as well the ratio with which the dynamic, adaptive and local effects are mixed into the final result. If all three sliders have the same value, it means that the three effects are evenly combined and each of the three effects only makes up 1/3 of the final effect. That is also why the sliders on the Dynamic, Adaptive and Local tab sheets appear to cause less changes in the image than in the Dynamic Contrast, Adaptive Contrast Local Contrast modes.
If you set one of these sliders to zero, the effect will not be applied. If you want to simulate the Dynamic Contrast mode in Expert Mode, you need to set the Adaptive and Local sliders to zero. If you want to simulate the Adaptive Contrast mode, you need to set the Dynamic and Local sliders to zero. And if you want to simulate the Local Contrast mode, you need to set the Dynamic and Adaptive sliders to zero. However, it is more convenient to choose the appropriate option from the arrow-down button menu.
So these three sliders do not work exactly as the Intensity sliders in the Dynamic Contrast, Adaptive Contrast and Local Contrast mode. Only if two of the sliders are set to zero, the remaining slider works the same way.
Dynamic Mix, Adaptive Mix and Local Mix
These three combo boxes determine how the three contrast effects are mixed. The "Normal" option uses the effect over the whole tonal rage. The "Shadows" option only applies the effect to the shadow range and the "Highlight" option adds it to the highlights only. The "Edges" option only applies the effect to the edges in the image and the "Surface" option adds it to the non-edge areas. For example, if you set one combo box to "Shadows" and the other to "Highlights", you will have one effect added to the shadows and the other effect applied to the highlights.
Setting all combo boxes to "Edges" can help to avoid that the effect is applied to flat image areas ( e.g. a wall or the sky), which do not benefit from strong contrast. If you do that, you usually also need to set the Dynamic, Adaptive and Local sliders to very high values.