>>2831220A crushed black is an area that is so under exposed that the color picker just reads "0,0,0" across a whole area of the scene. No information, no tone, just black.
Blown whites are the opposite. A whole area where it's just "255,255,255" with no variance, and therefore no texture, color, or variance.
Raised blacks and lowered whites are just when you take the "0" point that should be black, and bring it up so that the darkest areas of the shot aren't at 0 anymore, they're brighter.
The "fade" that's popular right now comes from a mixture of both. Bringing up the black point into the shadows, without letting the shadows get brighter along with it, so things that WERE dim, but detailed, suddenly get crushed out into black, as black becomes "gray"
