Recipes either use Craftsmanship or Magic Craftsmanship, it depends on the recipe. It determines how difficult the synth is for you, so say a recipe requires 80 craftsmanship, if you have 60 it will be really tough, but if you have 90 it will be easy. You'll succeed more and your actions will have more "potency". No recipes use both, so if you have the space and money to get gear to focus on one stat or the other, you can test out both sets.

Control makes it less likely for your elements to go unstable and makes it take longer before you start seeing sparks, which causes your success rate to drop and makes touch ups take more durability.

It was from this old ask the devs post.