| Joined: | Mon Apr 2nd, 2012 |
| Location: | South Lakeland, UK |
| Posts: | 4066 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
I have felt very limited by the inability to set the white and black points in Adobe Lightroom with a similar effect which is so easy in Photoshop, it has been bugging me for a while. I feel that setting the white and black points of an image is a fundamental step in the processing of almost every image. So, Google to the rescue and several attempts later hey presto! I have the answer.
At the start of processing the image if you feel the need to set the white and black points of the exposure then it's very easy.
If you hold down the Option key while sliding the White slider in the Develop mode of Lr, the screen goes black and then when the setting is optimal the area which will clip white appear as red zones, in a very similar way to the 'Plowden' method in Ps. Once set, repeating with the option key held down and slide the Black slider until the black clipping point appears, as blue zones. It's a matter of personal preference, per image if the whites and blacks are allowed to clip or not. In this case I allowed both white and black points to clip.
This is the same image which Eric said was muddy and grey on his monitor, I think it should be pretty white now Eric. Aided by setting the WB on a non clipped part of the birds plumage.
This screen shot is in the Lr Develop mode, the red zones represent the blown or clipped whites, blue zones the blown or clipped blacks:
This is in Library mode after setting the white and black points and the WB but not much else, slight tweak of -1/3 stop exposure and pulling the highlights back a bit.
This is a 1:1 crop showing the water droplets and texture of the swans feathers, no sharpening or added clarity, this is purely exposure control.
Thank you for the critique Eric, it forced me to finally crack this particular nut.
Whoops! I thought this was the same image I posted at the top of the thread, it isn't the same one but it's very similar.
____________________
Robert.