B&W points in LR

divamum

Is there a way to set black and white points in LR the way one does in Photoshop (as per this tutorial using threshold etc)? Obviously one can play with the sliders, but I wondered if there was a similar way of identifying where those most extreme points should be.

Thanks in advance!

colourbox

Same as in Photoshop...press Alt/Option while dragging Blacks slider reveals the black point clip, and pressing that key while dragging Exposure slider reveals white point clip. Or (in Develop module) press the J key to keep clipping display on as in Camera Raw.

arodney

You can also keep the clipping overlay(s) on by clicking on the triangles in the Histogram.

divamum

bgarland

I am just now learning about this myself and found those triangles by the histogram would light up the clipped areas in the photo. So is the right approach to get the correct white and black points to drag the black until most of the clipping is gone and the same for the white point with the dragging the exposure down in the histogram until white clipping is minimized?

I assume you want to do this as one of your first steps in post processing RAW files, then move on to your other adjustments like clarity or sharpening.

Does it sound like I have the basic understanding here?

arodney

bgarland wrote: »

So is the right approach to get the correct white and black points to drag the black until most of the clipping is gone and the same for the white point with the dragging the exposure down in the histogram until white clipping is minimized?

If you like the color and tone appearance that way. There’s no rules. Certainly not for black. There’s nothing that says you can’t plug up a lot of black detail. Look at the work of Photographer Greg Gorman (http://www.gormanphotography.com/) who’s style is to have very dark shadows. This is also an effective way to lose noise.

Highlight clipping means you did blow out specular highlights but you can do that too. Its all about what areas of tone you want to communicate to the viewer.

Then there is saturation clipping. Black and white in the histogram indicates all three channels are blown out. But you can also see if less than all three clip (saturation clipping).


Red=Red
Green=Green
Blue=Blue
Yellow=Red+Green (two channels clip)
Magenta=Red+Blue (two channels clip)
Cyan=Green+Blue (two channels clip)