Souwalker
Active Member
In LR, blown blacks is signified by blue patches in the Develop Module. Is it always necessaary to reduce the 'Blacks' to remove the blown blacks?
Thansk
pat
Thansk
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Blown Blacks
- Thread starter Souwalker
- Start date
reidthaler
Reid
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- San Francisco Bay Area
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No! In fact I routinely leave a smattering of blue patches as it adds more contrast, and contrast add more to an image than almost anything else. give it a try. create a virtual image and make one with no blue left and the other with just a bit. Hit the J and see what looks better.
Since our eyes are drawn to bright, light, and white, we are more 'bothered' by blown hightlights than no detail in some of the shadow areas--it's how we live day to day--some things are just too dark to be seen, and we are used to it. but except for specular hightlights, we expect to see detail in highlights because our eyes have a greater dynamic range than photographic capture offers.
Reid
Since our eyes are drawn to bright, light, and white, we are more 'bothered' by blown hightlights than no detail in some of the shadow areas--it's how we live day to day--some things are just too dark to be seen, and we are used to it. but except for specular hightlights, we expect to see detail in highlights because our eyes have a greater dynamic range than photographic capture offers.
Reid
Gene McCullagh
Active Member
I agree with Reid. Some areas of absolute black in an image adds to the full range of the visual experience.
P
parintele
Guest
A technically "correct" image should not have blown blacks or at least those would be in minimum amount. BUT, there are many circumstances when blown black regions do not ruin the image, on the contrary.
My approach to this subject, as I am one of those "purists" which tend to work clean, without too much blown areas, is to minimize blown blacks BUT also correct the contrast afterwards by lowering the dark tones...
In LR you can do that like this:
- first you ajust the ovearall Exposure for the main interest poits (subject and important areas in the pictures)
- second you adjust the blacks(down, from default 5 to 2 or 3, depends on the image itself...) and also you can even pull the Filllight a little...
The image now becomes flat, dark/black tones become grey-ish, looks horrible just like you would have washed it in muddy waters...no problem...
Next step is to correct the contrast and bring back what was lost by pushing blacks up ...
-so, first thing is to opne the Tone curve panel and tweak the Darks, Shaddows and Lights intervals... In principle you reduce the Darks (pull the Darks/Shaddows slider to the left) to half of the default lenght/interval...
You also reduce the Shaddows to it's original lenght/interval or less...Usually each interval represent a quarter of the total lenght, after your Darks are now half of initial dimension, your Shaddows is now 3/8, right...you bring it back to 1/4 or little less by pulling the Shaddows/Lights slider to the left...
In the end of this process you will have a very small (1/8 ) Darks interval, a normal or little smaller 1/4 Shaddows interval, a larger Lights one, something like 3/8 o little more...Your Highlights will remain as it was, 1/4...
-last step is to pull down the Hhaddows region of the curve or pull down the Shaddows slider...
Depending on how dark your Shaddows region is (how small the Darks interval is/how much to the left your Shaddows interval in placed) you can bring back the contrast in different amounts without affecting the darkest areas of the image.
Take a look how Blacks are ', Fill light is 3', so pretty much shaddow recovery, then you can see how luminance regions of the curves have been redefined and contrast was corrected by simply bringing down only the Shaddows...
Bottom line, usually, allthough we are better used to "not see" in the dark, total black looks bad in most cases, still looks artificial, in real life we can see "some" information in those areas...True, is not as bad as in case of blown highlights but still...
Depending on the image itself, soemtimes you don't have to work as much to save some lost dark shaddows, sometimes you shouldn't (there are many types of images blown blacks are just part of the image style...) but more often i find usefull to tweak allmost blown regions to bring them a little texture..they will anyway seem "black" to viewer's brain but not "harsh", not like black holes ,nothing there....
Is simply your decision how your images should look, I preffer as much texture without compromising contrast and above technique is a pretty decent one in LR... Works great on RAW files, especially in wide DR images where you need to also bring back some darks not only not ruin present one by working with Exposure, Contrast, etc..
Hope that was little usefull, cheers
My approach to this subject, as I am one of those "purists" which tend to work clean, without too much blown areas, is to minimize blown blacks BUT also correct the contrast afterwards by lowering the dark tones...
In LR you can do that like this:
- first you ajust the ovearall Exposure for the main interest poits (subject and important areas in the pictures)
- second you adjust the blacks(down, from default 5 to 2 or 3, depends on the image itself...) and also you can even pull the Filllight a little...
The image now becomes flat, dark/black tones become grey-ish, looks horrible just like you would have washed it in muddy waters...no problem...
Next step is to correct the contrast and bring back what was lost by pushing blacks up ...
-so, first thing is to opne the Tone curve panel and tweak the Darks, Shaddows and Lights intervals... In principle you reduce the Darks (pull the Darks/Shaddows slider to the left) to half of the default lenght/interval...
You also reduce the Shaddows to it's original lenght/interval or less...Usually each interval represent a quarter of the total lenght, after your Darks are now half of initial dimension, your Shaddows is now 3/8, right...you bring it back to 1/4 or little less by pulling the Shaddows/Lights slider to the left...
In the end of this process you will have a very small (1/8 ) Darks interval, a normal or little smaller 1/4 Shaddows interval, a larger Lights one, something like 3/8 o little more...Your Highlights will remain as it was, 1/4...
-last step is to pull down the Hhaddows region of the curve or pull down the Shaddows slider...
Depending on how dark your Shaddows region is (how small the Darks interval is/how much to the left your Shaddows interval in placed) you can bring back the contrast in different amounts without affecting the darkest areas of the image.
Take a look how Blacks are ', Fill light is 3', so pretty much shaddow recovery, then you can see how luminance regions of the curves have been redefined and contrast was corrected by simply bringing down only the Shaddows...
Bottom line, usually, allthough we are better used to "not see" in the dark, total black looks bad in most cases, still looks artificial, in real life we can see "some" information in those areas...True, is not as bad as in case of blown highlights but still...
Depending on the image itself, soemtimes you don't have to work as much to save some lost dark shaddows, sometimes you shouldn't (there are many types of images blown blacks are just part of the image style...) but more often i find usefull to tweak allmost blown regions to bring them a little texture..they will anyway seem "black" to viewer's brain but not "harsh", not like black holes ,nothing there....
Is simply your decision how your images should look, I preffer as much texture without compromising contrast and above technique is a pretty decent one in LR... Works great on RAW files, especially in wide DR images where you need to also bring back some darks not only not ruin present one by working with Exposure, Contrast, etc..
Hope that was little usefull, cheers
sizzlingbadger
Senior Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2009
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- 2,561
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- New Zealand
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I find creating an image in Photoshop can help explain how LR works also... I have attached an image that you can import into LR and check the Highlights and Blacks.
As you can see LR will 'complain' about anything at ' or 255 which is technically not correct... but it's the only way to do it sensibly in software.
The image attached is not over or under exposed it is supposed to have large white and black areas.
We have ' to 255 levels to use in our images and we can makes use of the full range. The highlights in LR are trying to show us where we *may* be losing detail from over or under exposure. As state above (rather well by parintele) there is nothing wrong with having these areas in our images as long as we are happy that they are not interfering with what we are trying to show.
Many printers will not print well in the 255 range, essentially they don't print anything at 255 and just let the white of the paper show through. This can cause those areas without ink to look different to areas that have ink.
Some high end printers get around this by printing a clear layer.
As you can see LR will 'complain' about anything at ' or 255 which is technically not correct... but it's the only way to do it sensibly in software.
The image attached is not over or under exposed it is supposed to have large white and black areas.
We have ' to 255 levels to use in our images and we can makes use of the full range. The highlights in LR are trying to show us where we *may* be losing detail from over or under exposure. As state above (rather well by parintele) there is nothing wrong with having these areas in our images as long as we are happy that they are not interfering with what we are trying to show.
Many printers will not print well in the 255 range, essentially they don't print anything at 255 and just let the white of the paper show through. This can cause those areas without ink to look different to areas that have ink.
Some high end printers get around this by printing a clear layer.
P
parintele
Guest
True, this is the reason loss of texture/color(white and black are not technically colors but anyway...) is not "good" in most cases...
Printing issues and even poor display issues regarding dark shades...looks like someone cut areas of the image...
It very much depends on the subject if total black is ok or not.
For example you can have a "bkack" dog which can have "black" areas on his coat, there is very bad as the rest of the coat have color and texture...
Same thing for a daylighted image...there can be some black areas in the picture...is not ok because, no matter we are used not to "see" into darness, the overall image makes such image similar to something we can see often in real life and we know we can "see" at least something there, our eyes being able to adapt when we focus on such shaddow area...
Still , in a dusk or dawn image for example, in a very high contrasty situation (bright sun outside, looking thru an opened door in a very dark chamber...) or similar situations, our brain "know" is natural to see nothing just a black area...
In my oppinion, this issue of blown highlights or "blocked" shaddows (thaks stasber) is much a matter of matching what brain is "expecting" to see in a picture rather than what is technically correct or not... so is subjective in most situations.
Printing issues and even poor display issues regarding dark shades...looks like someone cut areas of the image...
It very much depends on the subject if total black is ok or not.
For example you can have a "bkack" dog which can have "black" areas on his coat, there is very bad as the rest of the coat have color and texture...
Same thing for a daylighted image...there can be some black areas in the picture...is not ok because, no matter we are used not to "see" into darness, the overall image makes such image similar to something we can see often in real life and we know we can "see" at least something there, our eyes being able to adapt when we focus on such shaddow area...
Still , in a dusk or dawn image for example, in a very high contrasty situation (bright sun outside, looking thru an opened door in a very dark chamber...) or similar situations, our brain "know" is natural to see nothing just a black area...
In my oppinion, this issue of blown highlights or "blocked" shaddows (thaks stasber) is much a matter of matching what brain is "expecting" to see in a picture rather than what is technically correct or not... so is subjective in most situations.
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