Shadows Clipping Advice Please

[Stagecoach]

As some know I plan to expand my photographic interests to landscape that will predominantly feature greenery, hills and mountains and threatening skies. Whilst taking shots to date I have concentrated on getting the exposure so that there is no clipping in the bright parts of the clouds, e.g. histogram as far right as I can.

What I have noticed is that with all shots I have clipping of the shadows, specifically in the blue channel and wonder what my approach to this should be?

The below image is one grabbed today as it contains the typical DR that I will be working with and demonstrates my 'concern'. All I have done so far in the below is reduce the 'Blacks' level from its default of 5 to 0 and there is minor clipping left.

Obviously this could be changed in camera by overexposing or requires a certain approach in post.

For info the image was taken as a test subject to use to learn the 'curves' plugin I have for Elements.

Any advice will be very much appreciated.



Grahame

[Manfred M]

Grahame - I rarely worry about minor loss of shadow detail in my shots; in fact I will adjust my black point so that I get a tiny liitle bit in most of my images. Blown whites can look terrible, but blacks, you'll never really notice unless there is a lot of it.

[Stagecoach]

Thank you Manfred,

I was wondering if I was getting over concerned about this and suspect I'm only taking note because of my aim to get the best exposure on site to allow the widest options in processing.

Grahame

[Loose Canon]

I don’t see your shadow clipping activated in ACR here Grahame. Only the histogram.

I think you are okay here as long as you are careful of high ISO’s and in which case you would want to watch under-exposure.

Probably so negligible as to easily be pulled up in post. You could always bracket.

Hey man? A couple of dust bunnies! Reminds me of my recurring! Got to clean my sensor!

[Stagecoach]

Hi Terry,

Be assured it's turned on 99.99% of the time and I use the Alt key whilst adjusting

Any serious shots I take will be with the tripod and ISO200 but I suppose there may be the occasion when speeds at low ISOs are no good for moving foliage/clouds and as you say there's always bracketing and merging.

Those two are a bit more than dust and it needs a wet clean but waiting for my sensor swabs to arrive from the UK. Interestingly, I always used to remove them with the spot healing tool but since they now occur in the skies with landscapes I have found that I have to use the clone tool as the spot healer leaves a pixelated mess.

Grahame

[Manfred M]

The other issue that I find with white clipping is that no ink is deposited by the printer if the colour value is at or close to 255 and if you look at an image from an angle, this is even more obviois. No such issue exists with shadow clipping as pure black is printed at any time that the value drops below around 5, so in theory a print could show more black clipping, even when the histogram suggests that things are fine.

In reality, I've never noticed this.

[Polar01]

Even with whites that show clipping unless there is a lot I do not worry, if I feel that there is some concern with highlight clipping I will lower the white point to 253 output from 256. As there is no printer in the world that I know of that will print any tonal change above 253, 254 to 256 the printer will not print anything, it will leave these as pure white, as it is unable to print the tonal difference.
As Manfred stated almost everything below 5 is black on the printer, this is I feel more true for black in a colour print. In a B&W print where you only have 256 shades of tonal grey to work with, some reading suggest that also depending on the stock your printer may not be able to print the tonal differences from 0 to 23 on a luster or up to 30 on a matte stock and remember 3 tones at the top. In total you may lose 10% of you total tonal range. I would not worry much with colour prints as I am talking about blacks. However it maybe worth watching with images that are very dark that you wish to print.
Below are the two articles about this that I found interesting as I do a fair amount of printing.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/te...ibration.shtml

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...ration_2.shtml

Cheers:

Allan

[Stagecoach]

Manfred, Alan

Thanks for info regarding the setting of the black and white levels for printing, I had read about that in a book I have by Scott Kelby but have never used it as I do not seem to print anything these days.

Here's how that image ended up just using curves and actually understanding what I was doing this time then a couple of grads to darken and brighten the sky and foreground respectively.




Grahame

[xpatUSA]

What I have noticed is that with all shots I have clipping of the shadows, specifically in the blue channel and wonder what my approach to this should be?

Grahame

I was going to suggest a little "Fill Light" in ACR but first I downloaded your original post image. I used Elements "Open As" so that it opened in ACR. Your posted image, not surprisingly, had no shadow clipping. So I went to simulate it by increasing the contrast slider which was indeed successful in producing a histogram much like yours. And then a thought struck, can you guess what it was? Reducing the contrast made the clipping go away, of course. So, in the original image, perhaps backing off the contrast slider would have nailed those pesky blue zeros . .

. . Fill Light didn't work at all, BTW.

I find that clipping to zero often occurs with colorful scenery when it is transmogrified from camera space to sRGB. In that case, de-saturating in ACR sometimes helps, sometimes not.

(gotta love the CiC spell-checker: completely OK with 'transmogrified' but takes exception to 'de-saturating' . . .)

[Stagecoach]

Hi Ted,

I have just had another play with the original RAW.

Fill Light to max and although histogram looks good as it moves to the right the shadow clipping still remains the same.

Contrast to min and although histogram looks good as it moves to the right clipping still remains but reduced.

The clipping is showing as spattered 'yellow' patterns in the areas of the foreground grasses, maybe this is normal and something I just do not need to worry about.

It does not seem to be giving me any problems in producing the final works, of which I now have a collection of this image, all different

Grahame

[RustBeltRaw]

Fill Light to max and although histogram looks good as it moves to the right the shadow clipping still remains the same.

Fill light is not designed to affect deep shadows. It's basically for lightening midtones. Seems to be very noisy, so I can't say I ever used it much. It was dropped in Photoshop CC, and so far, I haven't missed it. Back to curves adjustments.

I'm also in the "don't worry about some clipped blacks" school. Deep shadows can look great, and are a critical component in low-key images. If your image has a clear subject, the main thing is to avoid clipping (blacks or whites) in any critical areas. It's far more acceptable in the background of a portrait than around someone's eye sockets.

[chauncey]

Most of the time, for web images, I will arbitrarily set a levels clipping mask to be RGB 5, 250.
Prints are a different story and must be soft-proofed in PP to come close...I use the term "close" because the best you can do is come close. The plethora of printers and substrates available preclude more than "close".
I watched Scott Kelby in a printing video once state that the best way to be sure about your output is to make a print and make further PP corrections based on that print and, that even going to those extremes, there can always be the possibly of a fly in the ointment.

[xpatUSA]

Hi Ted,

I have just had another play with the original RAW. Contrast to min and although histogram looks good as it moves to the right clipping still remains but reduced.

The clipping is showing as spattered 'yellow' patterns in the areas of the foreground grasses, maybe this is normal and something I just do not need to worry about.

Grahame

Hi Grahame, thanks for the update. Beginning to look like the clipping is in the NEF raw data which picky folks might not consider 'normal'

The point being that the grass (even in the shade) should be reflecting R, G and B onto the sensor and some blue, if only a little, should appear in the NEF. If it does not, then there is a problem, albeit not huge - as others have already said. In the past I have had color clipping when transforming (by whatever means) from the camera un-rendered space (large gamut by definition) to a smaller space such a sRGB or aRGB. I see sun on the grass - that could do it, i.e. gamut exceeds sRGB - plus I've had problems with ACR 5.4 in that regard some time ago (yellow flower, but same thing - clipped blues).

[DanK]

Fill Light to max and although histogram looks good as it moves to the right the shadow clipping still remains the same.

The clipping is showing as spattered 'yellow' patterns in the areas of the foreground grasses, maybe this is normal and something I just do not need to worry about.

When you move any of the tonality sliders to the right, you are amplifying noise as well as signal. I'm guessing that is the cause of the problem you noted. In general, I try to use only modest increases.

I think there are only a few options:

--keep your ISO low. Higher ISOs reduce dynamic range. Some cameras show this at quite low ISOs, while others have modest effects for the first few stops. This may reduce how often you have the problem, which is basically greater dynamic range in the scene than your camera can handle in one shot.
--live with the black clipping, as several have suggested.
--when you have a reasonably flat horizon, use a graduated ND filter. I never have, but its an option.
--bracket.

I bracket a lot of landscape shots. You can always decide when you examine the images on the computer that you don't need the extra shots, but they are there if you need them. I personally hate the distortions that often arise in HDR work, but there are other techniques that avoid this. I use Lightroom Enfuse, a lightroom plugin, which generally produces very natural colors by selecting from each image only pixels that are well exposed. The default settings work fine. At least one HDR program allows this as an option. Google 'exposure fusion'.

[Stagecoach]

Thanks for the info, Lex, Chauncey, Ted and Dan,

Lex, Fill light is one thing I steer clear of these days due to the noise and this was a recommendation I had also read in a Scott Kelby book.

Chauncey, Interesting to hear that you also limit RGB values for web viewing.

Ted, I think I'm just going to ignore it as it not affecting anything as far as I'm concerned.

Dan, The clipping was evident before increasing any of the tonality sliders from their defaults and could not be cured fully by reducing them to zero values. Fully agree with your other advice, I have a graduated ND and am also a firm supporter of taking numerous shots at different settings for both exposure and DoF when the scene warrants it.

Grahame