Exposure for web display

[chauncey]

I shoot a lot of white birds and am careful in exposing to the right, in that I don't go past that right histogram line when setting my camera exposures.
Additionally, when I finish an image and convert to sRGB, I adjust clipping to no higher than 248 RGB, That said, I sometimes am seeing what I would consider "blown highlights" on images that I display on various websites.
It has been suggested that I set that clipping to no more than 228 to insure preservation of those highlights...what say you all, is there a consensus of opinion?

[RichardTaylor]

There is a massive myriad of monitors out there, probably not all calibrated and used in different lighting conditions, so I just make the histogram looks ok (no unnecessarily blown blown highlights and blocked up blacks) when PPing and that is it.

[dje]

Hi William

I assume when you say you "adjust the clipping" you are talking about using something like Levels and adjusting the high point of the output level to something less than 255 ?

I suppose it's conceivable that some web software will alter the tonal distribution of the jpegs. But personally I never worry about this sort of thing. It's just not worth the trouble. If I get it looking good on my computer that's it for me !

Dave

[Shadowman]

In a Photoshop Elements tutorial it stated setting RGB at 240 to make highlights neutral. One thing about tutorials, they give a suggestion but rarely provide a footnote for researching their methods, so I would consider any advice given in a tutorial as just that "advice".

[davidedric]

Coming back to the exposure. I don't know if Joe (jprzsbyla) is reading this, but many of you will have seen his stunning images of Florida birds, including those white waders.

I spent some time with Joe last year, and he showed me his technique for white birds:

- spot meter on the bird
- look at the blinkies (they'll be there), and dial in enough negative exposure comp to eliminate them
- shoot with those settings, and bring up the exposure in pp (we use Lightroom) and avoid blowing the highlights.

I suppose that we don't have to worry about noise or detail in the shadows, because either there aren't any or if there are they aren't the area on interest.

Here is one of my efforts using Joe's technique, and I think I am happy with the feather detail.

Dave

[chauncey]

A series of events in the conversion processes. Swan image...starting out with a LR screen-shot of the tail and histogram, sans adjustments.



Into PS CC as ProPhoto, sans adjustments...save adding a color checker.



Conversion to sRGB



This is a screen-shot of the sRGB image...note the color picker on the tail.


.

[chauncey]

Now onto some things interesting...this is a "save for web" via PS CC, it has picked us some saturation.
This is how I see it in IE



But these screen-shots is how I see it when it's pulled into PS CC





What's my point...no clue, but it's interesting nonetheless! Why would things "look" so different?

[Mike Buckley]

This is how I see it in IE

I recommend that you try using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer to determine if you see a difference. I never see a difference between using Firefox and my post-processing software on my system.

[GrahamS]

If your images are edited on a calibrated monitor and you make sure that you use "convert to profile...." in PS to embed the sRGB colour profile and don't rely on ticking the "sRGB" box when using "export for web", there's not much more that you can do to ensure that your images are seen by others as you intended them to be seen. As far as I am aware, IE does not colour manage image files but I am not sure about the latest version. Firefox and Safari do colour manage image files.

[chauncey]

So bad...went back an checked my "save for web" settings. I neglected to imbed my profiles.
Trying to explain the depths of my embarrassment would be an exercise in futility...best to just stop digging and accept my lumps.

[Mike Buckley]

went back an checked my "save for web" settings. I neglected to imbed my profiles.

It's inexplicable to me that a developer would provide a setting named "save for web" that actually allows the user to accidentally forget to imbed the color profile.