Lightroom: Positive Highlights - Does anybody use them?
- Thread starter paul_b
- Start date
singlerosa_RIP
Senior Member
Not that I can remember.
RocketCowboy
Senior Member
Not something I think I've ever done either.
I'm thinking that maybe positive highlights could be used if using a flat profile like camera neutral?
RocketCowboy
Senior Member
I'm typically using neutral on the camera profile. That shouldn't be affecting the RAW file at all, only the JPG preview that gets embedded in the RAW.
Sorry I should of been clearer. I meant selecting the camera neutral profile in Lightroom when editing the Raw.
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BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Highlights refer to a specific portion of the luminosity spectrum on an image, same as Shadows, Whites, and Blacks. Have you ever noticed when you mouse over each of those sliders (as well as the Exposure slider) that a portion of the Histogram window is highlighted? This is the area that the slider concentrates on (White is actually to the right of Highlights). So when working solely in Lightroom the combination of the first 4 sliders mentioned it's possible to create strong contrast curves using those 4 sliders.
So the answer is, "Absolutely", when asked if I've gone positive on the slider, but generally only when I'm not moving on to some other editor like Photoshop. When treating it as a Camera RAW front end I generally will not unless there's a lot of recovery required on the original image.
So the answer is, "Absolutely", when asked if I've gone positive on the slider, but generally only when I'm not moving on to some other editor like Photoshop. When treating it as a Camera RAW front end I generally will not unless there's a lot of recovery required on the original image.
RocketCowboy
Senior Member
I hadn't noticed that highlighting behavior before, Jake. Thanks for that!
Interesting. Which camera calibration profile do you use? Adobe Standard?
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Scott Murray
Senior Member
When using black or white slider I press alt on the keyboard which gives me an idea of if something is overexposed or underexposed too much. Thats about it really. You can do the same with the highlights and shadows slider aswell.
Scott Murray
Senior Member
I would like to see some of these images.
With editing there is no set way of editing an image after all it all comes down to what you want out of that image.
I do when I am processing a black and white image, sometimes it helps the image "pop" more than when you use the "White" slider
I always use the "white slider" in some capacity on my images. Sometimes on the whole image and some times on parts of the image.
When I open an image in LR the first slider I go to is the highlight. Second is the "shadows". Once I have these two adjusted, then I'll actually start processing. Normally the white slider comes towards the end of my processing routine.
Yeah, I'm using Adobe Standard if I remember correctly
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These pictures would be good examples. The street shot has the highlights at +46 and the tree shot has the highlights maxed out at +100
After asking a similar question about positive highlights on the Adobe forum I was advised by most that the best practice is to match the value that you give to shadows with that of highlights, but shadows being positive and highlights being negative, ie +30 shadows with -30 highlights etc. Apparently using both together increases mid-tone contrast. Also, I suspect adjusting shadows and highlights always effects just the tones mapped in the areas of the unadjusted image (before any post processing (inc exposure work)) and can therefore hit the wrong pixels that you want to target if your image is under or over exposed. Therefore using shadows and highlights balanced together keeps the original histogram balanced, ie not distorted in unintended areas. I of course could be wrong.
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