Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
I opened this raw file from ACR and applied a Gradient Map and then a Levels Adjustment Layer. I pulled in the Whites slider to new value of 220 and bump the Blacks slider to a new value of 5. Histogram looks good to me with better contrast and no clipping; pretty much everything I want, nothing I don't:
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But... When I turn OFF the Gradient Map, the RGB Histogram clearly indicates there is significant clipping in the Highlights region:
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So now I'm thinking it's probably the Blue channel because of the scrim in the background. I open Histograms for the individual channels and my suspicion is confirmed... The Blue Channel is clipping pretty hard while Red and Green channels appear fine:
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What is confusing me is why the Histogram for the Blue channel appears to be so heavily blown out when, at least to my eye, the shot looks much better. Never in a million years would I look at that shot and think the Blue channel was clipping, neither in Luminance nor in Saturation... Yet according to the Histogram it is. ???
.....
.....
.....
But... When I turn OFF the Gradient Map, the RGB Histogram clearly indicates there is significant clipping in the Highlights region:
.....
.....
.....
So now I'm thinking it's probably the Blue channel because of the scrim in the background. I open Histograms for the individual channels and my suspicion is confirmed... The Blue Channel is clipping pretty hard while Red and Green channels appear fine:
.....
.....
.....
What is confusing me is why the Histogram for the Blue channel appears to be so heavily blown out when, at least to my eye, the shot looks much better. Never in a million years would I look at that shot and think the Blue channel was clipping, neither in Luminance nor in Saturation... Yet according to the Histogram it is. ???