| Author | Thread |
|
|
03/25/2006 08:26:30 PM · #1 |
Can anybody explain or post a link to somewhere which explains what exactly it means to clip a channel only in one of the Red/Green/Blue channels of the histogram?
I've already read a good amount on luminance histograms, and when you clip something here the pixels are just white, but from what it looks when I clib a red/green/blue there is still other information there besides just flat red pixels. Is this something to worry about only when viewing on a screen, or is it going to show up all red in a printed image? |
|
|
|
03/25/2006 08:42:29 PM · #2 |
It won't be extremely obvious, either on screen or in print. It just means you've lost any detail or color gradation for that channel. Assuming the other two channels are not clipped in that area, you'll still see graduations of color and luminosity. It's not a good thing, though, and you'll definitiely prefer the look of an equivalent photo without the clipped channel. For cameras without an RGB histogram, the fact that the luminosity histogram shows no clipping is no guarantee that one channel isn't clipped. Scenes whith highly saturated and pure reds, yellows or blues are worst in this regard. This is another reason to shoot RAW; you can usually pull back down the overexposure to at least some degree in conversion.
Don't be tremendously concerned with minor clipping of one channel; you'd be surprised at the number of photos that have one channel clipped in small areas and still look great.
Message edited by author 2006-03-25 20:43:07. |
|
|
|
03/25/2006 09:21:23 PM · #3 |
Clipping one channel essentially desaturates those pixels. People say "expose to the right", but really they mean "expose the brightest channel to the right".
Trouble is, it's hard to tell from a brightness only histogram if you've clipped one channel. The worst case would be an image where the brightest pixels were 255 in one channel and 0 in the other two. Then you'd have to keep your brightness histogram more than a full stop away from the right to avoid clipping.
Most scenes will not be so demanding though. If you just keep your histogram a little ways from the rightmost edge you will usually be OK, especially if you have the RAW file.
|
|
Home -
Challenges -
Community -
League -
Photos -
Cameras -
Lenses -
Learn -
Help -
Terms of Use -
Privacy -
Top ^
DPChallenge, and website content and design, Copyright © 2001-2025 Challenging Technologies, LLC.
All digital photo copyrights belong to the photographers and may not be used without permission.
Current Server Time: 09/08/2025 06:31:35 PM EDT.
