Results 1 to 9 of 9

Thread: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

  1. #1
    New Member ventodimare's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    Sydney (Australia)
    Posts
    5
    Real Name
    Francis

    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Hi,
    in my nikon D80, when I review a pic I can choose to see the histrogram or the blinking highlights (the high lights that have been blown out appear as blinking white areas).

    Is there any way to be able to open a pic (raw) in photoshop CS5 and to see those blinking highlights?

    Cheers

  2. #2
    FrankMi's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA
    Posts
    6,294
    Real Name
    Frank Miller

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by ventodimare View Post
    Hi,
    in my nikon D80, when I review a pic I can choose to see the histrogram or the blinking highlights (the high lights that have been blown out appear as blinking white areas).

    Is there any way to be able to open a pic (raw) in photoshop CS5 and to see those blinking highlights?

    Cheers
    Hi ventodimare, you can use Bridge in CS5 to open the image in Adobe Camera Raw. The histogram has two little triangles above the highlights and shadows ends ot the histogram. Clicking on these triangles will identify in blue and areas in the image that are too dark and in red, any areas in the image that are too bright. As you adjust Recover, Fill Light, and other sliders, to can see the red and blue image indicators get larger or smaller. Hope this helps!

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    17,660
    Real Name
    Have a guess :)

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by FrankMi View Post
    Hi ventodimare, you can use Bridge in CS5 to open the image in Adobe Camera Raw. The histogram has two little triangles above the highlights and shadows ends ot the histogram. Clicking on these triangles will identify in blue and areas in the image that are too dark and in red, any areas in the image that are too bright. As you adjust Recover, Fill Light, and other sliders, to can see the red and blue image indicators get larger or smaller. Hope this helps!
    Hi Ventodimare,

    Keep in mind also though that the "blinkies" on the camera are based on the in-camera created JPEG, not the RAW file. Just because an area is shown as being blown on the Camera doesn't mean that the same area will necessarily be blown on the RAW file (there can be up to about a 2-Stop safety margin).

  4. #4
    New Member ventodimare's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    Sydney (Australia)
    Posts
    5
    Real Name
    Francis

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Hi,
    thanks to you both! Great tip. As my pc is not very powerful, I was wondering if you know a freeware program that opens a raw and shows simply the pic, its histogram and the blinking.
    I have tried IrfanView and FsViewer and others but none seems to have the combination offered by Adobe Camera Raw

    Have a nice day and thanks!
    Last edited by ventodimare; 22nd November 2011 at 08:31 AM.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    17,660
    Real Name
    Have a guess :)

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by ventodimare View Post
    Hi,
    thanks to you both! Great tip. As my pc is not very powerful, I was wondering if you know a freeware program that opens a raw and shows simply the pic, its histogram and the blinking.
    I have tried IrfanView and FsViewer and others but none seems to have the combination offered by Adobe Camera Raw

    Have a nice day and thanks!
    Not off the top of my head -- there are a few other fairly powerful (and free) RAW converters available though.

  6. #6
    FrankMi's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Fort Mill, South Carolina, USA
    Posts
    6,294
    Real Name
    Frank Miller

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by ventodimare View Post
    opens a raw and shows simply the pic, its histogram and the blinking.
    Hi - - - say, could I get you to go to Forum Actions at the top of this page and in Edit Profile, add your real first name unless you prefer to be called vent.....?

    The same functionallity is available in Adobe Lightroom at a much lower cost.

  7. #7
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Location
    Windsor, Berks, UK
    Posts
    16,737
    Real Name
    Dave Humphries :)

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Hi there "ventodimare",

    Could you do us a favour please and Edit (your) Profile and put a first name in the Real Name field? It helps us keep the place friendly, but do accept my apologies in the (hopefully unlikely) event that "ventodimare" is your first name

    Quote Originally Posted by ventodimare View Post
    As my pc is not very powerful, I was wondering if you know a freeware program that opens a raw and shows simply the pic, its histogram and the blinking.
    I have tried IrfanView and FsViewer and others but none seems to have the combination offered by Adobe Camera Raw
    Well, have you tried Nikon's ViewNX2? Even if you don't have the CD that came with the D80, it is downloadable from Nikon's website and is free.

    I use it to review my shots, check histogram and clipping.

    It doesn't do "blinkies", but if you are viewing a RAW image thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5
    (note Luminance and RGB histograms)

    and hit the H key, it displays the colour channels that are clipped in the Highlights thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    and if you then use the S key, it shows the Shadows that are clipped, thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Also, if you click and hold anywhere on the image, it gives you instant 100% view to check focus and noise thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    It also allows you to check the Focus Point(s) selected, thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    I can't say what it is like on a low power computer, but as it is free, why not try it?

    I don't normally use it to do any editing, preferring ACR for that, which is no problem, you can add Open With applications for use thus;
    blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    As you can see, I quite like it

    I also use the NikonTransfer2 to get images off the card and into a main and back up location in one go - you can get that free off the website too.

    Cheers,
    Last edited by Dave Humphries; 22nd November 2011 at 08:33 PM.

  8. #8

    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Scotland
    Posts
    13
    Real Name
    Robert Beacon

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by Colin Southern View Post
    Hi Ventodimare,

    Keep in mind also though that the "blinkies" on the camera are based on the in-camera created JPEG, not the RAW file. Just because an area is shown as being blown on the Camera doesn't mean that the same area will necessarily be blown on the RAW file (there can be up to about a 2-Stop safety margin).
    After using the UNI white balance for a while I found that there is about 2/3 of a stop difference in the jpeg histogram in the camera and the raw histogram in ACR. Meaning that when you look at the histogram in camera and the hump is touching the right hand side then in reality the image is 2/3 stop underexposed. The blinkies settings aren't explained by any camera manufacturer by they are almost certainly conservative so blinking highlights in clouds wont be a problem and using something like ACR or Lightroom means you can rescue up tp 3 stops of overexposure. This means that there is plenty of elbow room to correct exposure. though you want to get it "correct" at the time.

  9. #9

    Join Date
    Dec 2008
    Location
    New Zealand
    Posts
    17,660
    Real Name
    Have a guess :)

    Re: blinking areas in Photoshop CS5

    Quote Originally Posted by bobrobert View Post
    After using the UNI white balance for a while I found that there is about 2/3 of a stop difference in the jpeg histogram in the camera and the raw histogram in ACR. Meaning that when you look at the histogram in camera and the hump is touching the right hand side then in reality the image is 2/3 stop underexposed. The blinkies settings aren't explained by any camera manufacturer by they are almost certainly conservative so blinking highlights in clouds wont be a problem and using something like ACR or Lightroom means you can rescue up tp 3 stops of overexposure. This means that there is plenty of elbow room to correct exposure. though you want to get it "correct" at the time.
    Hi Robert,

    It's one of those areas where the theory and practice can vary a bit. In theory, folks say you can push the exposure further than what may initially be apparent on the in-camera jpeg (and indeed this can often be needed in high DR scenes). The bit that they don't often mention though is that as you start to push the sensor closer and closer to saturation, you start to operate in non-linear regions of the sensors response curve which (considering also that it's likely that one channel will be in this region more than the others), may give a net result that you can get some weird highlight colour shifts than can be nigh on impossible to completely null out.

    In practice - personally - for high dynamic range scenes - I do push the exposure into this area, but for less extreme examples, I often just rely on the blinkies; although I know I can push things further exposure wise, for me, they just seem to tie in fairly close with the "nice" areas of the response curve (and many seem to forget that the camera is usually capturing far more dynamic range than they really need -- so it's usually not a problem to dig a litle of that from the shadow areas) (technically it's not as clean, but in practice, it's often perfectly OK).

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •