Red clipping

[blakemcguire]

So I have an older photo here that I had printed 4x6.
It looks OK, but there's not much detail in the reds, but if I drop the saturation a little in the red channel it just doesn't have the same kind of colour impact.

I want to get this enlarged a little bit and I want to get the best result I can.

Is there some kind of a happy medium or am I overthinking it? Is the red clipping ugly or is it something that only I'm really noticing?



Tell me what you think.

[PhotomanJohn]

Try reducing the luminance in the red channel.

John

[swanseadave]

+1,I agree that`s the best way.

[chauncey]

If you're a PS kinda guy, the easiest method is a B&W adjustment layer converted to luminosity.

[xpatUSA]

The histogram for the blown reds show them as unrecoverable in the JPEG posted. By "unrecoverable" I mean that there is a big peak at level 255 and half of a Gaussian distribution to it's left. Under the snare drum, the greens are clipped to zero but the blue channel has some content between levels 51 and 72. Unfortunately, simply reducing the red luminance in levels just moves the histogram spike to the left which darkens the red which still stays monochromatic (flat). If the raw file is still available, it might be better to start over. Otherwise, drastic color curve work could bring back something in the red zones but, at 8-bit/channel, posterization soon shows up:



Sometimes drastic curves work for this kind of image - and at least the snare drum is no longer monochromatic, eh?

Basically, the red curve was increased in downward slope at the top. The green curve was increased in upward slope at the bottom. The blue curve was pulled upward at the 60 level. The other parts of the curves were kept straight-ish. I spent very little time in Curves - could have been better, I reckon.

[Geoff F]

If it is shot in Raw, Blake, then it is definitely worth going back to the original for another edit. But whatever you try, there will be some loss of fine detail in the clipped areas.

I've had a couple of goes with different options.

Firstly a Curves Adjustment Layer with the Blend Mode set to Luminosity. I simply reduced the highlights until a little bit of detail started appearing in the clipped areas then used a mask so it only applied to those required red areas. This worked on all RGB levels but it might also be worth trying it just using the red channel.



And an alternative edit using ACR where I reduced Luminosity and Saturation just on the red channel. Also a few other tweaks including an overall recovery of clipped channels, a little boost to the clipped shadows and a tiny bit of noise reduction.



I suspect that starting again using a bit from both methods, and taking a little more time and care, should produce something usable

[Charlie Woodrich]

Sometimes changing the camera style in bridge can tame down the red channel.