M'Lady says my brights should be brighter: I'm working on it

Dan and Manfred, indeed I am. I just upgraded to 10.2 and I'm exploring the newness. For the record I do use levels.

I could have just adjusted the flower in a mask but I find that if i tweak one area then other areas also need adjusting. Same as in life adjust one area and it opens up demands in another area.

But i can certainly leave out comments about the software:)

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Originally Posted by JBW

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yec_Onwum.../EmptyName.jpg

ISO 100 ~ 1/6s ~ F/16, natural light

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Brian, I wonder if Her Ladyship might prefer contrast instead? In other words, leave those well exposed flowers alone or brightened just a smidge. But then dramatically lower the background so as to almost "3D" the flower:

http://kronometric.org/phot/post/CiC/temp/bri.jpg

Then add 3px Gaussian in post-post to smooth it a tad, et viola:

http://kronometric.org/phot/post/CiC/temp/EmptyName.jpg

What think?

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Originally Posted by xpatUSA

Brian, I wonder if Her Ladyship might prefer contrast instead? In other words, leave those well exposed flowers alone or brightened just a smidge. But then dramatically lower the background so as to almost "3D" the flower:

http://kronometric.org/phot/post/CiC/temp/bri.jpg

Then add 3px Gaussian in post-post to smooth it a tad, et viola:

http://kronometric.org/phot/post/CiC/temp/EmptyName.jpg

What think?

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I think that from now on I'll do the shooting and you can do the pp. WOW!

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Originally Posted by JBW

I think that from now on I'll do the shooting and you can do the pp. WOW!

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Thank you Brian. Often, a simple Curves adjustment can work wonders, I find. And, at the top right, I did drag the white level over to the left a bit, as others had already suggested but referring to Levels.

I like the flowers; we have similar on our street called herbetia lahue but they're purplish-blue.

A conundrum: why, when in Levels, do people refer to the right side of the image histogram as the white point?

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Originally Posted by xpatUSA

Thank you Brian. Often, a simple Curves adjustment can work wonders, I find. And, at the top right, I did drag the white level over to the left a bit, as others had already suggested but referring to Levels.

I like the flowers; we have similar on our street called herbetia lahue but they're purplish-blue.

A conundrum: why, when in Levels, do people refer to the right side of the image histogram as the white point?

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I don't know but it may go back to the time of the darkroom and film? Here's a definition:

'A white point (often referred to as reference white or target white in technical documents) is a set of tristimulus values or chromaticity coordinates that serve to define the color "white" in image capture, encoding, or reproduction.'

Seems to me that the white point is 255 and the black point is 0

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Originally Posted by JBW

I don't know but it may go back to the time of the darkroom and film? Here's a definition:

'A white point (often referred to as reference white or target white in technical documents) is a set of tristimulus values or chromaticity coordinates that serve to define the color "white" in image capture, encoding, or reproduction.'

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Excellent.

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Seems to me that the white point is 255 and the black point is 0

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Logically, it should be, but that isn't how most people use the term. The way they use it, it might be more aptly called the "whitest point" or the "nearest-to-white point." For example, sometimes people say that they "set the white point" at 245 or 250 rather than 255 so that no areas on the print are completely free of ink.

The other reason why this terminology is misleading is that when one "sets the white point"--regardless of whether one pulls the top of the curve to the left, as Ted did, or move the top slider on a levels tool--one is doing more than changing that top point. For example, suppose that you have an underexposed image that tops out with a small number of pixels at 180. You "adjust the white point" to bring those pixels up to 250. What happens to the rest of the image? The software won't just increase the value for the pixels at 180 and leave the rest as they were; that would leave a gap between them and the rest, and in many cases, it would be barely perceptible. Rather, it stretches the entire histogram. How it does this, that is, the function that gradually reduces the effect as you get to darker pixels, presumable varies among software packages, but that's just a detail. Some software will show you in the histogram the many points at which pixels were moved to the right. So, when one resets the white point, one is also adjusting midtones, just less.

You can make larger changes to midtones with the curves tool or by moving the gamma (roughly, the midpoint) slider in the levels tool. You can do this without affecting black or white points, although it will affect other tones progressively less as you get closer to them. The curves tool represents that decreasing impact.

For that reason, I think it is best to ignore the terminology and just start by asking: how far toward the right--toward the maximum brightness of 255--do you want the histogram to go? Then ask: what additional changes, if any, do I want to make the the rest of the histogram?

In the case of the curves tool, it would be trivial to redesign the display to make this clearer. You have the original histogram in the box. The altered histogram could be displayed on one of the vertical axes. This would show, for example, that as you apply a typical S-curve to increase contrast, you are compressing darks and lights into a smaller (that is, more extreme) region and spreading the midtones over a larger range. Photoshop does change the histogram to show the effects of curves and levels adjustments after the adjustment is completed, but it wold be more informative to have a before-and-after comparison and to have it work as you are making the adjustment, not just at the end.

some software has a before and after button

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Originally Posted by JBW

Seems to me that the white point is 255 and the black point is 0

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As soon we call a gray level in an image a "point", that loose terminology stands ready to cause confusion and trip us up. Your reference posted earlier remains excellent, IMO.

A white or reference point is a color, and is definitely NOT a gray level in an image or a histogram.

It is beyond me as to why people do not use the terms "Black level" and "White Level" in the context of image brightness or histograms.

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Originally Posted by xpatUSA

As soon we call a gray level in an image a "point", that loose terminology stands ready to cause confusion and trip us up. Your reference posted earlier remains excellent, IMO.

A white or reference point is a color, and is definitely NOT a gray level in an image or a histogram.

It is beyond me as to why people do not use the terms "Black level" and "White Level" in the context of image brightness or histograms.

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I once (with very little ability) tried to teach English as a second language. The first thing I tried to get across was that English is a potpourri and makes very little sense. :)