Lightroom Q: highlight warnings (rather than clipping warnings)?

[pjm1]

Does anyone know if there's anyway to show - easily - in lightroom areas of a photo which are greater than a particular luminance, say 92%? I realise I can wander over the possibly areas with the WB eyedropper and look at the R, G, B %s but that's quite a bit slower than just having a second set of blinkies (say) which show highlights rather than clipped whites.

One sort-of-solution seems to be to add a large extra amount of exposure (say +2.5 to 3) and look for the standard red blinkies.

Reason for asking is to check for lighting hotspots a bit more analytically (I don't yet have enough experience just to be able to tell immediately).

Thanks in advance.

 

[sjh2008]

The only one i know off is when in the Develop Module hit the J key to display Highlight / Shadow blinkies so you can tweak the exposure settings to not blow sky out etc

 

[StewartR]

Why not:
- increase exposure by an *appropriate* amount in the Develop module
- check for hotspots
- revert the exposure

I've had a long day and I don't trust myself to calculate how much extra exposure you need to turn 92% luminance into 100% luminance, but I'm sure it's not too hard.

 

[pjm1]

Why not:
- increase exposure by an *appropriate* amount in the Develop module
- check for hotspots
- revert the exposure

I've had a long day and I don't trust myself to calculate how much extra exposure you need to turn 92% luminance into 100% luminance, but I'm sure it's not too hard.

Hi Stewart - that was my thinking as well and I also can't work it out, but my excuse is not understanding it well enough rather than being tired!

 

[pjm1]

Ok - I've had a play using a test image I created in PS of 90% through to 99%. I adjusted the exposure bar upwards in 0.1 increments and I can confirm for this test image (making no other adjustments), each blob blew out with the following exposure increases:

99% +1.2
98% +1.7
97% +2.1
96% +2.2
95% +2.3
94% +2.4
93% +2.5
92% +2.6
91% +2.8
90% +2.9

So, I think as a quick check I can play around with my image and then as a final check, increase exposure by a further 2.7 (just to be safe) and if nothing blows, I don't have "too hot" skin.

I think!

Edit: Conversely, if going for a reasonably high-ish key image, I can push the exposure until the skin blows slightly, then reduce it by 2.6/2.7... (which having just done gave me EXACTLY the exposure I had set on a full-length shot I was quite happy with)

 

[Brian G]

Dependent on the image, when I'm in the Develop module I always hold the "Alt" key as I'm adjusting the "Whites" slider and set it so that a few "over" spots are just appearing.
(Similarly with the "Black" slider, although you can usually accept a bit more black clipping than white.)

 

[pjm1]

Dependent on the image, when I'm in the Develop module I always hold the "Alt" key as I'm adjusting the "Whites" slider and set it so that a few "over" spots are just appearing.
(Similarly with the "Black" slider, although you can usually accept a bit more black clipping than white.)

Agreed - or you can shift-double-click the slider and have LR do that automatically But I was really trying to work out to how set the exposure for skin highlights... I reckon the above method (post 5) works and I've been using it a fair bit on a large number of kids' party shots. 1000 images later and I can confirm it's pretty reliable (ok, I'll admit to processing maybe only 10% of them!)

 

[Chappers]

This is a feature I did suggest for Lightroom several years ago. I's useful when submitting images for publication to ensure you have sufficiant highlight and shadow detail. Still waiting