Do you set your white and black points?

[bajadreamer]

General question that does not pertain to any one shot. Do you routinely set your white and black points on all the images you process? If so, how do you do it. I have seen it done in ACR using ALT +moving the the white and black sliders by hand; using SHIFT + double clicking on the white and black sliders to auto set the points; and using a LEVELS adjustment layer using ALT and manually adjusting the sliders. I am sure there are other ways. I routinely use Photoshop for most of my processing after running my images through DXO Pure Raw.

 

[bleirer]

I do it routinely in the raw editor every image and always take another peek at the levels adjustment layer in Photoshop. Usually in levels I am satisfied with black and white but nudge the midpoint a little.

In Lightroom I check the white balance and profile first then set the curve at medium contrast. I find it recursive, I'll click and drag in the histogram (same as sliding the sliders) middle first then drag blacks left and shadows right then blacks left again then back to middle then whites right then highlights left and whites right again. Then down to curves. Usually i like black blacks, white whites, open shadows, and a full range of middle tones. But it depends on the scene, I won't overdo something high key or low key. Also if there is noise in the shadows I might keep that area below black, no sense in brightening a noisy shadow, that just makes mud.

 

[bajadreamer]

I do it routinely in the raw editor every image and always take another peek at the levels adjustment layer in Photoshop. Usually in levels I am satisfied with black and white but nudge the midpoint a little.

In Lightroom I check the white balance and profile first then set the curve at medium contrast. I find it recursive, I'll click and drag in the histogram (same as sliding the sliders) middle first then drag blacks left and shadows right then blacks left again then back to middle then whites right then highlights left and whites right again. Then down to curves. Usually i like black blacks, white whites, open shadows, and a full range of middle tones. But it depends on the scene, I won't overdo something high key or low key. Also if there is noise in the shadows I might keep that area below black, no sense in brightening a noisy shadow, that just makes mud.

Thank you for your information. I want to try different approaches. Your comments about "muddy" shadows is well taken.

 

[DRwyoming]

General question that does not pertain to any one shot. Do you routinely set your white and black points on all the images you process? If so, how do you do it. I have seen it done in ACR using ALT +moving the the white and black sliders by hand; using SHIFT + double clicking on the white and black sliders to auto set the points; and using a LEVELS adjustment layer using ALT and manually adjusting the sliders. I am sure there are other ways. I routinely use Photoshop for most of my processing after running my images through DXO Pure Raw.

I generally set white and black points using the Alt key trick during raw conversion or sometimes when processing an image in PS I'll do a final white and black point check with a Levels layer again using the Alt key trick. I'll generally want at least a couple of pixels rendering as true black but unless there are specular highlights I want clipped (e.g. sometimes small reflections in glass or bright peaks in something like whitewater) I don't actually clip the whites but bring them up close to clipping. And in some images like low contrast images shot on foggy mornings I often won't set a white point, black point or both as when the contrast really is and really should be pretty low that can stretch the image too far and lose that moodiness.

I haven't had great luck with the Shift-double click approach to setting black or white points, I find it often clips far more pixels to be true black or true white than I like. Sometimes I'll try it and then back off the slider a bit so not quite so many pixels are hard clipped as I generally just want to touch the edges of the tonal range. There are exceptions like an image with a jet black background or one I want to take to silhouette where a little bit extra hard clipping can help.

 

[bajadreamer]

I generally set white and black points using the Alt key trick during raw conversion or sometimes when processing an image in PS I'll do a final white and black point check with a Levels layer again using the Alt key trick. I'll generally want at least a couple of pixels rendering as true black but unless there are specular highlights I want clipped (e.g. sometimes small reflections in glass or bright peaks in something like whitewater) I don't actually clip the whites but bring them up close to clipping. And in some images like low contrast images shot on foggy mornings I often won't set a white point, black point or both as when the contrast really is and really should be pretty low that can stretch the image too far and lose that moodiness.

I haven't had great luck with the Shift-double click approach to setting black or white points, I find it often clips far more pixels to be true black or true white than I like. Sometimes I'll try it and then back off the slider a bit so not quite so many pixels are hard clipped as I generally just want to touch the edges of the tonal range. There are exceptions like an image with a jet black background or one I want to take to silhouette where a little bit extra hard clipping can help.

I find the same thing. Certainly easy to do, but often overdoes it. I am trying to streamline my workflow so am looking at each step I usually take and think, "Can I do something different that would speed this process up?".

 

[Strodav]

To me, it's very image dependent. I have seen so many portraits of light skinned models with dark hair in black dresses where the photographer buries all the shadow detail in the dress removing all texture and all but destroys the hair. I recently saw a portrait taken by one professional photographer of another professional carrying a camera. In order to adhere to the "rule" of contrast, the detail in the camera body and lens was completely buried. Except for the white text, the camera and lens looked like a black hole. When warranted, I try to preserve texture in the subject whether in shadow or highlight. Contrast in the background is a different story. If I believe a tone curve adjustment is called for I usually apply an S curve, i.e., increase the contrast in the midtones and flatten the shadows and highlights without burying the shadows or blowing out the highlights.

 

[bleirer]

One interesting thing about the curves adjustment layer in Photoshop is if you alt click the auto button, you get a choice of other auto algorithms. The default one isn't that great but some of the others really work. You can set any of them as default for next time. Also there are eyedropper tools for clicking in the image to set black point, white point, and gray point, so can be a good starting point.

 

[Viathelens]

Yes, most oftentimes I do, but I use LrC instead of ACR so won't elaborate.

 

[bleirer]

Detailed into on how to do it in photoshop curves adjustment layer plus more curves info.

Julieanne Kost's Blog | Working with Curves in Photoshop

While I recently posted the video below on Curves for my 3, 2, 1, Photoshop series, I wasn’t able to fit all of the shortcuts within the 2:20 second time limit so I thought I would include them (below the video), in this post (plus, I know that some of you prefer to simply read the shortcuts...

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