johnn: Can you send a sceen capture showning how to see clipped pixels with a log histogram?
den: This is the first of three screen shots for the highlight procedure for the tutorial example. Top left is the Original, top right is the Preview, and bottom right is the Highlights Mask with a tone range of 60->100% per the tutorial..... This highlight range was necessary to get the mask to include the sky/mountains/foothills to the tops of the mid-distance treeline. The brightness scale is in linear with the [100,100] control point moved to the left as one would normally do for expanding to full tone range..... while the sky, clouds, and mountain details increased acceptably, the gull's head and breast got 'blown'.
[Addendum1]: Complex 60->100% Tone Range Mask Work Flow:
1. Click on the original image and open Mask Tool - Brightness Curve option.
2. ADD curve [0,0], [60,0], [70,100], [100,100] and APPLY.
3. select Blur = 50 and APPLY.
4. SUBSTRACT curve [0,100,], [40,100], [60,0], [100,0] and APPLY.
5. select Feather = -2 and APPLY.
6. select Feather = +2 and APPLY.
7. click OK, creating the 60->100% tone range mask.
The reason becomes apparant when the Brightness Curve scale is switched to Log Histogram.... the image actually did have full tone expansion to white [100%] which when investigated further these tones were located in the gull's head and breast.....
The solution here was to create an image version where the gull's head and breast were optimized (move the [80,100] control point back to [100,100] ) so that these tones are included when the transform is 'applied'] and then clone them back into the image with the acceptable sky/clouds/mountains as in the gull optimized image, the sky/clouds/mountains were too saturated and dull.....
johnn: In general I think this procedure will help anyone achieve much better images, with almost all their images, if they are willing to put in a little work. However I (still) think the number of people that would make use of this procedure would increase significantly if you included an entire example, starting with, "For this image I want to . . . (in detail) . . . "
den: I may do this but reluctant as the documentation of the process is so tedious for an optimization that may not work on other images in general and those following these steps will try to apply it to other images without understanding why it will not work.
johnn: Rather than highlights, shadow, midtone, I learned to proceed with the largest area changes, then do the medium area changes and the least area changes. That is, if a large area of midtones needed contrast enhancement I 'learned' to start with that - it was a lot easier for me to at least try to visualize the final result.
den: The main reason the highlight, shadow, and mid-tone sequence was suggested, is that for most "good" camera exposures, the mid-tones need little or no changes and contain the most detail. By focusing in on the highlights and shadows first, one will recover detail here and then better visualize what needs to be done to the mid-tones to capitalize on the highlight and shadow improvements.... at least this is the way I approach this process. But then, not everyone looks at things the same way. The best approach is what works for you.
