Hi.

I am a photographer and have been asked to submit a lot of images to a library, they specify among many things that the black and white points should be 99% and 1% resp. There are many ways to achieve this, many time consuming ones placing targets and watching info dialogues etc BUT can I just use the levels/curves with the clipping dialogue set to 0%. Presumably this means that the highlights/shadows will not be clipped at all. Is this correct? I believe the default is set to 0.10%.

Hope that makes sense, just want to make sure I haven't confused things along the way!

many thanks

Anthony

Sounds like you're understanding things. Yes you can just use the Auto button in Curves to pull the black and white points to where you want. You could even make an action that will batch process the whole lot in one step. They specify that ALL images should have those black and white points?!

yes, all of them. I guess it's because they have no idea where the images will end up, so it allows them/the client to adjust the images for their press etc ...... I presume.

It does sum up to a slightly flat image though! Also, it must be the case that a spectral highlight will not have any detail whatsoever, wouldn't you think. No point in putting a tone into something that never had one to start.

Certain images will be destroyed in with a crude contrast boosting move like this,

Shouldnt make them look "flat" though - the control is too mechanical - If you have specular highlights you need to find a way to take them to 1% while pulling the rest of the image higher. Curves is your tool, and it will the only real way to get them to sing.

but wouldn't you think that any specular highlights should stay at 0% anyway. I realise that the technique I mention will send them to 1% but, as you mention, might not work out for the rest of the image. I think that if there are any obvious specular highlights (after assessing the image initially) then I will stay away from that technique and plot curves manually. But do you think it is ok on other images, without specular highlights??

impossible to say without seeing them