Pure white highlights... how?

[Sam Bacon]

Hi, all

I have been always wondering what would be the straightforward technique for making highlights be pure white which is quite common such as:

http://www.viennapaint.com/work/pop....P.ini&cached=1

http://www.viennapaint.com/work/pop....P.ini&cached=1

One can see such highlights in the whole lot of pro postprocessing (especiallly commercials), right?..
Is it painting, db or else?

I assumed it could be also something like "select highlights > solid white with highlights mask > soft lite mode (or overlay)..." but this does not work exactly the way it looks like in the given samples.

There may be some manipulation required before this?

I will highly appreciate any comments!
Thanks

[pieohpah]

I don't know if I'm missing something here, but I thing the easiest way to get the highlights pure white is to ajust the white point in Levels, either by dragging the slider or selecting what should be white with the picker.

Select Levels from the menu or create a new Levels adjustment layer.

[Sam Bacon]

Originally Posted by pieohpah

I don't know if I'm missing something here, but I thing the easiest way to get the highlights pure white is to ajust the white point in Levels, either by dragging the slider or selecting what should be white with the picker.

Select Levels from the menu or create a new Levels adjustment layer.

What if the lightest point in the image is not pure white? This will damage the colour balance, won't this?

[pieohpah]

If you use the color picker it will change the color balance, but not if you drag the white slider under the histogram in Levels. At least I don't think so.

[Sam Bacon]

Do you really think this is how the white colour was produced in the second image of my original post? I do not think so... Or is it me who is missing something...(

[pieohpah]

I leave that analysis to someone else. I don't really know =)

[madclark]

Here's a thought.

As someone pointed out, when you use the levels sliders, anything to the right of the white point will be white. But I'm not sure if this addresses what you see happening in these pictures.

I'd suggest selectively desaturating your highlights. With white as your foreground color, use Select>Color Range and bump up the slider to gather a good selection of the highlights in your picture. Then you can add two adjustment layers on this selection, a hue/satuation to desaturate the highlights and a curves layer to further brighten the highlights.

Good luck!