On 2/7/03 7:50 pm, "Paul Debois" wrote: > I've been asked by a picture library to supply digital files for all > submissions. One of their standards is to make sure that the histograms > are not clipped at either end, which for a lot of images is not a > problem. Some images I've been working on today are a little more > tricky, being into the light and as a result are quite contrasty. > > My scanner (microtek 4000t) was profiled by Neil Barstow and my monitor > is calibrated regularly. The images in question are visually accurate > on screen and are a good representation of the transparencies, but the > blacks are clipped. In the book "Real world photoshop" by David > Blatner and Bruce Fraser, they say they "prefer working > visually...rather than strictly by the numbers." Will a colour house > throw their hands up in horror if they saw a clipped histogram? I > realize this is leading towards a much larger subject, but is the > library guidline realistic?
I used to stress out about this in the early days, shooting digitally. I'd always try and keep the good old histogram on the back of my camera somewhere in the middle. But then I woke up. Hang on a minute, I said to myself, what if I was shooting tranny. If I want a shot of a girl indoors, against a sunny window, the light coming in is going to blow out by miles. If this was tranny, I'd say "stuff it, who cares if it blows out, that's the result I want", with digital, I'd worry about those highlights. Now I just shoot it and let the highlights go way out. That's how I wanted the image to look. Not every image could possibly fit into the perfect histogram, sometimes there is just way too much contrast to deal with, and its simply not possible to control it. Regards Paul PS PhotoRetouchPro has a great histogram, which displays the percentage of burned/iced pixels. It recommends that if there are more than 1% (I think) over, either way, then the image will be unsuitable for repro. Its a great guide. -- Paul Tansley Fashion & Beauty Photography London +44 (0) 7973 669584 http://www.paultansley.com =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
