In which one do you see blown highlights? I didn't see any in the historgram. Maybe from the PP work.
Frank
The first one I checked. If you use photoshop or photoshop elements, add a "threshold" adjustment layer on top of your original. Move the slider to the far right, which is the RGB 255. The whole image should go black at this point except a few tiny white spots. What you see are white spots with a RGB value of 255, pure white aka highlights without details. If you start moving the slider slowly back towards the center, you should also see quite a few areas with RGB value close to 250. Usually you would like to keep the whites not higher than 246 or even 245. Some even suggests 243.
The histogram I checked has clippings on both ends, actually.
I am not good with PS yet however I checked the original like you said and I didn't see any blown highlights. Here is the original unedited. Can you check and see if I missed something? I am trying to learn and this is a great help to me.
Thanks in advance
Frank
Critiques and edits of my images are always welcome.
I am not good with PS yet however I checked the original like you said and I didn't see any blown highlights. Here is the original unedited. Can you check and see if I missed something? I am trying to learn and this is a great help to me.
Thanks in advance
Frank
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This one only has some tiny spots that are pure or close to pure white. Personally I'd not worry too much about them since they are not in the important areas of the image. What you can do in the future is check where the whitest spots are. Use the eye-dropper tool or similar and shift-clicked on them. When you further process the image, keep an eye on those highlight spots to make sure they don't go over. If you need to brighten the whole image a bit, use a mask afterwards to hide/protect those already bright spots. Hope this helps.
i like the original image too, i wouldn't put too much emphasis on exposure some rules are meant to be broken to get an effect of your own, that and depending on where you meter your exposure can be totally off from the beginning so go with what you like and give the technical aspects a miss. Sometimes blown out highlights can be a good thing as well as underexposed areas
Performed 5 main steps in the following basic order (some steps I repeated later):
1) curves adjustment - to bring back the shadows in the reflection - I think a little separation between the flower and its reflection helps
2) desaturate - performed several times in increments of 5%~10% at a time between other steps to keep the colors toned down
3) levels - to keep the lightness in the flower while bringing down the water (for separation) and enhancing the reflection
4) color balance - this is a tough one always with water reflections - the water still seems off to me but my main goal here was to try to get the flower actuately depicted.
5) hue adjustment - something I don't normally do, but again, a slight 4% adjustment to try to balance out the water.