Black point

Hi,
After upgrading Aperture to 3.3 all my photo's appear be less bright in "view" mode. Also photo is indicated as too much black, which cann't be adjusted via the black point key in the adjustment field. Anyone got this problem also?
regards, Arnold

Arnold,
you can now adjust the brightness individually for the Viewer and the Browser in the Preferences;
Preferences > Appearance
Adjust the "Viewer Brightness" slider and the "Full Screen Brightness" slider. Does this help?
Added: How do you try to set the Black Point? In the "Exposure" brick? Have you tried to type directly into the number field besides the black point slider? In what way does i not work for you?
Regards
Léonie

Similar Messages

White and black point vs ??

I never know which forum to post these things, so I'll start with the photographers.
 
 These three shots are as follows: (1) the camera raw version, (2) where I moved the sliders from the ends to approximately the beginning/end of the major portion of the histogram, and (3) using the threshold control to find the white and black points in the main part of the picture.
 
 Then, in the two adjusted versions, I lightened the image with the curves control.
 
 In both these cases, I used the grey dropper to touch the same spot on one of the rocks, to get the apparent neutral point.
 
 It seems to me that the threshold method to find the white and black points is preferred, based on the overall color and appearance of the finished adjustment.
 
 But, I've found on some images where the histogram has missing black and missing white, if I adjust the sliders to these two ends, I get pretty much the same outcome, as far as the contrast, color, and grey point.
 
 Could I have some advice on the preferred method to use in handling my image adjustments? Doing it the threshold method takes more time, and sometimes it's difficult to find the white and black points, or even the grey point.
 
 Thanks.
 
 Al
 
 
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<img alt="Picture hosted by Pixentral" src="http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1tIEs4eAyKz4sxamyVaYRlKjTIIfKj_thumb.jpg" border="0" />
 
 
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Yes the image was purposely underexposed. What I was trying to accomplish was to speed up the shutter speed to remove the slight blurring and compensate by pulling data from the shadows. Even though the lens has an image stabilizer the amount of light wasn't enough for a proper sharp shot.
this image is before touch up
These two images are F/5.6, 1/20, ISO 800
After touch up
Better lit scene but shows slight motion blur
This last image is F/5.6, 1/4, ISO 800
I believe that I will have to wait next year and hope I have a faster lens by then. I just don't think the 28mm-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens is fast enough. I was trying this without a tripod to get in tighter.
Also I was taking these shots without the flash to get the drama of the tree lights.
What I would have prefer is a shutter speed of 1/125 or better as it helps with my hands shaking I believe the slowest should be 1/60
And the lower the ISO the better for noise.
These preferences are what I am used to with my Canon G3 that does not have IS.
I am getting so off track here, lol. But anyways, here are the pictures.

Problem with Black Point adjustment

When making Black Point adjustments (with hot and cold highlights enabled) my photos suddenly turn completely blue. If I hold click the slider button, I can see the photo again as expected.
I also notice this histogram is empty.
I have the same problem with both my Nvidia and Radeon graphics cards.
This problem has started since my upgrade to 10.5.7
Has anyone else experience this? ...am I doing something wrong?

I think I have found the problem. For some reason the Black Point values were incrementing in much higher values than before.

Recovery, and Black Point Not Working in 2.0

I imported RAW pics from my old database (converted to 2.0). Wanted to try the new exposure adjustments, mainly recovery and BP. The HUD only lets me adjust exposure and brightness, the recovery and black point are grayed out and cannot be adjusted.
Has anyone got this adjustment to work? I am using the trial version. No, I am not in the preview mode. The master is Canon RAW from 40D.

Got it. Thanks! Just figured it out too that you need to choose the v2.0 RAW conversion on the RAW Fine Tuning adjustment toggle.
Recovery and BP adjust a lot more sluggish on my MBP w/4G Ram then it does in the tutorial video. This is concerning since in have only imported about 40 pics so far.
Time will tell.

Set Black Point to 0 by default in Aperture 2.x?

Hello
(First post - have lurked a little on here for a while, but have not had a question of my own until now)
Has anyone found a way to set the Black Point slider on the Exposure brick (or any other slider for that matter) to zero as a default? Otherwise, with the Exposure control is off a Black Point of 3 is applied, which clips my images.
(by a happy miracle, my camera gets the black point right most of the time, provided I set it right)
So far I've had to create an image with my preferred 'flat' settings to Lift & Stamp across to new imports, or create a preset for the Exposure brick that then has to be manually applied, and both of these methods seem rather clunky for a Pro app. I'm not averse to hacking text files, if that is what it takes...
Thanks,
Matt

I'd like to know as well, is there a way to set the default black point to zero instead of the 3.00?

Adobe CMM Black Point Compensation

Hello list members,
I have been trying out the Adobe CMM in combination with Adobe Photoshop.
By testing the Black Point Compensation (BPC) preferences, I get strange
results on my PowerMac. This is not happening on an IntelMac for me.
The discussion started on the ColorSync users group and is still going on there,
so maybe others might report there too.
This is my testing basis (All done with ISOcoated to ISOuncoated, relative colorimetric):
(Abbr. Adobe Photoshop Convert to Profile BPC Setting: PS)
(Abbr. Adobe CMM preferences BPC setting: CMM)
PS CMM Expected Happening
On On BPC taking place OK
On Off BPC taking place NOT Ok, no BPC happening
Off On BPC taking place OK
Off Off NO BPC OK
Any feedbacks are welcomed.
Regards
Rolf Gierling

In rare cases using Black Point Compensation can cause unacceptable results and the effect is usually washed out detail in the very dark regions of the final image. In our experience this problem usually rears its ugly head with some RGB output profiles.
Adobe recommends, and we agree, that in almost all cases, Black Point Compensation should be on when dealing with CMYK files (doing
RGB to CMYK conversions or CMYK to CMYK conversions). In most cases, doing RGB to RGB conversions without Black Point Compensation will produce desirable prints. However, depending on the profile, doing a conversion from RGB to RGB with Black Point Compensation can produce
poor output with washed out blacks.
It appears that this problem with some RGB profiles is dependent
on the software that is used to generate the profile. Apparently there is a Black Tag feature in ICC profiles that in some cases can be used or unused depending on the software that actually creates the profile. For this reason, there is no hard and fast rule that says we should or should not use Black Point Compensation with RGB output. Our recommendation is to turn off Black Point Compensation with RGB output profiles or if possible, try a test with Black Point Compensation
on and off.
There is one other case where you may want to turn off Black Point Compensation. When you want to soft proof output for a printer that has a low dynamic range like newspaper, where the blacks are
usually not very dense. By turning off the Black Point Compensation, the soft proof is more accurate in predicating the effect of this low dynamic range. Black Point Compensation should be turned off
in the CMYK Set-Up. You can view full information for this problem source www.digitaldog.net/files/Black_Point_Compensation.pdf
Sincerely, Shair

Black point compensation

I have a problem with Black Point Compensation in the print dialog when printing my book pages. It almost seems that the on/off toggle is reversed. I usually have BPC on when printing in Photoshop and I can preview its effect there. I use Relative Colorimetric rendering and having BPC on is invariably better. When previewing the effect in Aperture's print dialog window on the other hand I seem to pretty much get the reverse of what I see in the Photoshop preview. In other words now having BPC turned off not only looks better in the preview, it's also better in the actual print. Has anyone encountered this? Is this a possible bug?

Hi Markus,
Not quite - what the article shows is that BPC is generally a good choice if you are moving from a color space or range of colors in your image (Adobe RGB, for example) that are greater than those in the destination space (nearly any print device) because it keeps the tonal range of the shadows in the image correctly related to each other by mapping the blackest black in your image to the blackest black possible on your output device then shifts the other blacks relatively. As John Nate says:
"the maximum black in Adobe RGB will be remapped to the slightly less dense black of the inkjet printer and all of the other tones will scale accordingly"
However, if you then have a situation where you have an image that has a very restricted black tonal range - an image that has already been prepared for newsprint, for example - and convert it to another space - Adobe RGB, for example - then instead of mapping the image accurately as it would appear in newsprint, BPC over-compensates and shifts the washed-out blacks of the 'correct' newsprint image to the deep blacks possible in Adobe RGB. So, if you are trying to get an accurate on-screen or inkjet proof from the newsprint-ready image, BPC will mess things up.
In short, most of the time when you are moving from sRGB or Adobe RGB etc. to inkjet or print, you can fairly safely leave it on. When you are dealing with images already converted to CMYK, and you want to maintain their appearance as it will be seen on print, it is best to leave it off.
Powerbook, Mac Mini (Intel) Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Powerbook, Mac Mini (Intel) Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Aperture2 - Recovery and Black Point adjustments question

I purchased the Aperture2 upgrade and, I'm impressed!!!
I have a question:
In the *Adjustment Tab*:
Two features in the *Exposure area, "Recover and Black Point"*, works sometimes and other times it does not.
There must be a reason for it - I just can't figure out why this happens. One would think that it should work all the time!?
Anyone know?

C and Scott, thanks so much for trying to help this old codger learn new tricks.
All the images I imported into Aperture2 are projects already completed and therefore I won't need to make adjustments to them. I was using them to test and learn the new Aperture2 features.
But, Just in case I ever need to convert a RAW image from A1x to the A2 format I'll know how to do it.
As I said before, as long as my new RAW images that I import directly into A2 have all the features available, I'm a happy camper. I won't be importing any images into A2 until after my shoot this evening, so, do you know if this is the case?

Recovery and Black Point on JPEG images

I'm not a big fan of trying to do much editing on JPEG images aside from non-exposure/white balance type stuff. I'll crop and straighten, etc.
My question pertains to (for those in the know) applying slight Recovery and Black Point correction to images that aren't shot in RAW format. A) will applying these slight changes having any effect (hopefully a positive one) on the images? B) if not, will it indeed have a negative effect?
Thanks for your time and expertise.
Mac

Jim,
Thanks for chiming in on a topic where I didn't expect to get many replies. All of your comments are well appreciated. I was basically asking because I was under the impression that unless your master is in RAW format, making adjustments to exposure, contrast and even recovery and black point would not do much and could even be detrimental to things such as skin tone, etc. I like to shoot in RAW for the reason of being able to have more fine control to adjustments, but for everyday shots and portraits I don't always go to RAW format since a lot of the time I have trouble getting the shot right with the manual controls. I also don't want the large RAW files for every shot that I take. Still, a lot of JPEG's need adjustments, even if just minor tweaks. The tweaks I make look fine on the screen, but I wasn't sure if they would look okay when printed out and I didn't want to spend countless hours making adjustments and spend (waste) money on prints that weren't going to come out good.
Anyway, that is the background to my thinking in making this post. Thanks again for chiming in.
Mac

Setting a White Point and Black Point

I would like to suggest for future versions of lIghtroom to have an ability to set the white point and black points similar to levels and curves in Photoshop. This would be in addition to setting middle grey in the white balance settings currently in Lightroom. I find that the method of using Threshold to find the closest white and black pixels and then using these points to set the black and white points in curves or levels provides a better way to fix a color cast than the methods available in Lightroom.

MB,
There is no real need for Black and White point eyedropper type tools in Lightroom. By holding down the Alt key while changing the Blacks or Exposure sliders the display will show the areas that are being clipped. This is much faster than looking around for the darkest and lightest areas manually. If you just like to click to taste (like using the White balance dropper) then forget the Alt key and just move the sliders until you get the desired look.
Remember that the problem with Photoshop is that there are so many ways to do the same thing that it has become difficult and bloated. Lightroom strives to keep the interface as clear as possible.

Establishing White Point and Black Point

Hi,
How do I Establishing a White Point and a Black Point in Lightroom 1.4.1 and especially in Lightroom 2 Bata?
Thank You,
Hersul

The last post by OP might have closed this thread, but given the relative lack of activity on this and LR2 forums (summertime?) - I'll go a little deeper.
i White point
- If your white balance is right from the start, you just use the Exposure slider to set the white point. If not, first set the white balance - that effectively sets a preliminary white point for each channel separately, or, to be more precise, matches the right side of the histogram for each channel - then set the Exposure. So, with the white point you have complete control over the histogram, as well as over each channel.
i Black point
- here the situation is different. You can move the left side of the main (composite?) histogram using the Blacks slider, but there's no means for moving channels separately. In theory, with digital capture, there probably should not be need for this, blacks should be always black, so that's OK, but...
I once had a batch of pics scanned from film. The film was poorly developed so it has some strong brown-magenta cast in the shadows. In Photoshop it was a piece of cake to set the black point by dragging the left ends of each channel to the left edge of the histogram (heck, even Auto Level did a wonderful job). In Lightroom, there's just no way you can correct this, because you can't control the channels separately.

Setting White, Mid and Black Points in Camera Raw 7

I am using Camera Raw 7 and can not seem to locate where can you set the white, mid, and black points in Camera Raw with the eyedropper tool. It seems you have to create a new psd file in Photoshop to do this, which does not make much sense since it is a basic levels adjustment. I am batch editing a bunch of CR2 files, and I just need to select the black, mid and white points on a grayscale that I've shot in the images - is there a way to do this in Camera Raw 7? Thanks!!

ACR doesn’t work that way. There is an eyedropper for the overall white-balance that you can set by clicking on a relatively bright, neutral area, but there aren’t black and white-point eyedroppers. But, what is clipped black or white is determined by the output colorspace you have set at the bottom and you can get some idea of what will be clipped black and white by turning on the clipping indicators and watching for the areas you’d be eye-droppering on (the black and white patches in your grayscale) to start showing the clipping color overlay for black and white, but any further toning adjustments will move data in and out of what is darker than black and lighter than white so what is clipped for output will change as you fiddle with the various toning sliders.
The reason things are different: In PS, when you set a black-point and white-point in Levels and click Ok, the data below and above those is thrown away and that is the starting point for the next adjustment. In ACR, things are non-destructive and all the adjustments occur simultaneously, rather than sequentially as in PS, and no clipping occurs until you create the output file. This means that the pixels that are darker than your black-point and lighter than your white-point are still there, and can be moved into the black-to-white range if you do further toning adjustments. Having more headroom of the pixels that are outside the black-to-white range is good because you won’t get the posterization or banding that occurs when colors and levels are clipped after each adjustment in PS.
Can you describe what you intend your overall workflow to be on an image: how much adjusting will occur in ACR and how much, if any, might happen in PS, after the image is opened into PS from ACR, or opened from a file saved from ACR? There might be other ways to approach what you’re trying to accomplish.

Confused on setting black point in Camera Raw 7

Hi,
I just upgraded to CS6. I was wondering how the new Blacks slider in Camera Raw 7 correlates to the same in the older version. The slider in CS5 went left to right from 0 to 100. The new slider defaults in the center and goes from -100 to +100. I never seemed to have a problem setting the black clipping point in the old version. In the new version I'm not sure if I'm getting it right. Any advice would be appreciated.
Kindest regards

Once you have some contrast added (if it's an underly contrasty shot), or some contrast removed (if it's an overly contrasty shot), then simply move the blacks slider left until you have the desired amount of black clipping. You can also move the blacks slider right if you need more light in the pic, and PV2012 will keep the blacks fairly-well seated (if its a full dynamic range shot), or it will let the black point slide up more (if original tonal distribution was not occupying whole histogram). But consider, before +blacks, whether +exposure (and maybe +shadows/-highlights) wouldn't do ya better. Note: +blacks will reduce contrast, so sometimes if you opt for +blacks you need +contrast (and/or +clarity) to go with it. Likewise, -blacks increases contrast, so you may need some -contrast to go with it (and you may find you need less clarity if you have blacks plenty-well seated).
Legend:
'+' = positive (right)
'-' = negative (left)
"plenty-well seated" = clipped enough but not too much .
"fairly-well seated" = not unclipped too much .
Clear as mud? ,
Rob

Blocky Blues via Black Point? HELP!

Hi. I am working through a wedding shoot, and there is one particular shot where if I boost the Black Point anything higher than 2, the shadows in one guest's suit go from I'd say 80% blue to blocky, blotchy black in a matter of like 0.1 units of Black point, and it gets progressively worse (i.e. more pixels bet crushed to black as I move the slider ever so slightly.
This shot is outdoors, at ISO 200 with a Canon 7D, and I have not noticed this behaviour with any of the other photos, blue suits or not. I have NOT pushed the exposure, it is properly exposed (I think I added +0.02 or something).
Thinking maybe the raw was corrupted, I opened the same photo in Lightroom 3 trial, I get nothing close to this level of "noise" even if I crank the Blacks up, it's a nice even darkening, with no blotches.
There is no option for reprocessing the image in the Raw Fine tuning (at 7D defaults btw) and even if I try to force a reprocessing via the "Photos" menu it says there are none that need to be done.
I just find it odd that my blues would die this way on this particular photo ONLY in Aperture (as I said, I haven't noticed it on any others).
Weird. What gives? Any ideas?
Message was edited by: pilotguy74

Hi Tony,
Thanks for the suggestion. After I posted (isn't that always the case!) I thought about messing with those (Boost and Hue Boost) sliders. There was no effect really. I just tried again and no effect.
I've played with the Blue curve in the shadows area, and have the photo looking good enough (not a super critical shot). You can only see a slight blocking in deep blue shadows now at 100%.
I just find it odd, that's all since it's only one photo, and LR doesn't exhibit the same behaviour...

Black point setting?

Now I've come back to using Aperture, I am finding it overall a much better experience than a year ago, when I dumped v1.5.
I have a couple of minor niggles though, but mainly the default setting of the black point slider. One trick with the Olympus E series is to shoot at -0.3ev to preserve highlights better. However, with the black point slider at a default of 3.0 (at whatever scale it's using), this invariably clips the dark end of the scale.
I have a preset to knock it back to 0.0, but it's gets a pain having to do this with too many photos. Is there any way to set this to default at 0.0?
Cheers.

It's not as bad as every single picture, but it's enough that I'd rather it did default to 0, or better still be user definable.
Which beings me to another little annoyance I've found too, and perhaps that a 'Pro' app such as Aperture should have just a little more user control. I really get fed up with having to untick the 'constrain to' button in the crop box, I almost never crop to a fixed aspect ratio, so this is another one I have to remember to click on whenever I use it. Actually it does stay unticked for a session, but a relaunch sets to ON again.
Thanks,
Andy

Export changes the black point

I've noticed that when exporting from LR4 (and LR3 for that matter) that on certain photos with deep blacks, the black point gets shifted during the export (for lack of a better term)
By this, I mean that on some of my dark (i.e. night and or low key shots) what I see on the screen in the develop module is a nice even gradient from 0,0,0 to whatever comes out of the shadow. When I switch to Library module, the blacks get a little pixelated in some areas in that view. If I then export the photo the blacks are blocky in the rendered .jpeg.
If I take that same photo and export it to CS5 as a 16 bit .tiff, all my smooth tones are preserved. If I save that file from CS5 for web and devices (at the same resolution as I do for LR, i.e. 1024px wide) then what I see in that CS5 rendered export is what I saw on the screen during my editing.
I had/have this issue with LR3, and work around it by exporting those types of photos with CS5, but it would be nice to not have to play that game.
A while back I asked this same Q re: LR3's export behavior and an employee (Ben Warde I believe) asked for some sample files. I sent them along but alas have heard nothing back.
So, um... can we try again? Has anyone else had this issue? Does LR use a different export method/algorythm than PS "save for web and devices'?
I'm 100% certain it's not a corrupt monitor profile or a calibration issue as it happens on both my calibrated Macs (MBPro and iMac), and when I edit, I see nice smooth gradients from black to shadow, and CS5 makes a nice export, it's just LR that pixelates my darks...
I just want my exported jpegs to be WYSIWYG out of LR, just like they are from PSCS5...

I apologize for asking you to do this again, but please send me sample files. You can contact me at [email protected] (personal email); feel free to use YouSendIt.com, dropbox, etc.
(I suspect what you're seeing is the difference between the Ps and Lr JPEG compression system -- yes, they're different.)

Black point

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