Nikon D3 highlight recovery problems

In a lot of images in which I recovered highlight data, large cyan and gray color patches form where there should've been continuation of the gradient color (usually occurs with blue skies). Seems like Aperture 2 is not handling clipping very well, or is clipping too soon. I haven't noticed this from my D2xs' nefs. Anyone having the same issues? I may be forced to go back to the jpgs that I shot along with the raw files for the time being.

marokero wrote:
In a lot of images in which I recovered highlight data, large cyan and gray color patches form where there should've been continuation of the gradient color (usually occurs with blue skies). Seems like Aperture 2 is not handling clipping very well, or is clipping too soon. I haven't noticed this from my D2xs' nefs. Anyone having the same issues? I may be forced to go back to the jpgs that I shot along with the raw files for the time being.
hi, maro
maybe sounds like you have "highlight areas" turned on. shift option h
i'm on a d300 25mb raw files and not having that issue
victor

Similar Messages

Lightroom 4: Played with it for two hours - I am already impressed (highlight recovery)

Great job, Adobe developers. Only the new highlight recovery is worth the upgrade, at least when dealing with Panasonic GH2 raw files. You can get an impression about it, with my post to German Systemkamera Forum. I post the link here, unfortunately, the content is in German, but the included screenshots tell enougjh, you don't need the text:
http://www.systemkamera-forum.de/raw-converter/29051-lightroom-4-beta1.html#post238652
Kind regards
Thomas
P.S.: I posted this originally in the Lightroom 3 forum, before I noticed that a Lightroom 4 beta forum has been established. Sorry for that, but I thought that it is apppropriate to share my very good first impression of LR 4 beta also here. In the future I try to confine my LR4 feedback to here.

Ok, here are the screenshots:
Problems solved:
double contours and highlight revovery
double contours, highlight revovery, detail
blue sky color
Sorry for vthe inconvenience.
Kind regards
Thomas

Highlight Recovery: Two Flavors

This is not about the present hue and saturation issues with highlight recovery, but rather about two flavors I'd like to see:
1. Same as now: Which basically compresses the upper tonal range. This is good for taking the edge off of overly highlighty images, or dulling images that benefit from a dull look - I have some foggy beach scenes where highlight recovery really helps the mood... This algorithm tends to compress the highlights though, which doesn't necessarily enhance detail (it can, since it can literally recover blown-out highlights that would otherwise be 255,255,255, or just bring highlights into the "prime visibility" zone of the histogram, thus more apparent detail despite being more compressed).
2. Highlight Detail Enhancement: This algorithm would reduce the luminosity of the lower highlight tones more than the upper highlight tones. This would compress the upper midtones more instead of the highest highlights. This would essentially be the equivalent of a masked contrast reduction, which doesn't effect the contrast of the low tones - its effect being limited to the high tones. The idea being to separate the highlight tones, rather than to subdue them.
Also, consider adding this to the locals, since the method number 2 would compress upper midtones more which may not be desirable in some areas of the photos. Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing algorithm 1 added to the locals either, now that I think about it...
This would basically simplify what I find myself doing over and over with a lot of photos:
Local contrast reduction of the highlights to enhance detail without supressing overall contrast, and other stuff - see below:
Summary:
- Present algorithm essentially reduces the range of the histogram, by pushing leftward from the right of the histogram, so to speak, compressing all tones, highest tones the most. Good for recovering blown-out highlights and/or or dulling an image for effect.
- Proposed algorithm addition: Separate highlight tones to bring out highlight detail - does not compress highlight tones, but would compress upper midtones instead - the equivalent of global contrast reduction combined with a luminosity mask that limits its effect to the highest tones most.
PS - I assume this is one of the aspects of the Active D-Lighting and other intellgent contrast handling algorithms that aim at enhancing (or maybe I should say preserving) highlight detail without overall contrast reduction. The motivation for this FR comes from the countless hours I spend using local contrast reduction (and other techniques, e.g. tone curve and trying to strike a good balance with exposure, brightness, and contrast) to recover highlight detail (which is already present straight out of the gate when using NX2 in combination with Active D-Lighting).
PS - I'm not trying to claim Active D-Lighting, or other like algorithms are panaceas - they have their own problems, limitations, tradeoffs, artefacts... My proposal is for Adobe to do something even better, whereas what's been done so far in Lightroom, highlight-detail-preservation-wise, is not so good...
PS - I can easily see a little local contrast, aka highlight targeted 'Clarity' being tossed into the mix.
PS - This notion could be adapted for the left end of the histogram as well, although the present fill algorithm is pretty good compared to the present highlight algorithm.
I consider this the single biggest missing "core feature" in Lightroom today.
Adobe: I hope you will consider this for Lr4.
Rob

As I understand it, neither the Shadow nor the Highlight tool recover anything that was not there before. The Shadow tool will give you the impression of recovering detail because it lifts the really dark areas (the [2 2 2]s etc.) up into to a range where you can actually see them.
Most monitors are calibrated (or mis-calibrated) in such a way that anything below a certain threshold (eg, [10 10 10]) looks the same as black as [0 0 0]. Check your monitor at:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
(It uses an animated image, if the animation has stopped, you might have to reload the page.)
Judging from a quick check with one my photos, stock iMacs tested at an Apple reseller did not show any detail below estimated [25 25 25], stock Cinema displays faired better with maybe [15 15 15]. My Huey-calibrated screen starts at between [1 1 1] and [5 5 5] depending on ambient light (although the Huey should compensate for that fully).
So, the Shadow tool probably simply lifts detail that was at eg [2 2 2] to [10 10 10] where you are able to see it. Real shadow or highlight recovery can only be achieved via the Exposure control as you rightly observed. And using Exposure to recover highlights requires extensive corrections with Levels to get the rest of the image back to where it was before, and usually I do not manage to get it back exactly.
Interestingly, prints at my lab suffer from a similar problem as the un-calibrated screens do. Everything below roughly [15 15 15] appears as black, loosing the details. Even though illuminating the print from the back shows all shadow detail, looking at it in the normal way, some shadow detail is lost.

Lihgtroom 4: Played with it for two hours - I am already impressed (highlight recovery)

Great job, Adobe developers. Only the new highlight recovery is worth the upgrade, at least when dealing with Panasonic GH2 raw files. You can get an impression about it, with my post to German Systemkamera Forum. I post the link here, unfortunately, the content is in German, but the included screenshots tell enougjh, you don't need the text:
http://www.systemkamera-forum.de/raw-converter/29051-lightroom-4-beta1.html#post238652
Kind regards
Thomas

Ok, here are the screenshots:
Problems solved:
double contours and highlight revovery
double contours, highlight revovery, detail
blue sky color
Sorry for vthe inconvenience.
Kind regards
Thomas

Highlight Recovery in LR2/3

I've been using LR2 on raw images from my Canon 20d for quite a while. I recently got a Canon 7d. Raw images from the 7d with almost any blown highlights can not be recovered - unless I'd like a magenta/green tint in the recovered area. The 20d images could be recovered. I'm only talking about areas that are 1/2 stop or so overexposed here. I note that using Canon's DPP does not result in any strange tints. Using DXO does result in the same tints as LR2. While not overexposing anything is the obvious solution, it seems strange that LR doesn't work as well with the 7d as it did with the 20d. I'm running LR2.7 on a PowerPC Mac OSX10.5.8 but I had a chance to try this on LR3Beta and got the same results. Given that Canon's software doesn't have the problem, it would not appear to be a problem per se with my camera. I also saw an earlier discussion but that was before the 'final' profiles for the 7d were available. Here's an example of what happens(The Highlight recovery slider is 45, exposure: -.33):

From what I understand, the odd colour shifts and banding are a known problem of LR's highlight recovery feature, and the LR team is aware of this. Hopefully it will be corrected in the release version of LR 3.

Highlight recovery unusable - improvement request

The shadow recovery tool works brilliantly, but the highlight recovery tool is terrible. It does not take advantage of the extra lattitude of RAW files. In RAW images with blown highlights, highlight recovery simply darkens areas that are not blown out, but it does not recover detail in blown out areas, even when that detail is available in the RAW file. Rather than using the highlight recovery tool, I am forced to reduce overall exposure to recover blown highlights. Then I have to use shadow recovery and levels to lighten shadows and midtones to their original luminance. Please, Apple, give us a highlight recovery tool that actually recovers blown highlights from RAW files.

As I understand it, neither the Shadow nor the Highlight tool recover anything that was not there before. The Shadow tool will give you the impression of recovering detail because it lifts the really dark areas (the [2 2 2]s etc.) up into to a range where you can actually see them.
Most monitors are calibrated (or mis-calibrated) in such a way that anything below a certain threshold (eg, [10 10 10]) looks the same as black as [0 0 0]. Check your monitor at:
http://www.drycreekphoto.com/Learn/Calibration/monitor_black.htm
(It uses an animated image, if the animation has stopped, you might have to reload the page.)
Judging from a quick check with one my photos, stock iMacs tested at an Apple reseller did not show any detail below estimated [25 25 25], stock Cinema displays faired better with maybe [15 15 15]. My Huey-calibrated screen starts at between [1 1 1] and [5 5 5] depending on ambient light (although the Huey should compensate for that fully).
So, the Shadow tool probably simply lifts detail that was at eg [2 2 2] to [10 10 10] where you are able to see it. Real shadow or highlight recovery can only be achieved via the Exposure control as you rightly observed. And using Exposure to recover highlights requires extensive corrections with Levels to get the rest of the image back to where it was before, and usually I do not manage to get it back exactly.
Interestingly, prints at my lab suffer from a similar problem as the un-calibrated screens do. Everything below roughly [15 15 15] appears as black, loosing the details. Even though illuminating the print from the back shows all shadow detail, looking at it in the normal way, some shadow detail is lost.

Troubleshooting System Recovery Problems

A System Recovery is a useful tool to return your Windows 8 tablet back to factory defaults. However, what do you do when the System Recovery isn't working!?
A full System Recovery can be a lengthy process as there is a lot of data being transferred. Patience is the key, as a full Recovery can take two to four hours to complete.
For more information check out HP's Troubleshooting HP System Recovery Problems for Windows 8. This document will help you get your Windows 8 tablet back up and running.
TIP: If you are planning on using the System Recovery make sure that you do not change or delete the HP Recovery Partition as that will make all but impossible to Restore your tablet using the HP Recovery Manager.
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue.
Click the “Kudos Thumbs Up" on the right to say “Thanks” for helping!
Thank you,
BHK6
I work on behalf of HP

Have you created this disc on your own or you use original toshiba disc?
Do you use it for the first time?

Highlight recovery comparison

While folks have complained about the noise in Aperture conversions I've seen no comparison of highlight recovery between Aperture and Adobe Camera Raw.
Here's my own.
http://homepage.mac.com/frankpryor/Aperturepix/PhotoAlbum97.html
The highlight in both cases is compensation with the "Exposure" control in both AP and ACR of a factor of -2.
fp

Gary,
I'd read a post where someone had said Aperture's
conversions compared favorably with ACR's. I realized
that I had done a comparison of shadow noise under
various conditions, but that was in 1.01 and I'd
never compared highlight recovery myself. I thought
the results were interesting so I shared them.
We all want this app to fly. I sure as **** wish I'd
waited to see results before I bought it. If posting
results as I find them helps others to make up their
minds about the application and it's suitability for
their needs that's a good thing.
I do agree. But I have to say that from my perspective it was starting to feel a bit obsessive, what with the videos and writing in to macintouch and all. I think you can probably appreciate that people might get riled up when you continue to describe as bugs things that are certainly debatable. But whatever, really. I'd say that Aperture would benefit from someone like you, for whom compositing and layering is a big part of their workflow, being on the beta team.
The first comparison you posted doesn't really
compare highlight recovery because the highlights
aren't blown in the original .
True, but I didn't have much to choose from lying around on the powerbook
Your second example is more useful and quite
interesting. What camera are you using?
20D.
gary

Photo Highlight Recovery Tutorial

Hello,
A week or so ago there was a thread of HDR and more specifically about using
one raw image as the source for an HDR image to recovery highlights, etc. I
promised that I would post a tutorial for my technique on using a single raw
file for highlight recovery. Well here it is:
http://www.screencast.com/users/PC-Review_Online/folders/Tutorials/media/b1e365d8-b94b-497 f-8df6-c7fe21a4894c
Robert

Well, I just did some playing around and I have some major issues with the
Control+Clicking on the RGB channel. It doesn't just select the highlights,
it seems to select nearly all of the image. Take a look at these samples
here. One is from using the color range and one from control clicking on the
RGB channel. The RGB channel option is not acceptable for what my technique
is supposed to do. I have better results using the color range, saving it to
an alpha channel and then applying a small amount of blur to take care of
the hard edges. I am going to play some more and work on refining the
technique but I don't see myself recommending the control clicking method
because it selects way more than just the highlights.
http://www.sonic.net/keesha/channels.jpg
Channels method
http://www.sonic.net/keesha/color_range.jpg
Color Range method
Any thoughts?
Robert

Disable highlight recovery

I do a lot of work on white seamless, i.e. the background is supposed to be 100% white. However, the auto highlight recovery (as described here http://www.dpreview.com/articles/7481161037/lightroom-4-public-beta-whats-new/2 ) kicks in and pulls down my white to something like 99%. How can I disable the highlight recovery?
Thanks
Oliver

I hear ya olilo123 - Although Lr4's new shadow/highlight recovery is awesome for 95% of my photos, it takes a fair amount of work to undo it in the cases where it's effect is not optimal. In my photography, I find the case comes up more often with the shadows than highlights, when I want them nice 'n black.
As you've noted, simply using the blacks or whites slider is not enough, one also has to fiddle with a few other settings...
Eric: I'm not complaining - the new PV2012 is wonderful! But *if* there were a way to allow even some of us users the ability to selectively shut down the shadow and/or highlight recovery, it would be a nice touch.
Dunno if anyone's given thought to an "Enable Advanced Settings" preference, so beginning users are not troubled with the more esoteric settings...
And please don't recommend just using PV2010 - its like recommending someone walk when they don't like the song that's playing in the car... ;-}
Rob

Automatic highlight recovery - a double-edged sword.

The more I use Lr4b1, the more I love the automatic highlight recovery, and the more I hate it.
It's really not feasible to undo it using the tone curve, and local correction is also *very* challenging.
It's single-handedly responsible for some marked improvements to some of my photos, and just rubbing all the highlight pizazz out of others - no way to win it back using the whites slider.
I really wish I had the option to control it.
Rob

To try and elaborate a tad more:
It's not in the develop module, thus the term "auto" - there is no option to turn it on, off, or otherwise throttle it - it's always on.
It's what's responsible for more detail in your highlights now than you had before - have you noticed that?
Likewise, there is a similar effect at the left end for opening the deepest shadow tones - have you noticed that?
You can see it in your photos when you convert to PV2012 if you have tones at or near the clipping point, and you can also see it in the histogram.
Also, if you turn on the highlight clipping indicator you'll notice a difference in the clipped regions.
It's also noticable when you adjust tones even if highlights were not originally near the clipping point:
Select PV2010, and increase exposure - watch the right end of the histogram. Repeat using PV2012. eh?
The highlights may be a little flatter, but they'll have more detail - usually a good thing. And, yes, as I've said before, and continue to say, I too appreciate the work Eric has done to bring us this improvement. Hopefully that message has not gotten lost in the interest of providing more critical feedback.
The purpose of this thread was to express that in the interest of recovering this detail, there can be a little flattening at the upper end, and this is not a good thing when the sorta glowy unadulterated look is preferred over maximum detail.
If you've never encountered this in your own photos, then you probably won't appreciate it in mine...
And sorry folks, but one can not accomplish the same thing with the whites slider - not even close.
Cheers,
Rob

Highlight recovery questions

1. What actually happens (from an algorithmic point of view) when one goes from 0 to 100? Is any information lost? Is there a con to always going to 100?
2. Sometimes when I do recovery I notice that the original has only a small spot that's "blown" but the moment I move the recovery slider to from 0 to 1 a lot more area get highlighted as blown. I'm not sure why that would be. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Nick

Here's a paragraph from Bruce Fraser's Camera Raw Book:
"The first stage of highlight recovery is to use any headroom the camera leaves by default, which varies considerably from vendor to vendor, with some leaving no headroom at all. The next stage uses Camera Raw's highlight recovery logic to build color informatiom from the data in one of the two unclipped channels. Next, the amount of highlight compression introduced by the Brightness slider is reduced, stretching the available highlight data over a wider tonal range. The final stage is application of a curve to map the midtones and shadows."
Hope that helps. I just chock it up to magic.

Highlight Recovery needs improvement.

I've just been fiddling with the trial version of Capture One 4, and one thing shines when compared to Lightroom. The result form the highlight recovery tool is far,far more natural looking that what can be achieved by Lightroom.
So, the request is obvious.

Lightroom's highlight recovery slider does not only reconstruct the colors, but also affects the tone curve. It 'pulls in' the highlights, so to speak.
I can understand the reasoning behind this: simplicity. If you have a photo that is otherwise well exposed, but has blown highlights, increasing the highlight recovery compresses the highlights and reconstructs blown-out channels at the same time.
Unfortunately, this means that a 'pure' highlight recovery (reconstruction) *without* highlight compression is not available. For better control, I would have preferred to control these functions separately.

Highlight banding problems NOT encountered in Capture One

I have noticed one issue with Lightroom since I started using it that may become a deal-breaker if I am not able to find a solution (or at least an explanation). The Issue is this:
In areas of intense, sharp highlights in my images (usually when a light source is in the frame) LR interprets these highlight areas in the Raw image much less smoothly than Capture One does. I have an example of each here (an exported JPEG that basically matches what I saw when looking at the Raw files):
Lightroom:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2375/1600778249_58791abf02_b.jpg
Capture One:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2106/1600776525_2e976c1b86_b.jpg
Notice the much better handling of the blue tonal gradations in the highlights in the upper left corner of the example from Capture One.
Is there anyone with enough knowledge of both LR and C1 to explain why the difference is so striking in the upper left corner? I've tried everything I can think of in LR (Recovery, adjusting the HSL sliders for blue and aqua, changing the contrast, exposure, etc...) and nothing works to solve the problem. Is this perhaps a color space issue? The image was shot in the sRGB color space, but the images were output in the Adobe 1998 space (this shouldn't matter and I assume the highlight problems would appear in an sRGB output as well). Or maybe it is just the way LR interprets Canon's Raw data? I find this all very confusing. Help!
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get the image to look like the C1 version in LR? Or is this impossible?
The image was shot with a Canon 5D at ISO 800 without flash. I made only slight changes to the image in both LR and C1 to make the man's face less saturated. Other than that, this is the default handling of the Raw file from each program.
I'm running LR and C1 on a G5 iMac with 2GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 9600 graphic's card, and a calibrated monitor.
Thank you to anyone who can shed some (smooth) light on this issue.

Okay, so the deal is, this area is completely blown out, even in the RAW data. You prefer the way CO handles this situation on this particular image, and I tend to agree. However, in most cases, I prefer how LR handles this by adding contrast to try to recover detail from blown areas. In this case, adding that contrast is causing a problem.
I can see no way to alter this particular image using LR/ACR to get what you want (a low-contrast diffuse transition from blown to unblown). If you have more of these, or if others have similar examples, that would be helpful.

Lenovo G550 Recovery Problem

Hi ,
I have Lenovo G550 and it crashed. When i used recovery discs .. i got some problem saying" Cant read from the device". So I turned it off and tried with another set of receovery discs i have made. But Now it is saying " Insuffient space and not highlighting patitions in the receovery process step 1. It shouws the partitions but not highlighted. I tried several times.But the same problem. How Can I solve this problem and get recovery done. As I bought this laptop in India and using in UK. I can not call customer service now. Could any one of you please help me. Do I need to do partition again and try recovery or Is there any simpler way. I can not buy expensive partition software. If Partition is mandatory which partitions should i make and in which format?
My Lap Details:
15.4inch Lenovo G550 with 320GB and Windows 7 Home Premium and the processor is Core 2 Duo.
Please help me
Thank you,
Renuka

it could be because of you re-partitioned the volume. warranty may cover the issue if you have valid one ( international warranty - iws - )
try to burn default backup before ordering dvd sets.
you can order recovery discs. call lenovo support line.
check your warranty from the link below:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=look-iws
if it doesn't work, you can use this software to find your serial.
http://download.cnet.com/Keyfinder-Thing/3000-2094_4-10491989.html?tag=mncol;5

Nikon D3 highlight recovery problems

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for