Clipping

[CharlesG]

Good Day,

I was wondering if you could help me understand clipping.

Of the three buttons in the upper right hand part of the app in the develop persona, "Show Clipped Highlights", "Show Clipped Shadows", and "Show Clipped Tones", I understand the first two, but I struggle to understand what the clipped tones is telling me.

Would anyone be able to tell me what is meant by clipped tones and how they should be dealt with?

Thanks!

[v_kyr]

36 minutes ago, CharlesG said:

Would anyone be able to tell me what is meant by clipped tones and how they should be dealt with?

Usually the online help should give you an idea here what clipped tones means in the RAW development context ...

• Developing a RAW image (and there down on page then: Show Clipping & To show clipping)

Quote

Show Clipping

An incorrect level of exposure within an image can lead to pixels 'falling out' of the viewable intensity range. This results in the loss of detail in areas of shadow, highlights, or midtones and is known as clipping.

In Develop Persona, you have the ability to display Clipped Shadows, Clipped Highlights and/or Clipped Tones directly on the image. This can help you identify areas which need correcting as well as preventing overenthusiastic modifications which result in clipping. The Develop Persona remembers your choices for these options from the last time you used it, even when editing a different photo.

Quote

To show clipping:

On the Toolbar, do one of the following:

• Click Show Clipped Highlights to display all 'blown' highlights as a high-contrast red colour.
• Click Show Clipped Shadows to display all clipped shadow areas as a high-contrast blue colour.
• Click Show Clipped Tones to display all clipped midtone areas as a high-contrast yellow colour.

 

• Catching Clipped Pixels in the Develop Persona (RAW Editor) in Affinity Photo  (Youtube video)

[h_d]

From the Help:

 

Maybe the Show Clipped Tones button should say 'Show Clipped Midtones'.

I only see clipped midtones if I boost exposure, saturation and/or contrast to very (approaching ludicrously) high levels:

 

 

 

 

[v_kyr]

There is also a Youtube video describing the show up of clipped pixels in RAW dev ...

• Catching Clipped Pixels in the Develop Persona (RAW Editor) in Affinity Photo

[NotMyFault]

1 hour ago, CharlesG said:

Would anyone be able to tell me what is meant by clipped tones and how they should be dealt with?

The Develop Persona shows the image in "unbound" values. When you click "Apply", it will be converted into the selected color format and mapped to the color profile, per default RGB/8 and sRGB.

This is a lossy conversion. Some colors cannot be 1:1 converted, as they are outside the colors which can be stored in the selected destination format.

How should you deal with it?

• Well, mostly ignore it. Those clipped colors will be converted to similar colors, which are available in the target format. This will effectively results in many pixels getting  getting the same available colors, despite they had different colors in the RAW image. For regular images, this is acceptable.
• Other choices:
  • Choose a target format which has a wider color gamut, e.g. DCI-P3, ROMMRGB, etc. This preserves the colors, but you are probably not able to view them based on limitations of display technology. But you can analyse the image content with help of adjustments, filters etc  the relative difference is preserved, even if Displays will clip those colors anyway. For scientific images, which get processed numerically, this is a good choice. Or you hope for future Display technology improvements.
  • Reduce saturation globally. This will preserve the relative distance between colors. You may be able to see that there are more different colors, but all will be a bit muted. This is a choice if you want to see color differences, even if colors get changed globally.

It really depends what you want to do with the processed images in a chosen export format, like JPEG, PNG, JPEGXL etc.

• Print it with Inkjet printer?
• Send to print services?
• Make a book for publication?
• Share with friends for usage on mobile devices?
• Upload to a website?
• Show on  (public) displays ?
• Use with video productions?
• Pre-process in Affinity for scientific analyses in other software?
• Archive in best possible quality for future generations, accept no loss in quality or detail?

Again, for private usage it does not matter much. Keep the RAW files.

I would advise to use RGB/16 and DCI-P3 color profile for processing in Photo, this is currently a good compromise even when later exported to JPEG. You should consider JPEG XL if interested in HDR and keeping more color detail.

For more details, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space