Clipping Mid-Tones?

[Alan Smithee]

OK I finally got Vuescan to stop clipping my shadows. I set RGB Exposure to
1. I set Crop | Buffer % (percentage) to 0. Color | Color Balance to None
and Color | Brightness to 1.12 (or until I couldn't see any more clipping
using the Color | "Pixel Colors" function. Now I get lots of head and foot
room with my Black and White scans. Sounds too perfect right? When I open
said scans in Photoshop and set and drag my Black and White points I notice
that the "hump" in the middle is right off the scale. It levels out after I
apply the BP and WP buuuut...I'm curious am I somehow losing data in the
middle or does photoshop simply not have the ability to show everything?
Thx.

 

[Wilfred]

When I open
said scans in Photoshop and set and drag my Black and White points I notice
that the "hump" in the middle is right off the scale. It levels out after I
apply the BP and WP buuuut...I'm curious am I somehow losing data in the
middle or does photoshop simply not have the ability to show everything?

The latter. There is no such thing as 'clipping mid-tones'. Clipping
always occurs on the horizontal axis of the histogram.

 

[pipette]

The latter. There is no such thing as 'clipping mid-tones'. Clipping
always occurs on the horizontal axis of the histogram.

By "off the scale", I think the OP meant to say that the top of the
midtone is chopped off. That is NOT clipping. He needs to understand how
to read a histogram better.

 

[Alan Smithee]

By "off the scale", I think the OP meant to say that the top of the
midtone is chopped off. That is NOT clipping. He needs to understand how
to read a histogram better.

Isn't there someway for my to see the top of the tonal curve though? Why
does the histogram display "the bottom part of the mountain" only?

 

[Robert Feinman]

OK I finally got Vuescan to stop clipping my shadows. I set RGB Exposure to
1. I set Crop | Buffer % (percentage) to 0. Color | Color Balance to None
and Color | Brightness to 1.12 (or until I couldn't see any more clipping
using the Color | "Pixel Colors" function. Now I get lots of head and foot
room with my Black and White scans. Sounds too perfect right? When I open
said scans in Photoshop and set and drag my Black and White points I notice
that the "hump" in the middle is right off the scale. It levels out after I
apply the BP and WP buuuut...I'm curious am I somehow losing data in the
middle or does photoshop simply not have the ability to show everything?
Thx.

What you are seeing is on a histogram is the number of pixels at each
brightness level. The software to display this is not setting the
maximum height for the graph properly.
Just ignore it, everything you are doing is fine and you will get all
the data from the scans.

 

[Alan Smithee]

What you are seeing is on a histogram is the number of pixels at each
brightness level. The software to display this is not setting the
maximum height for the graph properly.
Just ignore it, everything you are doing is fine and you will get all
the data from the scans.

--
Robert D Feinman
Landscapes, Cityscapes and Panoramic Photographs
http://robertdfeinman.com
mail: (e-mail address removed)

Thx.