Highlight recovery. DxO vs Lightroom

DxO PhotoLab
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These forums are not s**t. No matter what tool you use, the simple, undeniable, fact is that burnt out highlights can never be truly “recovered”. They can only ever be “reconstructed” by pasting detail from somewhere else in the image or using AI to “imagine” what it might have looked like.

Sports photography is hard to get right, as you know only too well. Anyone practising it needs to shoot RAW and expose as much as possible to avoid blowing highlights. I`have around 60 years of photography experience, both film and digital, but it is only in the last few years, as digital sensors have improved, that I have been able to develop techniques to take full advantage of those improvements.

Remember the Zone system for film photography? Well, I have developed a digital equivalent that, instead of avoiding blocked shadow detail, avoids blown highlight detail.

I too used to be frustrated with blown highlights and software’s inability to deal with it - until I realised there was something that I could do about it before the image left the camera.

Ansel Adams said you need the best negative to create the best print. But, even then, he would have to dodge, burn and retouch when printing. The same applies to digital captures. I will repeat - there isn’t a software available today that can truly recover blown highlights, only fake it.

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Than I suggest you find a different forum that accommodates your ego better or simply stop complimenting about stuff you don’t like, that seems fine for others. . If you know all about exposure and you have camera like A9II which is a beast of a camera with all the tech one might need. How do you find a problem with exposure during shoot or in post is beyond me. There is nothing that any modern and especially A9II camera cannot handle in preserving highlights automatically, its the feature built into the camera. And restoring shadow details including noise reduction is also built into DXO PhotoLab and done a good job at it. Unless one is unskilled, it should be easy and precise way to recover and details that were recorded in the raw file. If you think that is not true, post raw files and lets see.

Same thing. You obviously won’t be shooting HDR for that shoot, but you can protect highlights and recover shadow details later, which works fine. The only possible argument you would have is if you are shooting JPEGs and delivering during the game for some news agency or something and you do no post production on the files. otherwise. other than that kind of unique situation , there are no problems, only people who complain about their own expectations.

Now, if you are shooting video, that we can have another discussion, but with modern camera like a9II shooting raw, sorry you don’t have a strong case. In fact you have no case at all.

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My hunch is that this is exactly what’s occurring. In such scenarios, with an image that does have any slightly clipped highlights either in the sky or a player’s shirt, a quick attempt at recovery using software would be viable.

It is possible raw files are recorded, but it is likely a jpg workflow is the norm and preferable.

Pretty much all school/graduation and event photography is jpg first, raw only in exceptional circumstances.

Time constraints and the sheer volume of images captured makes editing and delivering every image from a raw file pretty much impossible.

Shooting beautifully exposed jpg portraits in indoor studio conditions is simple, the same cannot be said for outside shoots involving fast moving action, even with the best available cameras and lenses.

In addition, even experienced and skilled photographers are still only human and don’t always get something totally right. Hence the need for highlight recovery…

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I guess only in such situations where JPEG delivery on the spot is the only option, that I see issues with highlights. Although, unless one is shooting action with burst mode, there is an option to use DRO if I’m not mistaken, on the Sony bodies.

"DRO stands for Dynamic Range Optimization. It is designed to fit more dynamic range into images. A single exposure is still taken so you are always limited to the sensor’s latitude. However, from what the sensor captures, more or less of that range is mapped into images. With fixed values, the transform is applied the same to each image. With Auto, it depends on feedback from the metering system and the mapping from sensor dynamic-range to images will be adjusted accordingly.

DRO is one of the few settings which indirectly impacts RAW files. While its designed as processing, which normally effects JPEG and TIFF files only, the camera adjusts exposure to have more dynamic range available for the mapping, often reducing exposure to get more details in highlights. If you shoot RAW and Manual mode though, DRO will have no effect."

Answer from Itai on Stack Exchange

DRO has auto settings and five stop in one stop increment settings. So it can be tweaked for most conditions if one shoots only JPEG, to be a kind of one shot HDR thingy , similar to many smartphones. I don’t think its fast enough for full burst shooting mode, when shooting 10-20 fps, but for portrait shoots if you need JPEG with high dynamic range right away. It works similar to smartphone methods of preserving details. DRO is not something I use often , because I typically shoot RAW, but when I was testing it, it worked pretty well in most situations.

DRO (Dynamic Range Optimizer): single frame shot, it will lift shadows at cost of more noise in dark areas while keeping highlights preserved. It can be used for motion.

HDR : it will do image stacking. Many frames with different E.V values (for example -0.7, 0 and +0.7) that will be merged to create one photo and prevent overexposed background. It cannot be used for motion because it cannot prevent blur between each frame of different exposure used for final photo.

Since DRO and HDR can be optimized, for both slight motion and no motion, it should not be too difficult to choose settings for a particular shoot even if one only shoots JPEG. And with RAW shooting, it really is not a big deal. You can recover, crazy amount of detail form RAW files and if you know how much you can push it, blown highlights, unless done on purpose should not be an issue.

https: //www.flickr.com/groups/83292375@N00/discuss/72157607844701333/

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Normally, Smart Lightning does most of the job…

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When needed highlight recovery is extreme (but possible), smart lighting (spot weighted or not) does not work.
It lets a tiny part of the most exposed zone competly bright, as if clipped and not recoverable (but still at 100% brightness, not grey).
In those case, not using smartlighting and pushing exposure very low let see details in those very bright areas (so there is no clipping, and lowering exposure way way down is the only way to get details in those parts). But when exposure is lowered that much, it is impossible to balance other values (or really hard and time consuming to get a usable but generally not that good result). And neither selective tones nor tone curve do the job in those cases.
At least with my camera and PL6.

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Nope I shoot raw. I also underexpose as appropriate to protect the highlights. Before all the preachers came out this discussion was about how the photolab controls actually affect the transfer curves (input levels to output levels)

Even if you underexpose two stops and you have all of your highlights intact, when you add back the two stops with the “exposure” control, and then try to adjust the “dynamic range” controls to bring back the highlights, well that was the topic here.

The first handful of replies were on topic until mikerofoto suggested HDR was the solution and some people should learn to use their camera before using their camera.

And yes I used to be much more active in these forums. I have found other places for good information which a much less toxic “you’re doing it wrong” attitude than we see too commonly here.

Regarding gear I know very well the characteristics of my cameras. Where the dual gain stage kicks in, which ISO’s produce the best noise and most dynamic range (100/640 for A9II and 100/500 for A1), and how to optimize my captures for noise, dynamic range, and highlight protection. This forum is about a raw developer. And the topic was about the controls in the developer and how those controls affect the final result. Until it became a “you don’t know how to use your gear” discussion.

Thanks to the few of you in here that were actually discussing on topic and trying to be helpful.

Y’all have fun. I’m out…

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…that is exactly what happens when you use selective tone sliders. Try other tools or post an example so that we can check what can be done differently. Use a sharing service like wetransfer or google drive to provide an original raw file.

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wow, and all i said was “sometime too much recovery is too much”, because yes many over do it and pictures look ugly over processed, but that’s people choice.
not sure why you got offended, from the top pictures that are landscape which is why i talked about HDR.
not gonna waste my time for ya!

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No. That’s not all you said…. The whole quote…

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Maybee you could use a Local adjustment, if you are on PL7 with FP7 a luminosity mask should do it. If PL6 just a local brush and lower exposure.