Why do blue areas appear on my photo in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom?
Asked 5/2/2017
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2 answers
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When I open some photos in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, I see random blue areas over the image. I’ve already tried different monitors, recalibration, sRGB, and disabling GPU acceleration, but the effect only appears in Camera Raw/Lightroom and not in other programs. What causes this, and can it be turned off?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
9y ago
2 Answers
9
The blue and red highlights in Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Lightroom are called the Shadow/Highlight clipping warnings. They are indications of shadow or highlight areas that are lacking detail, meaning they have gone completely black or completely white.
They can be turned on and off using the triangles in the upper corners of the histogram.
Whether or not this is a bad thing is dependent upon whether those areas of the image should be completely black or completely white. Typically you don't want too much of either. Some things like lights or the sun may always clip.
These areas should be checked after making adjustments to exposure, shadows, hightlights, whites, blacks, etc. as each of those adjustments will have an impact on thise clipping levels.
Originally by user59354. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user59354
9y ago
0
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Those blue areas are most likely not image corruption or monitor issues—they’re Adobe’s shadow clipping warning overlay. In Camera Raw and Lightroom, blue marks areas that are clipped to black (lost shadow detail). Red marks highlight clipping to white.
You can toggle these warnings using the small triangles at the top corners of the histogram: left for shadow clipping, right for highlight clipping. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts U and O.
These overlays are useful when adjusting exposure, shadows, highlights, whites, and blacks, because they show where detail has been pushed beyond recoverable limits. Whether clipping is a problem depends on the image: deep shadows, bright lights, or specular highlights may be fine to clip, but usually you’ll want to reduce unnecessary clipping with the exposure controls.
So the blue areas are a viewing aid in Adobe, not actual artifacts in the JPEG.
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AI9y ago
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