Photoshop: Default White Point

This weekend I went hiking up Deadman Canyon to Hidden Forest in Nevada’s Desert National Wildlife Range. Unfortunately on the way home the tire on my car blew out, hence today’s image. I chose this particular image because it has lots of dust and dirt. It’s relatively flat with the majority of the tonal range condensed in the quartertones and midtones.

A common technique that many people use is to set the white and black points of an image using the white and black eyedroppers in Photoshop’s Levels (and curves) dialog.

If your image is in RGB you can hold down the option key (mac) while you drag the white and black point triangles. You’ll see interactive clipping showing the whites (or blacks of you image).

Unfortunately Photoshop ships with default target values for your white point that may cause your image to become blown out (no detail in the highlights).

Here’s the tip: before setting your white point, double click on the white point eyedropper. and change the value of the white color. I like to use 5% cyan, 3% magenta and 3% yellow (a carry-over from my prepress days.

Now when you set the white point of your image with the eyedropper tool, you’ll be able to keep detail in the highlight while brightening and expanding the tonal value of the image.

When you close the Levels dialog box you will be asked if you want to save the new target values as the default.