March 9, 2009
How black are your blacks?
The humble Blacks slider plays an important role in allowing you to optimize the contrast of your photos as you process them in the Develop module. This movie clip is all about how much to safely clip the blacks when working with different types of images as well as how the black clipping point you set in Lightroom relates to the black clipping point of the print output process. The answer to the question ‘how black should I make my blacks’ may be easier than you think.
Note that in the final section where I compare different output profile conversions, the Black Point Compensation box must be kept checked (which is the default setting). You would also want to make sure this box is checked when making a print via the Photoshop Print dialog. And in the case of Lightroom printing, this is always enabled anyway.
Please note this video is in Quicktime format. A player can be downloaded from apple.com.