This is sort of a tutorial, not an actual question but I figured this might be useful for most people in this group.
If you have any experience with PS, you know about the histogram and how to see when clipping occurs, but it doesn't tell you WHERE in the image. But there's a way to make clipping or even near clipping visible. Here's how.
Add an adjustment layer of type "Gradient Map", pick two colors that will be blatantly visible in your image. Now right-click the symbol in that layer (b&w disc) which will open a context menu - select "Blending Options" (picture 1).
In the box "Blend If" pull the white slider from "Underlying Layer" far to the left (from 100 down to 8) and the black slider to the right (from 0 to 247). These now act as a kind of "tripwire". Press OK.
Keep this layer always on top of all layers. If it is visible (eye symbol) it will now mark patches with near clipping in either of the colors you picked for the gradient. You can see the effect in picture 2, where I greatly increased contrast for demonstration purposes.
This layer can monitor your edits in real time, that is, if you make a change to your picture and that change leads to clipping you'll see immediately where it happens.
i knew those blue dots were trying to tell me something...hahahaha. thanks for the tip Thorsten I'm sure many of us will find this helpful including myself.
Thanks for this Thorsten but to be honest I rarely use photoshop or light room any more, great tools as they are.They are very useful I grant it. I have a friend who is colour blind. He uses his editing tools very well but has to ask others what they think of his pictures.On that point there are lots of blind photographers who get immense enjoyment out of photography but never really get to see their work. Google it and find out.I am sure others will appreciate this.kutgw.
That's OK Geoff, everybody is different and everybody gets their enjoyment in photography from a different aspect of that hobby. To me, PP is immensely important, and so it was to Ansel Adams, only that he had to make do with cruder tools.
Great to know this, thanks Thorsten!
FWIW, and for LR users in particular: I rely on Lightroom's clipping info (reeeally easy: 2 clicks on the top corners of the histogram for blacks / whites) as that's where I do 98% of my work (I rarely use Photoshop in my workflow).
I used to be the same, now it's the other way round, I rarely fire up LR these days, mostly for a first assesment if at all,
AFAIK LR only shows you when you actually have clipped, the method I describe can be fine tuned to trigger when you get close to the boundaries of the dynamic range of the sensor.
Also, using the blending options I can then remove the adjustment from those pixels that get close to clipping by moving the sliders and watching when the clip warning disappears; the adjustment stays the same where I didn't get close to clipping. That's where LR falls apart.