Quick culling program with highlight/clipping alert

Hi all,

I love culling on my camera because it has a simple and easy highlight clipping alert. culling in dpp takes too long since highlight alerts are only when editing, and lightroom takes a while too to load each image.

Is there a program out there that has clipping alerts and loads raw files fast? I'd prefer freeware, but I'd pay something for it if it works!

Or maybe I'm using the programs i have wrong Please feel free to point that out too

Thanks for the help!

If you're shooting raw, don't rely on the camera's highlight clipping warning. You could be throwing out some very recoverable images. You could import into LR with minimal previews to save time. Also, use a USB 3.0 reader and an UDMA card for fast import times.

Like Mike said:

mike_d wrote in post #16925567
If you're shooting raw, don't rely on the camera's highlight clipping warning. You could be throwing out some very recoverable images.

A HUGE benefit of shooting and processing Raw files is that they contain a lot of data that gets thrown away by the jpeg conversion, including highlight and shadow "detail" that the in-camera preview can show as "clipped" because that's what would happen if you got the out-of-camera jpeg. In fact, viewers that "show" Raw files but don't actually process them typically show you the "embedded" jpeg that the camera embeds into the Raw file, and so you are looking at a jpeg and so you might delete a shot that otherwise could be recovered in highlights and shadows. Here we aren't referring typically to "bad" exposures, but more fundamentally to scenes of a high contrast that with "normal" settings (such as using the Standard Picture Style or especially the Landscape Picture Style) the jpeg produced would show that clipping.

But the good news is that Raw processors can recover a lot of those scenes! In fact, you mention Lightroom, and Lightroom has a very powerful set of Highlight and Shadow tools. Take a bright sunny day but with a bunch of clouds, and the jpeg will typically blow out a whole lot of those clouds, but with Lightroom you can dial back the Highlights tool and Wow, a whole lot of cloud detail comes out! The same goes for darker "shady" areas that a jpeg would pretty much show as (clipped) black, a good Shadow recovery tool (such as you have in Lightroom) can make a huge difference!

Now sure, you can mess up and image by significantly overexposing or underexposing, but to me Lightroom lets me scroll through my images and if one is too bad, I just mark it as a Reject, and then at some point I can Filter to show only Rejects, and Delete them, a pretty quick process!

I've used Fast Picture Viewer for years. Very fast culling, can output XMP files that Bridge/LR can read. Free trial then $50.

Photo Mechanic is also widely used, but is more expensive.

Hmmm, I guess what I'm looking for is a program that will show clipping in a raw file.

Tim, does fast picture viewer do this?

Yep, instantly - see link.

Tim, does that show the Raw histogram as well as the highlight clipping?

Yep.

Kirk (kirkt) posted this link about two weeks ago so thanks to him: FastRawViewer

It has a number of awesome features like the one that is similar to focus peaking where you can visualize the elements of a photo that are in focus.

And since its still in beta its free to use for now.

robots4joey wrote in post #16925559
Hi all,

I love culling on my camera because it has a simple and easy highlight clipping alert. culling in dpp takes too long since highlight alerts are only when editing, and lightroom takes a while too to load each image.

Is there a program out there that has clipping alerts and loads raw files fast? I'd prefer freeware, but I'd pay something for it if it works!

Or maybe I'm using the programs i have wrong Please feel free to point that out too

Thanks for the help!

robots4joey wrote in post #16925559
Hi all,

I love culling on my camera because it has a simple and easy highlight clipping alert. culling in dpp takes too long since highlight alerts are only when editing, and lightroom takes a while too to load each image.

Is there a program out there that has clipping alerts and loads raw files fast? I'd prefer freeware, but I'd pay something for it if it works!

Or maybe I'm using the programs i have wrong Please feel free to point that out too

Thanks for the help!

Oh no!! The highlight clipping alert in the camera is wrong!!! Don't ever delete like that!!

I use Photo Mechanic. It's $150, so it's a great deal. It displays very fast previews so you can start culling immediately while the import is still happening, it shows shadow and highlight clipping, and also renders very quickly at 100% zoom. It's the industry standard for photojournalism because you can take a days worth of shots, cull down to the best 25, and have them uploaded to the editor within 30 minutes.