Clipping (photography) - Clipping Due To Overexposure

Clipping Due To Overexposure

Clipping can often occur in image highlights as a result of an incorrect exposure when initially photographing or scanning to a digital image. Increasing an exposure increases the amount of light collected or the sensitivity of the sensor, and increasing it too far will cause the lightest areas, such as the sky, or light sources, to clip.

Bright areas due to overexposure are sometimes called blown-out highlights or flared highlights. In extreme cases, the clipped area may appear to have a noticeable border between the clipped and non-clipped area. The clipped area will typically be completely white, though in the case that only one color channel has clipped, it may represent itself as an area of distorted color, such as an area of sky that is greener or yellower than it should be.

A similar effect of blown-out highlights also exists in analog photography, though in that case it is not referred to as "clipping", and the "blown-out" area often curves off gently to its maximum brightness rather than being cut off abruptly as in clipping. This causes blown-out highlights to appear differently in analog and digital photography, with the smooth edges in analog photography regarded as more pleasant to some.

In some cases, a small amount of clipping may be tolerable, especially when the clipped area is in the background of the image rather than part of the main subject, or is only a very small area such as where a light, or the sun, is reflected in a shiny object.