Introduction to Color Clipping in RGB Color Spaces

All photography, and in particular Landscape photography, is about capturing the interaction of light with the world around us. At the heart of this light interaction is color. In my opinion, there is no greater element to photography than capturing and portraying color. The process of capturing color, processing color information, and ultimately outputting color for some form of display, is a long and complicated process. One important aspect of managing color when progressing from the processing stage to the output stage is color clipping. Color clipping occurs when there are colors and color variations in an image that are outside of the color space being used to output or print the image. An image that has clipped colors will appear dull and lacking vibrancy when it is printed.

In this introductory tutorial, I walk through the general definition and concept of color clipping as it relates to RGB color spaces. I also go into some basics of RGB color spaces to provide a simple understanding for those of you that aren’t as familiar with color spaces and how they work. From there I teach you how to identify when and where your colors are clipped, and provide a few basic suggestions on how to avoid color clipping. One of the easiest ways to avoid clipping colors when operating solely in RGB color spaces is to process in the color space that you expect to use when outputting your image.

This tutorial series will dive deeper into color spaces beyond the scope of RGB, exploring CMYK and l.a.b. color spaces. Each of these color space types is a useful element, and when used in conjunction with the traditional RGB color spaces can provide some powerful processing tools. However, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Working in multiple color spaces will increase the chance of color clipping, making this first introductory tutorial all that more crucial.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial and find it useful. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave me a comment on YouTube or shoot me an email at matt@mattgashley.com. As always, thank you for taking the time to read this and watch the tutorial, I genuinely appreciate the support. To keep up to date on future tutorials, print releases, and workshop updates, be sure to subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Thanks again and I’ll talk to you all again soon!