Building on the fantastic work tajohnson did with his Highlight Blinkies Picture Control, which itself was inspired by all the trailblazing innovative work beatboxa has done with picture controls, I present an enhancement that provides "blinkies" in a single picture control for both highlight and shadow clipping, an idea I got from beatboxa's use of two separate picture controls for the same purpose.

In examining the .NCP file format (using dumpncp.pl from nikon-firmware-tools and lut-ncp.js from LUTCalc), I learned there are two representations of a user-specified tonal curve for a picture control. The first is a simple list of 8-bit input/output luminance values corresponding to the points added in the visual tonal curve (created using a tool such as Nikon's Picture Control Utility 2 or the third-party nikonpc site). The other is a 256-entry list that maps every 8-bit input luminance value to a higher-resolution 15-bit output value, akin to a 256-entry 1D lut. The NCP creation tools take the simple curve you specify visually and build-out the 256-entry list from that curve, presumably via interpolation.

It appears the simple list is included in the NCP only for the GUI presentation of the curve points - the actual luminance transformation performed by the camera for the profile uses the 256-entry LUT. This opens up all kinds of creative possibilities for picture controls. First, it makes it much easier to create them, since the values can be supplied programmatically rather than having to fight with the visual curve tool. Second, they'll be much more precise and flexible, since they allow us to specify all 256 input values and provide higher-resolution 15-bit output values for each of those inputs.

In that vein I have created two initial picture controls using this technique:

• SHADHIGH.NCP - Remaps clipped shadows and highlights to inverted values, ie clipped shadows become pure white and clipped highlights become pure black. This allows a zebra-type experience for both shadows and highlights at the same time
• INVERT.NCP - Reverses all the values of the Nikon-provided NEUTRAL profile, so that black becomes white, white becomes black, and all the luminance values in between invert as well (ie, 1 becomes 254, 2 becomes 253, etc...)

Here's a video demonstrating the use of the SHADHIGH.NCP picture control. First I show what the standard NEUTRAL looks like, then I switch to the SHADHIGH.NCP picture control.

Here's a demonstration of SHADHIGH.NCP and INVERT.NCP picture controls applied to a still image:

NEUTRAL vs SHADHIGH vs INVERT applied to a still image (Animation)

Lastly, here's an animation showing a hex dump of the original NEUTRAL vs SHADHIGH, with the reversed 1D lut values highlighted in red:

NEUTRAL vs HADHIGH Hex Dump (Animation)

How to Use

1. Download the NCP file(s) from the links above.
2. Mount your media card on your computer using a card reader
3. Create a NIKON/CUSTOMPC directory off the root directory of the card, if one doesn't already exist.
4. Copy the downloaded NCP file(s) to the NIKON/CUSTOMPC directory
5. Insert the card into your camera, go to the Photo Shooting Menu -> Manage Picture Controls (manual link) and use Load/save to add the profile to your camera.
6. Set the picture control by going to the Photo Shooting Menu -> Set Picture Control (manual link).