Clipped highlights / crushed shadows
Bright or dark areas pushed to pure white or black, leaving no texture to recover where clouds, fabric, hair, or product detail used to be.
See it
What it is
Clipped highlights are bright areas recorded or processed as pure white, with every brighter tone collapsed to the same value. Crushed shadows do the mirror image at pure black. A histogram piled against the right edge warns about highlight clipping; a pile against the left warns about blocked shadows.
Watch for them when shooting white clothing in sun, stage lights, clouds, dark suits, and black products. Zebra stripes on video cameras and the flashing highlight alert photographers call blinkies make the problem visible before capture. In editing, set white and black points deliberately so the image has contrast without erasing texture that matters.
Gotcha: not every pure white or black pixel is a mistake. A bare bulb can clip naturally, and deep black can give a grade weight. The permanent loss happens when important detail was never recorded. A JPEG preview may blink even while the RAW file still has some headroom, so check the RAW channels before declaring a highlight gone.
Ask AI for it
Correct this RAW image with Adobe Camera Raw clipping warnings enabled. Pull Exposure and Whites down until texture returns in the white dress, then lift Shadows without raising the black point into gray. Keep only the bare light source clipped, preserve true black in empty background areas, and confirm no important RGB channel remains pinned at either end.