The light extraction efficiency of photonic-crystal (PhC) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) relies on the competition between the PhC extraction and dissipation mechanisms of the guided light within the LED. This work presents the experimental determination of the PhC extraction length of each guided mode and the absorption coefficient of the active region (AR) and quantum wells (QWs) from the observation of the LED far-field emission using a high-resolution angle-spectrum-resolved measurement. The angular and spectral linewidths of the extracted guided modes reveal, depending on the spectral range, the modal extraction length of the PhCs, the AR absorption length, or a combination of both. Modes with a high confinement with the QWs presented a shorter absorption length compared with their extraction length by a shallow surface PhC (95-nm-deep), meaning that the AR absorption was a more efficient mechanism than the PhC extraction. The measured modal extraction length of the shallow surface PhC varied in the range of 55-120 mu m, which determines the minimum dimensions of the device and the maximum acceptable dissipation length for an efficient extraction of the guided light by the PhCs. This paper presents also a discussion on the PhC designs that yield PhC extraction lengths shorter than other dissipation lengths, a fundamental requirement for high-efficiency PhC LEDs. The same technique was also applied to estimate the absorption coefficient of the InGaN-based QWs, and can be extended to experimentally determine losses by metallic layers from electrical contacts or other dissipation mechanisms, which are parameters of interest to a broader class of optoelectronic devices, not only PhC LEDs. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3309837]