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Overlay Tool: How to solve complex composition challenges

Ancient Hawaii is a new series of art images we have been working on over the last year. It’s been a pretty tough road with a lot of technical challenges along the way and today l would like to talk about how we used Capture One Pro 8 and the overlay mode to handle one particular challenge in two different images.

Anderson Andia – The Demi-God of Maui

With the image of the Demi-God Maui, one of these challenges was compositing the fishing line into the shot. Obviously having the model actually throw the fishing line would have taken hundreds, if not thousand, of attempts to get the perfect position of body and line. So the way we tackled this was to shoot the elements separately and then combined them all together to get the perfect combination. To start we shot the model where all we had to do was concentrate on a strong body position.

Secondly l composited the background together using numerous water, cloud and other elements to create the final master plate. The last element to be added was the fishing line and this is where the overlay mode in Capture One Pro 8 was so useful.

We got in the studio and used a flat rope that we stitched around a thin piece of wooden dowel giving us the rigidity to help us form a fluid tight line as if it was in mid-flight.

The line was then clamped to two stands in which we could then maneuver it in place fairly easily.

Launching Capture One Pro 8 and in tethered mode we then imported our master image via the “Drop Image here” mode by dragging it from the desktop.

Once the master image was in place we lined up the clamped rope with the model’s hands by dropping the Opacity level down to where both the rope and master image could be seen. Using the Move Overlay Hand Tool made it easy to position the rope to match the model’s hands and get the alignment and arc of the rope perfectly positioned. Shooting tethered gave us instant feedback on how these two elements matched up so when l processed the image out of Capture One Pro 8 and into Photoshop minimal work was needed with repositioning.

Anderson Andia – Papakahanmoku and Wakea

Due to scheduling on everyone’s part, we rarely had the opportunity to shoot the models together (seen image above). Again this is where the overlay mode helped us out greatly especially in the Papakahanmoku and Wakea image seen above. Shooting the female model first was relatively straightforward, but when shooting the male model his positioning was more critical as his eye line would have to match up with her. To do this I processed the female image out and doing a quick selection in Photoshop l imported the PSD layer into Capture One Pro 8.

Using the overlay mode and again shooting tethered we had an instant and accurate guide for him to be able to match up perspective and body positioning to perfectly match her’s. What would have been a difficult shot to complete was both easy and accurate to accomplish thanks to Capture One Pro 8 and its overlay mode, which took the guesswork out of the process and saved a lot of time.

To view the whole ancient Hawaii series go to www.hawaiiancient.com

Behind the scenes for a Handball World Cup shoot

We made this little insight during our trip to Doha back in June. It was shot alongside a TV commercial for the event. As the world cup recently finished all the assets have been released for me to use on my blog etc.

I was commissioned via my agent ShootGroup by Filmworks in Dubai, to work alongside the creative team at Leo Burnett in Doha to produce a set of background images for a composite, a set of athlete shots produced in a makeshift studio in the handball stadium and a set of location images to show some of the great travel locations around Doha.

Location Doha

We were in Doha for a week and everyday started well before sunrise, which was 4.15am so we could use the best light. It’s worth pointing out that during the day the temperatures reached 50+ degrees, which was hot to say the least.

My choice for this commission was to shoot it high-res on the Phase One 645DF+ with a IQ260 back. Steve at Teamwork in London once again supplied the camera system. I was always confident of what we could do with the athletes as by lighting them in our studio setup where I had complete control, but knowing the power of processing the IQ260 files in Capture One Pro 8 gives me so much control out in the field where I had everything, from cityscape at night, sand dunes at dawn, boats on water and a desert fort, as well as lots of white buildings in bright sunlight. I know that I can control the file perfectly with Capture One Pro 8. In the studio we would shoot directly into Capture One Pro 8 tethered, out in the 50 degrees heat we would shoot to card and download. It was an unbelievable heat, you would drink 300ml bottles of water constantly and it just came straight back out your pores, and worryingly the camera seemed to be constantly too hot to handle. My producer even went off to buy the only umbrella in Doha to keep the sun off the camera at all times. Even though the camera felt like it was so hot it must explode it kept working just fine, and produced the amazing images that we required.

Processing

The files we shot were needed by the retouchers pretty much as we shot them, so as soon as we had shot the images the Process Recipe for low-res JPEG’s was run to output the shot images for selection and then normally by the time we got back to the hotel the selects were in and we would deliver a high-res version ready for the retouchers to start mocking up for approval. The workflow in Capture One Pro 8 and the quality of the processed file meant we had no worries at all and as you can see they were able to produce a great set of composite images.

Lighting, Elinchrom ELC Pro HD1000

The lighting gear was a bit of a mixture of lighting modifiers we could get in Doha and a set of Elinchrom ELC Pro HD1000 from the Flash Centre in London, which maxed us out on gear we were allowed to take in to Doha.

1/2000 sec flash duration

We used these lights to obtain the short flash duration to free the subject. You can see the flash duration on the led screen as you change the power settings. This is very handy to control this aspect of the lighting.

Regards

Pete

Natural beauty shines in Capture One Pro 8

My name is Tobias Björkgren,I’m a commercial and fashion photographer based in Stockholm. I took the plunge into a Phase One system three years ago with the lease of a Phase One IQ140 digital back and 645DF camera. I have been loving it ever since.

The reason I love using the camera is because of the wonderful sharpness and falloff that looks really beautiful compared to 35mm. The system doesn’t forgive if you make a mistake, everything is seen and there is no hiding your shortcomings – that said, when it shines, it truly shines!

Natural brass beauty

This shoot I did with the makeup artist Johanna Larsson and model Tone R. from MIKAs model agency. We had an idea to interpret the interior design trends of gold/brass details and the use of Carrara marble. So we used marble as a backdrop and sheets of gold leaf, gold/brass makeup around Tone’s eyes as our shoot evolved. To capture the details I used my IQ140 digital back and rented a 120mm manual focus Macro lens from Phase One.

One thing that surprised me with this lens was how easy it was to use the manual focus, even up close! I was shooting at f/16 but at this distance, with a macro lens, you can see that the depth of field is quite shallow.

We wanted to keep it fresh and natural which suited an inclusive Capture One workflow. It’s so uplifting to edit completely within raw processing software because you know that you have complete control and access to the full camera color space of the Phase One system.

It’s really easy to get nice skin tones when you have the ability to use the selective color editing as a Local Adjustment. I used the masking tool to mask the area on which I want to apply the skin color adjustment. This is a good way to take control of your adjustments if you have other color tones in the image, close to the skin tones, and you don’t want them to be affected. Such as the gold/brass makeup in this shot.

As you can see with the before and after images we did not do much with the editing process. I had to do some filling with the gold around the eyes and remove some gold glitter in the eyebrows in some of the images. To do this I used the Repair feature of the Local Adjustment tool, the other adjustments I did were mostly contrast and color correction, applied globally.

One new thing that I tried on this shoot was to utilise the Clarity tool and apply a negative clarity value. I then counted any softness with an increase to the Structure slider. This was done to soften the skin a little without making it ”mushy”. Using the tool in this way, the contrast within the skins texture is softened without losing details of the texture, if that makes much sense.

I really hope you like my work and to view more visit my gallery on PhaseOne, my portfolio or my Facebook page.

I am also doing a 5 days take-over of Phase One’s Instagram account starting today. Don’t miss out on, follow Phase One www.instagram.com/phaseonephoto.

Best regards,

Tobias

The secret to beautiful colors

One thing that I keep getting asked is, “Why would I switch over to Capture One Pro 8 from what I’m currently using? What does it do better than what I already use?” It seems as though a lot of people do not know that different programs process raw files differently. If this was news to you, then this article is for you!

I was missing out

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been using Capture One. Before that time, I was oblivious to the benefits. As I started working in the commercial world, photographers seemed to use Capture One, for tethering and processing. I started using Capture One and was surprised at how colors rendered. I couldn’t believe what I was missing out on all of those years before. I initially thought that it would be an undertaking to learn a new program and that the benefits couldn’t be worth it. Still in denial, I thought whatever the difference might be, I could surely make up for it within Photoshop.

Worth the effort

I was completely wrong. Not only could I not make up for it, I couldn’t get anywhere near what Capture One was getting me in regards to how it processed colors. The reality is that it processes them so much more realistically than the current (and most popular) choice for processing RAW files. In fact, going back to the raw converter I was using before makes me realize just how much of an uphill battle it was trying to achieve beautiful color tones in my images. I was doing myself a complete disservice.

Let me show you first hand. Photographer and friend, Michael Woloszynowicz, has kindly allowed us to use his images to showcase the difference.

The two images seen here are imported as is without any settings. As you can see, the image on the left was processed in my previous raw converter of choice and it comes up muted and falls short while the Capture One processing algorithms show us how vibrant and pleasing the tones of the image are. This is before any sort of customization whatsoever. Depending on the image, the discrepancy varies much more…..sometimes, shockingly so. For instance, here is another example shown below.

When I get asked how I got my colors a certain way, the answer is unmistakably that I just started with a base from Capture One. Then when I apply further color grading, it becomes apparent why a good base is imperative. When I show them the difference, they tend to have the same reaction I did when I found out.

The other difference is how it handles sharpness and clarity through the image. You can clearly see how much sharper the base file is with Capture One within the image. You can even see a difference with the contrast. The brilliant clarity resolves much more detail than what I would get before.

The game-changing tool

The game-changing tool in Capture One Pro 8 is the color editor. The color editor allows you to correct offending skin tones that need to be corrected. The eyedropper tool on the bottom right of the wheel allows you to select a very specific skin tone and tweak exactly how it will be modified.

For instance, you can pick a green tint and move it to a red tint, which would blend in closer to the skin range of the image. The smoothness slider allows you to pick whether or not you want just the color you picked, or any neighboring colors to be modified at a lower capacity. The hue rotation slider gives you the ability to move the offending tone closer to its neighboring colors. In this example, a green tone is moved to reflect a beige tone. The saturation and lightness tab adjusts exactly what they say.

The uniformity slider is my favorite

This slider brings all the tones in the selected range closer to one similar tone. So if you have an issue where an image is rendering 5 varying tints of the same color, you can bring them all together without affecting texture, luminosity, or vibrancy. It really saves time in your retouching workflow once you begin working on it. Before, I would spend a much longer time color correcting skin tones in Photoshop. This delicate attention before-hand saves me time and gets me a far more accurate result.

Again, for example, with the settings shown in the image above, here is a before and after of what the edit accomplished.

Before:

After:

Ultimately, the way Capture One Pro 8 handles the fidelity of colors is far better than anything I have seen thus far. It is further complimented by the ability to specifically control each color in the image with purpose built tools. The sharpness and clarity that pair with the color control is a perfect match. This total control is really something that should excite anyone that cares about their images.

Best regards,

Pratik Naik
Solstice Retouch

Want to learn more about Pratik’s work? Sign up for the upcoming webinar, where Pratik will take us through his Capture One to Photoshop workflow.