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To mask or not to mask?

Masking is a term that you may not think applies to Capture One Pro 7, but as you have seen in my previous blog posts it is certainly possible to selectively edit areas with Local Adjustments.

So indeed this is a kind of masking, but are there other ways we can selectively adjust images? Take a look at the image above. It has quite a prominent blue sky, but it didn’t look as rich as this in the unedited photo.

All it took was a simple Color Editor adjustment and a change in the ‘Lightness’ slider to simply bring the tone down to something more pleasing. No need for any kind of Local Adjustment.

Often the Color Editor gets overlooked as a way to change the appearance of a color and not just the hue. Also in the above image the red flag was picked as well, to richen the red a little. Again, no need for any local adjustment. So think about if an area of your image needs adjusting, or if it can be dealt with using one or a few color edits as opposed to needing to draw a mask.

When to use Auto Masking?

During workshops and seminars I often see people instantly going to the Auto Mask feature and then spend more time than necessary trying to mask around complex objects, when all it could take is either a simple edit like above or a quick combination of a Local Adjustment Mask and a color edit. Normally for the last option the mask need only be ‘rough’ one, so it is extremely fast to do! We will look at that technique at the end.

However, the Auto Mask can certainly be a really useful feature and I do use it on occasion when the above-mentioned techniques don’t work.

How the Auto Mask works

The image below may well benefit from an Auto Mask, if I want to separate the background from the flower a little. Auto Mask works by detecting differences in color and contrast in an image file to find the edge of a subject, and this is a good example.

Here is the image with some basic corrections but I wouldn’t mind darkening the background a little. As the background is made of multiple tones it doesn’t work so well to use the Color Editor as in the above example.

So instead I will use the Auto Mask function of the local adjustments brush. Normally, Local Adjustment masks are simply brushed on with varying size and opacity. If you want to know more about using Local adjustments then there are plenty on the blog you can read up on. To check them out, try searching for ‘Local Adjustments’ in the upper right corner on the blog.

To activate the Auto Mask, right-click on the image with the Brush selected and check the Auto Mask box.

The Brush icon now has three concentric circles with a smaller one in the centre. This centre circle is now the sample area. So during brushing the mask will stop, or find the edge, when the content inside the sample zone differs compared to the outermost circle.

Now all I need to do is draw along the edge of the petal, keeping the sample zone on the petal itself and the outer circle on the background. If you have opted to see the mask as you draw, it will look like the edge has not been detected, but the calculation is actually made when you release the mouse or pen.

During masking:

After releasing the mouse or pen:

I continue around the edge until the mask looks like this:

To fill in the mask, I can use the Fill Mask command in the Local Adjustment Tool:

Now the mask looks like this:

There is a small error in the upper right-hand corner and in the bottom right, but it’s easy to clean that up with the erase brush.

Finally, I can invert the mask and darken the background to my liking!

Finally, a really useful technique is to use a Local Adjustment in combination with a color edit. I use this image below a lot, captured by my friend Malcom Bryan in Beijing, as it illustrates this point perfectly.

Here it is with some basic adjustments:

What I want to do is edit the color of the red ballon a little in the background, but there is a problem! If I select it in the Color Editor and make an adjustment, it also effects the balloon seller’s skin tone. We can see this by turning on the View selected color range option in the Color Editor. This turns any part of the image, that will not be affected by the edit, to monochrome. I have adjusted the range and smoothness carefully to just include the balloon, but it still effects the skin tone as well!

So by using a really rough Local Adjustment mask, I can select just the area in the top left-hand corner, select the red tone only and then the skin tone will be left unaffected.

So, that’s three different ways you can select areas for localized adjustments. All with different uses but all equally useful!

Best regards,

David

The trick that changed my approach to color correction

In this second blog post I will show you an easy and somewhat unusual trick that was taught to me by Steve Hendrix of Capture Integration in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

A way to push a mood or grade an image

I was looking for a way to take a large section of brown grass in a housing development and shift it towards green. Steve suggested that I use the Skin Tone Editor in the Color Editor in Capture One Pro 7. Using this tool has changed how I approach color correction and how I shift colors to push a mood or grade an image.

In the fall of 2012 I shot aerials of Chicago, Illinois for a book project and my stock library. A few minutes before sunrise, we flew a Schweitzer 300 helicopter out over Lake Michigan and along the Chicago shoreline. I wanted to see if I could make a stronger photograph of the Chicago Harbor Light than the one I shot in 2003 for the Chicago book project mentioned above.

The water appeared greener than I remembered

We were flying in a “severe clear” high-pressure system. The light was clean, crisp and perfect for low-level aerial photography.

When I imported the images in the Capture One session for this shoot, I noticed the water appeared greener than I remembered. I shot this image with a Nikon D4, 35mm F/1.4 Nikkor G lens and a B+W Polarizer. The sky was close to where I wanted it but the water was a bit lacking.

First off was an adjustment the overall exposure. I brought it down about half a stop to dampen the highlights on the sunward facing side of the ligthhouse. I used the highlight recovery tool to bring down the clipped highlights and also brought the output level down to 250.

Why I used the Skin Tone Editor

I thought about Steve Hendrix’s Skin Tone editor suggestion and used the editor to shift the water color toward blue.

For those wondering why I use the Skin Tone Editor to shift color instead of the Advanced Color editor – it is just another arrow in the quiver. You can shift the color a fair amount and the uniformity slider allows you to spread or restrict the color. I find it useful for coloring grass or shifting the color tone in water.”

After taking a sample of the green water, I shifted the color quite a bit plus increased the smoothness and uniformity. The water was a bit dark to my taste and I increased the lightness to 2.2. This is a great trick for decreasing or increasing brightness in an area. I often use it to bring down skies and to increase the color.

Next up was the sky. It seems as if it is almost a must-do wtih aerials that if you expose for the surface than your sky tends toward overexposure. I prefer to not use gradient filters while shooting aerials. They can be one more item that can drop out of the helicopter and my philosphy is, safety first. I take a minimalist approach while in the helicopter becuase more weight equals less power and the less equipment in the rear cabin the less chance something can go missing.

The sky correction was made on a second level and was close to 3/4’s of a stop.

Since this image was intended for stock, I wanted the colors to pop a bit when seen as a thumbnail on the agency website. I find for many of my aerial and landscape images that I can process the image out to a final delivery file without going into secondary image editing programs to correct or enhance.

Best regards,

Cameron Davidson

email: cameron@camerondavidson.com
web: http://www.camerondavidson.com

Focus Tool for tethered work

Capture One Pro 7 has a Focus Tool, which allows you to inspect your image at a zoom range of 25 – 400%.

Useful for tethered shooting

The Focus Tool is especially useful when creating still-life images or product shots in a tethered setup shooting directly into the Capture Folder in Capture One Pro 7.

By using the Focus Tool you can at the same time have an overview of the whole image while being able to inspect a critical area at 100%.

In Capture One Pro 7 on a Mac it is even possible to have multiple Focus Tools open at the same time for instance to be able to control the total depth of field in a scene.

The Focus Tool in its default place in the Details Tool Tab

The Focus Tool is by default placed in the Details Tool tab but as with most tools in Capture One Pro 7 you can make it floating.

At the bottom of the tool you can select the “pick focus point” cursor and click in the viewer to inspect the preview image at 100%. At the bottom of the tool you can also change the Focus Tool zoom rate.

If you select the Pan Cursor Tool (hand) you can pan inside the Focus Tool. Double-click in the Focus Tool to change zoom resolution between 25% and 100%. With a scroll wheel mouse you can simple scroll to zoom in or out.

A third method to navigate the Focus Tool is by using the overview feature. On a PC you simply press the spacebar while the Pan Cursor is inside the tool. On a Mac you need to right-click with the Pan Cursor Tool inside the Focus Tool and click into the overview window.

The overview window inside the Focus Tool

The white frame indicates the area, which is displayed in Focus Tool. With the mouse you can now simply move the white frame.

Multiple Focus Windows

When using Capture One Pro 7 on a Mac Computer you have the option to use multiple Focus windows simultaneously. This is a very useful option when creating an image where you need to control your depth of field very precisely.

To add another Focus Tool simply select “Create Floating Tool” / “Focus” in the Windows menu. Once you have a new Focus Tool you can dock it below the first one in the Details Tool tab.

I have now docked my extra Focus Tool right under the first Focus Tool in the Details Tool Tab.

When working with two or more Focus Tools, only use the Pan Tool inside the Focus Tool to navigate to where you want to inspect the image. This way the two Focus Tools can inspect different areas of the image simultaneously.

When you browse between different images or when you capture a new image tethered the two different zoom positions will be maintained.

In the example below I was using the Schneider Kreuznach 120mm MF TS f/5.6 tilt and shift lens. I wanted to place the focus on all the bottle labels even though the bottles were placed at a 30-degree angle.

On the viewfinder it is hard to see, if I am perfectly focused so I need to check the focus in Capture One Pro 7. I used two Focus Tools to inspect each end of the row of bottles. This way it was much faster to achieve the right setup of the Tilt and Shift lens. So even though I need to iterate a few times to get it perfect it was achieved very quickly.

All the best,

Niels

Potomac River: Behind this long-exposure image

I am going to take you through my process for three images – one for each blog post. The first is a recent landscape image shot with my Alpa Max camera and Leaf Credo 60 back.

I have used Capture One since version 2.7 and am always learning new tricks from the Capture One Webinars, The Image Quality Professor’s Blog and the good folks at Capture Integration in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

The right day at Potomac River

The image of Great Falls on the Potomac River was shot on May 19th when the river was above flood stage and cresting after several days of intense rain. The Potomac River watershed is huge and drains a good portion of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland.

All of this water flows across Great Falls, which is a few miles upriver from Washington DC. This view was shot from the first lookout around 8:30 in the evening. Two days earlier, when the river was higher, the rocks in the center part of the frame were completely submerged.

Above is the original image as shot. I will walk you through what I have done and why.

The very first thing I do when shooting with the Alpa is to apply a Lens Correction to the file. I was shooting with my Alpa 35mm XL Schneider lens with a center filter and a five-degree down shift to include the rock in the lower portion of the frame. This can produce a slight lens cast, which LCC can fix.

With the LCC I enable uniform light and then back off the percentage to 35. I find 100 percent uniform light for my landscape work to be too precise and clinical.

One advantage of the LCC is you can enable it to remove dust in the frame. I often shoot LCC’s for my aerial work with my medium format or Nikon cameras. I keep several LCC’s shots with my prime lenses at infinity and the f/stops and ISO’s I often use.

Bring out detail

Next up is to apply an exposure correction to bring up the details for the overall view. This was a bit more than I expected and I ended up opening up the exposure by .87 of a stop.

I also applied a slight curve to the image and brought the highlights down to 251. I wanted to keep a little bit of moodiness in the water and not brighten it up overall by bringing in the highlights all the way to 217.

Next up were the blown out highlights in the sky. I used a gradation and brought the end point to just above the center of the rocks in the river. The exposure reduction was pretty heavy: 3.6 stops. In reality it was 2.73 stops since the original exposure was opened up by .87 of a stop.

I also shifted the color in the sky a bit using the Advanced tab in the Color Editor. I find the Color Editor is a great place to start when you want to refine the exposure of a color. I dropped the lightness of the blue in the sky by 11 percent and increased the saturation to 28. The smoothness was set at 20.

Smooth edges & more contrast

I then used the Erase Mask Tool at 17 percent opacity and erased the gradation along the tree line and edges of the river. The hardness was set to 0. I like to keep the edges smooth and not have a hard line when I reduce exposure in a mask. One advantage of using the Erase Tool in the mask is you can easily dodge parts of an exposure.

I wanted the stone in the lower portion of the frame to be a wee bit darker to create contrast against the flowing water. I used a low level of opacity with the hardness set a zero and painted over the center portion of the rocks. Additionally, I added a fairly heavy dose of Clarity at 61 and of Structure at 26.

The water flowing near the rocks was a bit murky and I decided to open it up just a bit. The mask is little hard to see below – but I drew over the water on the left side of the frame and the opened it up 2.31 stops plus added a bit of brightness.

I shifted the color balance to 209 on the hue scale along with 20% saturation.

All in all a pretty simple process. For me, to be able to do these adjustments with the RAW file is a plus and makes my workflow a bit faster. Plus, I can always go back to the raw file and make adjustments with the layers or even add additional corrections.

Best regards,

Cameron Davidson