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Clarity with Punch

The High Dynamic Range Tool in Capture One Pro 7 is a very powerful tool when dealing with the large dynamic range you often find in landscape images.

With this tool you can bring back details in both shadows and highlights. When doing extensive correction in both highlights and shadows it is often a very good idea to use the Clarity Tool to bring back more contrast to the image in order to give it a more natural look.

Before After

The image on the left-hand side is straight out of the camera. The image has been exposed to preserve the highlights with only a bit of clipping, leaving the shadows very dark. The image on the right-hand side is after the High dynamic Range Tool and the Clarity Tool have been applied in Capture One Pro 7.

The Clarity Tool in Capture One Pro 7 has three different methods for applying clarity to an image:

Punch:

The default method that besides applying local contrast also applies a bit of local saturation. This usually works very well on for instance landscape images.

Neutral:

Adds the local contrast the same way as “Punch” but without changing the saturation. When really strong clarity corrections are applied then this method often gives more pleasing results.

Classic:

This method was introduced in Capture One 6. It applies the local contrast without changing the saturation, but it does it in different way than the Punch and Neutral.

The image above where I added quite a bit of Clarity is a very good example to show the benefit of having alternative methods for clarity. In this example with lots of mostly gray clouds it is easy to see how the different method works.

Punch Neutral Classic

When comparing the Punch and Neutral method it is easy to see that the sunstroke as well as the yellowish sky over the horizon picks up more color when using Punch. The sunstrokes appear equally strong.

Comparing the Neutral and Classic method you will notice that Classic preserves the highlights better and it gives you much more details in the forest. On the other hand the sunstroke isn’t as strong as when using Neutral. You will also notice that Classic has a tendency to show a halo over the strong contrast edge of the forest.

So which method to use is very much an individual choice and is also very much dependent on the motive.

If you prefer Punch or Neutral, but are afraid to lose highlights details, I have a few tricks to overcome that:

1) In the Levels Tool bring down the target levels from 255 to for instance 245. This will leave a little headroom for the Clarity Tool.

2) Use a Local Adjustments Layer to add negative clarity over the highlights details with a smooth brush. This will reduce the clipping effect from the Clarity Tool.

Clarity Neutral Clarity Neutral including the little trick

Applying the trick with the Levels Tool and a negative clarity brush over the highlights in an Local Adjustments Layer brings back all the needed highlight details even when such Clarity corrections are applied as in this example.

All the best,

Niels

Time-saving shortcuts: The sequel

Moving sliders faster when using the keyboard

If you click in the textboxes next to the sliders you can adjust the value of the slider very precisely by using the up and down arrows on the keyboard. However if you want to make a big change you can hold down Shift while pressing the arrow keys and it will take a step that is 10 times larger.

Quickly copying only some adjustments from one image to others

The regular copy apply buttons in the toolbar copies all adjustments from one image to others. If you only want to apply a few of the adjustments, you can go to the adjustments clipboard tool and untick the adjustments you don’t want before pressing the apply button.

This is tedious however if you are only interested in having the adjustments from one tool transferred to all the other images. That is why we made the Local copy apply button. It is the small double arrow in the title bar of the tools that support it. Most of the tools in Capture One Pro 7 has a “local copy apply button”. This makes it easy to apply the adjustments from just one tool to many images.

Clicking the local copy apply button you are shown the part of the clipboard that contains the settings relevant for the tool. Then you can choose to either copy those settings to the clipboard or you can apply them directly without really using the clipboard.

To be able to work really fast we have made it so that if you hold down Alt while clicking the local copy apply button, it corresponds to clicking copy in the box. Holding down the Shift key corresponds to clicking apply in the box.

People are sometimes confused with how to use the apply button – the idea is that you select multiple images and then you can quickly give all the images e.g. the same Black and White Tool setting look as the primary variant by holding down the Alt key and clicking the local copy apply button.

If you like this way of working you should also try adding the “Copy and Apply Adjustments” button to the main window toolbar. Just right-click the toolbar and select customize.

Find the item called “Copy and Apply Adjustments” and drag it to the toolbar.

This button works exactly like the local one in the tools – however it copies settings across all tools just like the regular copy apply buttons f you press the “Copy and Apply Adjustments” button you are shown a dialog box containing the clipboard.

Color readouts shortcuts

The “add color readout” cursor tool allows you to get small signs with readouts of the color value in different points of the image. You simply left-click to add them to the screen. If you want to remove one of the readouts you can simply hold down the Alt key, while clicking on it and it will disappear. If you have made multiple readouts and want to remove all of the at once you hold down the Shift and Alt keys at the same time, while clicking on one of them.

Temporary reset

If you want to see how the image would look without the adjustments from one of the tools, you could simply press the local reset button on that tool and afterwards press undo. However there is a more elegant way to do it. Hold down the Alt key while clicking on the reset button in the tool and the tool adjustments will be reset as long as you click. When you release the Alt key and the left mouse button the adjustments will return.

Snapping masks

If you hold down Shift while drawing a Gradient Mask, you can get the mask to snap to 45 degree angles. This is nice if you want your mask to be very accurate.

Process history

When a Variant is processed/exported to e.g. .jpg, Capture One Pro 7 saves the path to the output file. If you want to see that list, then select an image that has been processed previously (all processed images will have a small gear icon overlaid on their thumbnail).

Then click the “adjustments->process history” menu item to see a list of the processed files. You can click on them to have them opened in the default image viewer on your system.

Best regards,

Theis Hansen

Your new wingman to Capture One Pro 7

The shift key is definitely worth getting to know better and can as any other wingman help you achieve great things.

Check out the shortcuts below and discover how the shift key can help you speed up your workflow in Capture One.

This is the first part of a small collection of shortcuts all involving the shift key from another one of those late nights in the office.

Avoiding load of the most recently used Session or Catalog

When starting Capture One Pro 7, it will automatically load the Session or Catalog you used last time before it closed. This is a nice feature because it makes it easy to continue working from where you left off.

However if you know you are starting Capture One Pro 7 with the goal of creating a new Session or Catalog, try holding down the Shift (Windows) or Alt/Option (mac) when launching Capture One and you will see a dialog box giving you the option of creating a new Session or Catalog. You can also choose to open an existing Session or Catalog.

Organizing RAW files on disk

I often use Sessions in Capture One Pro 7 for moving around images on my hard drive. It is better than using Explorer/Finder because it will remember to move the Capture One settings files along with the RAW files.

Usually I simply drag images from the thumbnail browser to the desired folder in the Library Tool. Depending on if you are pointing to a different drive than the one the file is on; Capture One Pro 7 will copy or move the file to the folder you drop it in (just like Windows Explorer). To force it to copy, hold down ctrl (a small “+” will appear next to the mouse cursor).

To force it to move the file, hold down shift (those shortcuts also work in Windows Explorer).

Use “Edit Multiple” mode when needed

Capture One Pro 7 has two modes for dealing with multiple selected Variants. Press this button on the toolbar or click “Edit->Edit All Selected Variants” to toggle between the two modes.

When “edit all selected Variants” is enabled (orange) the buttons in the toolbar (like trash, rotate or process) will apply to all selected variants. When “edit all selected variants” is disabled, only the primary Variant (the one with the wide border around it) will be affected by the buttons on the toolbar.

While “edit multiple variants” is powerful, it is also dangerous since you could end up deleting or resetting all the selected variants instead of just the primary one you were looking at. We have reduced the risk of this happening by showing a warning when a dangerous operation is about to be performed.

A simpler way of working is to disable “edit all selected variants” and when you want to process/reset/trash all of your selected images then hold down the shift key while clicking the desired toolbar button. Then it will affect all selected Variants even though the “edit all selected variants” button has been disabled. Notice when holding down shift and hovering over the toolbar buttons, we show the number of variants that will be affected.

Quickly select the cursor tool you want

Using shortcut keys to select the cursor tool you need is very convenient. To make the shortcuts easier to remember, the shortcut key is shown for each cursor tool in the cursor tool selector. But how do you select the “Rotate Freehand” cursor tool when it has the same shortcut (“r”) as the “Straighten” cursor tool? Hold down shift and press the “r” key multiple times to cycle through all the cursor tools that have “r” as a shortcut key.

That’s it for this week. Don’t miss the sequel next week!

Best regards,

Theis

Get as much image real estate as possible

I thought in this week’s post I would write less about technique and more about improving the environment you are working in!

Now, I can’t do much personally about your office or studio space, but hopefully by now you will have discovered that the Capture One interface is extremely adaptable for the way you or I might like to interact with it best.

If we look at the default workspace with the lead image in place, it looks like this:

Nothing wrong as such, but there are a lot of options that might distract from the image at hand. And secondly, if we are not blessed with the latest massive monitor then we want to get as much image real estate as possible to make it easy on the eye and not waste space with tools and other elements that we don’t need in the adjustment phase.

So here is what I prefer to work with during adjustment:

A little but easier on the eye, no?

Basically it is just some subtle changes, but nice to work with. I have consolidated some tools into certain Tools Tabs to make that area as narrow as possible, removed the browser and also removed the Viewer labels.

Where do I find Viewer Labels?

If you look at the first image, it’s the bar under the image with the basic metadata like shutter speed, ISO etc. I really don’t have a use for that, once the image is being edited.

If I need to bring back the browser, I just press CMD-B (Mac) or Ctrl-B (PC) on the keyboard. Even that is simplified too.

I should add by this point that I have already gone through a process of rating and selecting. I do this with no Viewer at all and just simply the browser with the usual thumbnail information intact.

The final feature that helps me is the Proof Margin toggle button. You’ll find it in the top left hand corner of the viewer and you might not even have noticed it.

What this simply does, is to give you a bit more ‘air’ around the image, so it is not so close to the borders of the viewer. I personally find it much easier to judge composition in this way. You can actually set the size of this margin in the Preferences.

In theory you could just set the standard Margin to something broader, but I do like to be able to have a choice as well.

To have a final look at the image it is a simple case of CMD-T (Mac) or Ctrl-T (PC) to hide the tools giving us almost nothing but the image.

We do have a full screen option, which you might prefer (View > Enter Full Screen), but I find my way faster.

So here is a quick summary on how to adjust those workspace elements:

To add or remove a single tool from a Tool Tab, or even an entire Tool Tab:

Right-click on any of the Tool Tabs and choose from the menu.

To change the order of Tool Tabs:

CMD (Mac) or Ctrl (PC) drag:

To resize the different areas:

Drag the divider lines:

Hide various elements in the Viewer and Browser

There are other options you could explore too, for example Auto Mode for both the Browser and Tool Area. This means that they will hide until you mouse close to either edge. But I prefer to use the shortcut keys to show and hide, but you may be different!