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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

The secret side of the Aspect slider

In last week’s tip, Peter Eastway mentioned that he often uses the Aspect slider in the Keystone Tool to adjust the appearance of the image.

“Although I’m sure the developers in Copenhagen didn’t design the Keystone Tool for me, it’s amazing how often I use the Aspect slider to either squish things together or stretch them out.”

Therefore I decided to elaborate on Peter’s technique in case you can find a place for it in your workflow.

The Aspect slider is found in the Keystone Tool.

The traditional use of the Aspect slider is to alter the effect of any perspective adjustment to make it look more natural to the eye. Sometimes the ‘perfect’ correction isn’t the best one visually. This is why by default, if you use the Keystone correction tools, the Amount slider is set to 80% as opposed to 100%.

The Aspect slider has no automatic values applied, so it’s up to you to dial in the look you want to achieve. In a lot of cases of the normal use of the Keystone Tool, the Aspect slider can be left alone, but it’s often worth experimenting with it, in case it can help the image.

For example here, if we correct the perspective of this image using the Keystone Tool.

We can reduce the aspect value a little to make the building a little taller. Notice that the Amount slider has defaulted to an 80% correction. This still removes most of the ‘falling down building’ syndrome but looks more natural.

With some images, the perspective is too extreme to make a visually pleasing correction, but this doesn’t mean we can’t still make use of the Aspect slider.

The lead image without any corrections looks like this.

As there are a couple of lofty towers in Chicago’s skyline, it makes sense to try and convey that a bit more… even though it is cheating somewhat! The image could also do with some help in the way of contrast and probably some Local Adjustments.

If we start to drag the Aspect slider we can gradually stretch the buildings making them look taller. You can see the difference between the original and the same image with a -18% Aspect adjustment.

You may find that the crop needs adjusting after the Aspect slider has been moved.

I have also played with the Vertical and Horizontal sliders to change the look a little as well.

Now that the building shape is a bit more dramatic I can complete it with some image adjustment.

The contrast is really flat, probably from a lot of flare from the sun off the glazed surface. The Levels look ok with a nice even Histogram, but the mid tones could definitely use some help by pulling the mid tone slider towards the highlights.

A positive Clarity adjustment will also help with the haziness of the image. Remember, set to ‘Punch’ the saturation will be increased as well, which is perfect for the blue sky. The final thing that needs to be done is to warm the white balance so the sun is more obvious on the side of the building.

To bring out the warmer sun even more, I can use a pick on the Advanced Colour Editor to darken that tone and increase saturation.

As a final step, to get a bit more variation in light in the building, I will create a Local Adjustment layer, which I can use to ‘dodge’ selected areas of the image.

Before brushing onto the image, I’ll call the new layer ‘Dodge’ and right away increase the exposure for that layer by 1.5 stops. The brush Opacity should be nice and low so the effect can be built up and remain subtle.

A few brushes and I can improve on the lighting on the windows.

I think that’s it, except for a small adjustment on the crop and a Local Adjustment gradient mask to darken the foreground a little.

Here is the final result against the original.

It would be interesting to know if you have found another use for the Aspect slider? Or if it has benefited your images?

Oh… and here is a Black and White… now to stop playing!

Best regards,

David

The Road to Stykkisholmur

I had to plead with the driver and the guide to let me stop for this photograph.

Well, let’s face it, when you look at the starting point (see later in this article), it was a drab afternoon. It was also my second day in Iceland, so I had no idea whether there was just one or two quaint churches sitting forlorn on remote hills, or hundreds.

As it turns out, there are hundreds and many of them are incredibly photogenic. I think I could spend months travelling around Iceland and never get sick of the landscape and its structures.

So, confession time…….

I was on a PODAS with Kevin Raber, Steve Gosling and our Icelandic guide Daniel Bergmann. Daniel was looking at me funny when I asked if he could pull over. Kevin was looking at his watch and wondering when we’d get to the hotel for dinner. I was looking at this scene and thinking how amazing it looked with the misty rain, the warm grasses and the hint of the hills in the background behind.

Australian eyes discover Icelandic beauty

That’s what makes photography such an individual pursuit. I was putting my Australian eyes over a foreign landscape and loving it. Daniel had driven along this road thousands of times before and no longer saw it. I am the same in Australia. People come to my place in Sydney and marvel at the coastline and how great it looks, but for me, it’s just home.

However, one thing that Kevin and Daniel are is fair. They could see I was serious, so they pulled over and I jumped out. A couple of the other photographers followed, but I think the general consensus was I was a bit mad.

So, in the interests of regaining a small amount of my reputation, I’m presenting the finished work, what I saw out of the van window.

The edge to set you apart

The original file was processed in Capture One Pro 7, naturally. There is no other raw file processor that gives me the same file quality; so all my files go through it whether photographed on a Phase One, a Canon, Fujifilm or Nikon. And while I finish most of my art prints in Photoshop, there is a lot you can do to set up the file in Capture One. In fact, while travelling or on a job, I use Capture One Pro 7 to proof my work and very often this is all that’s required.

In this case, the final image has a few further embellishments in the sky that I did in Photoshop, but the basic starting steps were made in Capture One Pro 7 as follows.

Click on the images to enlarge

The unprocessed raw file is quite warm, but not what I remember. Perhaps it was the tinting on the van window, but I saw a cooler, silvery light with the red of the church’s roof really sparkling.

You’ll also see that my composition is a little on the wide side. It was raining and the longest lens I had was the 110mm. A 150mm would have been better, but I had promised Kevin I’d only be two minutes! Still, plenty of pixels on the IQ180 and cropping wouldn’t be a problem.

First step was to create the cooler, bluer light. I enlarged the image and used the Pick White Balance Tool, clicking on the wall of the church. In fact, I used the tool to click around on the sky, the roof and even the white entrance arch, but the colour balance I liked the best was when I clicked on the front façade of the church’s tower. This setting gave me the blues in the sky that I wanted.

Given the overcast light, the scene was pretty flat. You can see from the histogram that there is plenty of room for movement. I used the Exposure tools to increase the contrast and the color saturation, plus I used the High Dynamic Range Highlight for a reason that escapes me just now. I know I am paranoid about paper whites in the sky, but they simply don’t seem likely as I look at the file now!

I cropped the image next, removing the foreground fencepost. This simplified the composition and although the small pond on the right remains, this will change in the next step.

Although I’m sure the developers in Copenhagen didn’t design the Keystone Tool for me, it’s amazing how often I use the Aspect slider to either squish things together or stretch them out.

As we struggle to find ways to make our photographs look ‘different’ from what everyone else is posting on Instagram, adjusting the aspect ratio can create an edge. In this case, by reducing the Aspect slider, I have made the buildings look taller. Note also how the cropping has changed. I find I use the Keystone and Crop Tools in tandem.

Moving back to my Quick Tool tab, which I have set up with all my most used tools, I adjusted the Vignette slider to darken down the edges of the frame. However, the image looks a little flat. The Exposure sliders are great, but sometimes I find using the Levels or Curves Tools makes more sense.

Moving to the Exposure Tool tab and the Levels Tool, I have grabbed the White point and dragged it left to the edge of the histogram, effectively lightening up the image and producing some highlights. This has made a big change.

I also tweaked the Black point just a little and moved the Gamma slider until the image looked to my liking. It is essential to do this with good quality monitors that have been correctly calibrated and profiled. I use an Eizo ColorEdge CG275W and the Wacom Cintiq 24HD touch for my work and both produce excellent image quality for editing.

This is the final result from Capture One, at which stage the image was transferred to my ‘working’ folder to await my attention and, much to my embarrassment; it is 18 months later that I finally finished the file.

Capture One Pro 7 provides so much control over the raw file that I find I need to do less and less in Photoshop to finish the image. In this case, a couple of colour overlays with a soft light blend mode were added to finesse the final colour palette.

This photograph has always in the back of my mind and I’m so glad they stopped the bus.

Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Daniel.

Best regards,

Peter

Check out Peter’s work here and check out his PDF video publications on his Better Photography website

Clean up the sky for bugs and bees with the Spot Removal Tool

When capturing the above image on a beautiful spring day I could clearly hear the lark birds singing in the sky. They typically just show up in the image as blue spots not really looking like birds, so I was prepared for cleaning up this image in Capture One Pro 7.

Something unexpected

What I didn’t expect though was the large number of bees and bugs that showed up in the image when zooming in. Luckily it only took a minute or two to clean up the raw image with the Spot Removal Tool in Capture One Pro 7.

Dust or Spot?

The Spot Removal Tool is a very easy and efficient tool for removing smaller spots in an image. Whether the spots are caused by dust on the images sensor or are actual spots in the images, this tool can help you!

Before After

This is a 200 % zoom into the image above. The image to the left shows the bugs and bees that suddenly appeared in the image. The image to the right has been cleaned up using the Spot Removal Tool in Capture One Pro 7.

The Spot Removal Tool is by default located on the Details Tool tab in Capture One Pro 7. The tool gives you two options for spot removal depending on the type of spot: Dust or Spot.

Get rid of dust in your images

You should only choose the “Dust” option, if the spot actually comes from a dust spot on the images sensor. When choosing “Dust”, a special algorithm will remove the influence of the dust spot and reconstruct the image 100% correctly as though the dust spot hadn’t been there in the first place.

Safely copy the dust fix

Another advantage of using the “Dust” option, when it’s actually a dust spot you are dealing with, is that you can safely copy the dust spot fix from one image to another without any risk of the spot not being removed correctly.

This means that if you fix a spot in an image for instance shot in landscape orientation, where the dust spot shows up in the upper left side of the sky, you can safely apply the fix to even a portrait oriented image, where the spot may shows up on top of some meaning full information. If you copy and paste settings between two or more images the dust spots will automatically be transferred to the next image as this is a safe way of fixing a dust spot. This makes a lot of sense, as dust normally stays in the same position on the sensor between different images.

Remove spots from your images

The “Spot” option works differently. When fixing a spot of this type, the colors and textures of the surrounding areas are used to fill in and fix the spot. This works very well in many cases like in a sky or when fixing skin spots in a portrait.

When you copy and paste settings between two images, these kind of spots are not automatically transferred, as it normally does not make sense as the camera or the object may have moved between the two images. If you still want to copy the spot fixes of this kind you should manually check it on the clipping board.

Fixing Spots:

1. Select the “Spot” type

2. Select the Spot Cursor Tool either from the Spot Removal Tool or from the Cursor tool bar.

The red circle shows the Remove Spot cursor

3. Right-click with the mouse to adjust the Remove Spot cursor size to a size 3-4 times larger than the spot you want to remove. Working on a blue sky as in this case I don’t need to pay much attention to the cursor size as long as it is big enough.

4. Now just click on the spots with the cursor. If you need to adjust the size of a spot fix you can drag on the edge of the cursor mark. If you for a reason need to delete a spot fix use the “-“ button in the Spot Removal Tool.

5. To view the result without showing the cursor marks, just select another cursor, e.g. the Pan (Hand) or Select (Arrow) Cursor Tool.

At zoom to fit with the Remove Spot cursor selected you can se all the spot fixes you have made on the image. In this example quite a few fixes but it was done very easily in less than 2 minutes.

All the best,

Niels