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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

Get more creative freedom with variable opacity

In the past I have written a great deal about Local Adjustments on this blog, and for good reason!

I believe Local Adjustments are a powerful way to explore creativity in Capture One Pro 7, but more importantly it can save you time by avoiding this step in Photoshop.

Equally a layered file size in Photoshop can run into many gigabytes, whereas in Capture One Pro 7 we have the beauty of working on the RAW file that will not balloon in size as we add layers.

Add a new dimension to your creativity

In this blog post I will talk about varying the Opacity in your local adjustments, which can add a whole new dimension to your creative application and also make the job of applying a local adjustment much easier!

It is especially useful to use a lower opacity when erasing parts of a mask, which is a really nice way of shaping the result of the adjustments on a mask.

First of all, to vary the opacity of your mask, adjust the slider in the cursor settings dialog box, which can be found in the Local Adjustments Tool, circled in orange. You can also access it whilst right-clicking on the image with any of the mask tools selected.

I am going to work on this image, which is definitely going to benefit from a number of local adjustments to even out exposure and get some more detail and drama back in the sky. Here it is with no adjustments.

To begin with, I will use a Gradient Mask so I can lower the exposure in the sky. The Gradient Mask Tool is selected with this icon in the Local Adjustments Tool.

Then click and drag on the image to define the start and end of the mask. Where you start drawing the mask will be at its strongest, where you finish the mask will be at zero.

So I will end up with a mask looking something like this (Press ‘m’ on the keyboard to show your mask).

The mask is shown in red. Now I can lower the exposure and boost the clarity to get some more drama back in the sky.

Much better! But now the issue I have is that the tops of the trees are too dark on the top right of the image. If I try to erase with a 100% opacity eraser, then it looks very ugly and obvious, like this:

No amount of careful and precise brushing can really improve on this and it becomes frustrating going back and forth trying to repair it! So the solution is to drop the opacity of the Eraser Brush right down and gradually work away at the area to bring it back to the desired exposure.

I have chosen the Eraser by simply hitting ‘e’ on the keyboard and then right-clicking on the image and lowering the opacity to 15%.

Now I can use the brush in multiple strokes to gradually erase the mask in steps. I feel this is much more of a gentle process like dodging and burning in the darkroom was… but with a bit more predictability!

I can also open up any other areas of the clouds if I feel like it. If I go to far, I simply choose the Draw Mask at an equally low opacity and add a little more back in. With a few minutes work I am happy with the result, and it is much more natural. I also lightened the trees on the left too.

Now, I think I should fix the crop to something I like and think about next steps, for example reducing the exposure on the water highlights a little. Here is the final crop:

Now, what about if you would like to mask a whole area to begin with at a lower opacity? Let’s take the area of the water in the foreground, which is a little too bright and distracting. I will take quite a small brush, again at a lower opacity and simply outline the area, and then use the ‘Fill Mask’ option in the drop down menu in the Local Adjustments Tool.

I will then get the area masked all over at the lower opacity. If you try and fill it in by simply brushing with the mouse or tablet pen, you will not get a perfectly even mask to start with. By lowering the exposure and adjusting the mask as necessary I can get the effect I want and maintain the natural look as before.

Finally, I will boost the exposure on the house a little by adding a further layer. I will draw a very rough mask again at a lower opacity and adjust as needed by using the erase and draw mask brushes back and forth.

Also, by using this method, especially in conjunction with an exposure adjustment means you are adding an additional way to vary this adjustment. So, the more you brush over the same area again and again (in this case) will increase exposure and gradually decrease exposure if using the erase brush. With the house, I have intentionally brightened the left side of the building a little more compared to the right, just by brushing over a few more times.

Secondly, this method of using a mask gives you ‘more bites of the cherry’ to get the look you need.

To finalize the image, I will add a bit more Neutral clarity to the Background layer and increase contrast slightly.

I think this may work nicely as a Black and White so I will use one of my presets as another example on a cloned variant.

In summary, by lowering the opacity we can have much more control over our local adjustments and deliver a more natural result. By working on the RAW file we maintain as much quality as possible and avoid the need to work on a large Photoshop file.

But the most important point is that it is a lot of fun!

Here is the original image with the final result:

Best regards,

David Grover

How to get uniform skin tones

Without this, the normal flow would be to correct to an overall skin-tone, using a combination of White Balance, Levels/Curves and Color Balance. The challenge a photographer faces after this general color correction step, is how to quickly but precisely correct local skin tones, where the skin has another tint. This could be caused by issues like lighting fall-off, off-tint foundation applied by a make-up artist, pigmentation difference etc.

To correct this using Photoshop the photographer would create a Selective Color (or Hue Saturation) adjustment layer with a mask covering the off-tint skin tone and correct the color. Then for each area where the tone is off, this flow will be repeated. As you can imagine, this flow is very time-consuming, requires detailed masking, and is very repetitive.

So how can Capture One help you? In the Color Editor Tool there is a tab called “Skin tone”. This tool is available from both the “Color” Tab and the “Local Adjustments” tab. If you are using it from the “Color” tab, the tool will act on the entire picture, the so-called Background layer.

The Skin Tone Tool being applied as a background layer on an X-rite ColorChecker SG

If used from the Local Adjustments tab, you have to draw a mask on the area where you want the tool to have effect. I find using the tool with Local Adjustments gives me the most control, but using it on the Background layer can speed-up up the workflow a bit, but at the cost of effect precision. The risk here is that red and yellow colors can be unintentionally affected by the Skin Tone Tool.

Let’s see how all this act on a real-life image. On the image below the skin-tones are pleasing in the face and on her shoulders, but her legs and the fingers on her left hand have a noticeable magenta tint and do not match the upper body perfectly.

Legs and hand need skin tone tweaking to match the upper part of the body, which already has a pleasing skin tone

Preparing for using the Skin Tone Tool

To correct this tint, I start by creating a layer, and then masking the skin. When drawing the masks, there are a few pitfalls to avoid:

Avoid being very precise around green/blue/cyan/deep magenta hues, as these normally won’t be affected when dealing with skin tones.
Avoid masking into the hair. Especially blonde hair is quickly affected.
Avoid masking into the lips, unless the “naked” foundation look is needed. Bright red lips will suffer greatly.
Avoid masking into greens or light brown eyes. They can be affected by the tool.

On this particular image I have to be careful not to include the golden parts in my mask, as a golden color is close to a warm skin tone.

Masking in the layer containing the skin tone layer, avoiding hair and golden areas

Once I am done masking, I select a skin tone using the Color Picker from the Skin Tone Tool. The color I pick will be the tone that Capture One Pro 7 applies to the leg and hand we have masked in.

Hue and saturation range

Next step is to widen the color range in 2 dimensions. First, press the “Span full saturation range” icon in the tool, then broaden the affected hue by dragging the endpoints in the color circle in each direction. If the image is highly saturated, it can be advantageous to also drag the “Smoothness” slider to the maximum value. This makes for a smoother hue falloff.

Widening the hue and saturation and increasing
the smoothness of the fall-off

Using the uniformity slider

Now move the “Uniformity” slider to its maximum value of 1.0. This is where the magic happens. The skin tone I previously selected is now applied to the area I have masked, if the colors are within the defined range. Sometimes setting the Uniformity value to 1.0 can prove to be a little too much. On those rare occasions turn down the value, or, better, erase the mask with a low opacity Eraser Brush until reaching the desired amount of uniformity in the image. The rouge make-up on a model’s cheeks is a good example of when it would be a good idea to lower the opacity locally by using the Eraser brush.

The Uniformity slider set to Max

Tweaking the skin tone

Once we are happy with the color range and the uniformity, we can start tweaking our skin tone. It can be difficult at first to hit the right skin tone with the picker, but this is easily modified with the slider controls. A rough hue and saturation selection can be obtained by moving the color selection point in the color wheel. Fine-tuning this selection is then done by adjusting the Hue Rotation, Saturation and Lightness sliders. As I am using the Uniformity feature, making these adjustments will affect the entire selected color range.

Getting a uniform look across multiple pictures

Most times I have to deliver a series of pictures, which have to have the same overall look. Here the Skin Tone Tool is very useful as the settings can be copy/pasted to the remaining pictures. A workflow tip is not to have any mask drawn when the settings are copied. As a mask is very specific to a certain picture, it would have to be manually erased in order for a new mask to be drawn on a second image.

Here is the final result as a comparison, showing the legs with and without the skin tone correction:

With and without the skin-tone correction using the Skin Tone tool in Capture One Pro 7

More than just skin

Even though named “Skin Tone”, this tool can be used for a lot more than just skin. It can also be used on other colors.

The Skintone Tool can correct much more than just skin tones. Here the color of the water have been uniformed to allow for further corrections using the Advanced Color Editor.

In this picture I have combined the use of the Advanced Color Editor Tool and the Skin Tone Tool, to make the water a blue tone instead of the typical Danish green water color. In a layer I have used the Skin Tone Tool to make yellow, green and blue/cyan tones look more similar. In the Advanced Color Editor I have then adjusted to the hue to make the water look bluer. A layer mask sees to that the sky is not affected by the adjustments on the water.

Best regards,

Christian Grüner