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Always back up……..seriously!

NOTE: This article discusses an outdated version of Capture One. To learn more about our latest version, click here.

You’ve heard it over and over, and over and over, and over and over……..regardless of how often it’s said, it will always hold true and never ring truer than when your data is lost.

A corrupt file is a corrupt file

It doesn’t matter if it’s an award winning shot, or just a picture of a friend drinking a beer on an inner tube, a corrupt file is a corrupt file and that is always going to ruin your day.

Sure your workflow is safe enough?

From a “Tech Tip” perspective you may roll your eyes and not heed the advice but trust us, no matter how safe you think your workflow is, it can likely stand to be a little bit safer. Here are a few suggestions to improve your security.

1. Use a dedicated Backup system, NOT JUST a RAID system. RAIDs are great to keep you working if a drive goes down, but separate sources dedicated to backup are a MUST for redundant and safe storage.

A typical RAID system isn’t smart enough to know if a file is corrupt, but it will do a fine job of making sure you never lose that corrupt file! Should a file become corrupt, a RAID system will just perpetuate the existence of that corrupt file, not provide you with a backup of the viable data. Separate, dedicated backup drives are the only way to ensure the safety of your files going forward.

2. Use Automated backup software. You don’t always remember to back up and you can’t always find the time to do it manually. Spend the $50 on professional software that will routinely backup files and check data for changes. Something like Chronosync (pictured below), Superduper or even Apples Time Machine are necessary parts of a safe workflow.

3. Work smarter not harder. Using features in Capture One Pro 7 like the Catalog workflow can do wonders to streamline a backup workflow. Even if you are dedicated to the Session workflow, it doesn’t hurt to create new Catalogs on a routine basis, referencing RAW files already edited in the Session and importing their adjustments into the backup Catalog.

4. This will result in a Catalog that contains all the adjustments for your RAW data in one, easy to copy/store/archive file.

The available “Backup” Catalog feature will not only create a copy of the Catalog that contains your changes since the last backup, but it will also guilt you into remembering by noting the last time you backed up.

The backups of your Catalog are easily available in their default location or in a specific location you can choose (perhaps an external and dedicated backup drive would be best)

5. When considering the best solution to protecting your data, don’t cheapen out. Consider the real cost of a single lost image. If you’re a traveling photographer, should the hero shot reside in only one location, losing it is the same as losing the whole job. Always backup CF cards while on the road to at least 2 separate sources and, if it all possible, don’t format the CF card until you’re home safe and sound.

Stay safe out there kids!

~ Drew

How to enhance details with Structure

Explaining structure is a hard task and better demonstrated with the right image. I have tried to explain it before in earlier blog posts but I believe this image is perfect for showing the enhancement that a structure adjustment can give.

This is a lemur, right?

Due to my recent faux pas with the robin and chaffinch mix-up , I am using an animal, which I can confidently identify! Therefore I hope I am right when I say this is a lemur?

As well as using Structure to really define the fur and make it stand out, I used quite a few Local Adjustment layers along with an obvious Black and White conversion

The unadjusted file was nearly passed over, but I am glad I spent the time to produce the final image.

The Original

As I said, I nearly missed the original image. The crop is not particularly interesting and the lemur is not standing out so well from his other friends in the huddle. I think when I took the shot I somehow expected this to be the case.

Before making any adjustments I tried to see if a better crop could improve things. I felt that a square crop could work in this case, so I chose the Crop Tool and defined a 1×1 Aspect Ratio by clicking and holding on the crop cursor icon.

This makes it very straightforward to get a square crop.

I figured that the crop helped the composition quite a bit, so decided to move on with some adjustments. I immediately thought that a Black & White image would work nicely, so I used the excellent Black and White Tool in Capture One Pro 7 to do the job. I normally start with one of our factory Presets and settled on the ‘Panchromatic 4’ Style.

I treat this as a starting point for further adjustment. Next I made some adjustments to the basic tools in the Exposure tab as you can see here.

It’s getting closer but there are some brighter areas which I think are a little distracting. For example, the white fur around the ear and the left leg. Even though I have a pretty strong Vignette on, I still think the top part of the image could come down a little. And of course, we still haven’t exercised Structure to bring out the full potential of image detail.

Therefore, this is a great opportunity to use some Local adjustments.

To tackle the brightness of the top part of the image, I’ll use a simple Gradient Mask (The Gradient Mask Brush is circled on the left) and draw from the top of the image down.

This gives the perfect mask for bringing down the exposure in just the top of the image.

I find it helpful to rename the Adjustment Layers in case I want to return to them to adjust later. Just click on the name to edit it.

I also added another gradient mask at the bottom of the image to bring the exposure of the grass down a little more. (not shown here)

Most importantly, I felt the ear fur was a little too bright, so a quick dab of the Draw Mask brush and a reduction in exposure fixed that.

I added a final Local Adjustment to the eye, just to brighten it up a little. My Adjustment Layers palette ended up looking like this.

Now we get to the all important Structure Tool, which I will add to the Background layer.

To try to explain Structure, think about this analogy. Consider an image of a tree and you have the option of using Clarity, Structure and Sharpening.

Clarity will enhance the tree trunk and the large branches

Structure will enhance the smaller branches and leaves.

Sharpening will enhance the structures on a leaf itself.

Hopefully the analogy will help you to think about what Structure can do for your images. If we compare the lemur on the left (Structure set to 40) with the one to the right (Structure set to zero) you can quite clearly see what Structure is doing in this case.

Structure really helps to bring out the details of the fur in a way that applying extra sharpening might not. If I was going to print this image out I could probably push it a little more. It’s worth experimenting with the level of Structure you can apply for your own needs, whether it’s for screen or print.

Here is the image also in color. What do you think works best?

Best regards,

David

Steve Gosling’s 3 P’s of landscape photography

This loch sits on the edge of Rannoch Moor – a vast expanse of open land that I frequently cross on my way to Glencoe and beyond to the Scottish highlands and islands.

Adds to the challenge

This area on the west of Scotland has become one of my favourite parts of the UK for landscape photography. It’s a rugged, wild landscape that I find very inspiring. It can also be an incredibly frustrating place to work – the weather is very changeable (as mentioned in a previous post, they say in Scotland that if you don’t like the prevailing weather then just wait twenty minutes as it will inevitably change).

But that adds to the challenge and makes it all the more rewarding when everything comes together in a successful photograph.

The three P’s of landscape photography

When I am running photographic workshops or giving talks I often refer to the three P’s of landscape photography:

Planning – to work out the right time of day and year to be at a specific location (with reference to sun/moon position, the presence or absence of foliage on the trees, tide times etc) as well as keeping an eye on weather forecasts to increase the chance of getting a successful photograph;

Patience – as all landscape photographers know, rarely are we able to just turn up at a location, get out the camera and take a wonderful image. The old adage, ‘if you’ve seen it, you’ve missed it’ normally applies. My usual approach is to set up the camera, fine- tune the composition and then wait for the light, weather conditions, cloud formations and so on to come together in a way that supports what I want to say about the location (based most importantly on what I feel about the location, not just what I see). This requires a lot of patience – I frequently spend hours standing around waiting for all the elements to coincide to give me what I’m after. And of course success is far from guaranteed – going home empty handed is not uncommon.

Persistence – which brings me to the final ‘P’. Revisiting locations is part of the job – sometimes I’ll keep returning to a location over a period of years before I get a photograph that I’m completely happy with.

And that is certainly true of Loch na h’Achlaise. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to this spot and up until my last trip (when this image was taken) I’ve previously taken only one photograph that got close to reflecting the nature and the spirit of the place.

“Then I had my shot”

On this visit the loch was frozen, the distant mountains were covered in snow and an interesting cloud filled sky sat above them. I set up and waited. Luckily as the day was drawing to a close (and as I was beginning to fear that this would be another wasted visit) the sun broke through the cloud and gently illuminated the mountaintops. I had my shot.

The RAW file below showed that I had managed to record all the required detail in shadows & highlights and also revealed the potential for a successful colour image as well but that’s for the future. My first interest was to get a Black & White print.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog I like to get a good quality colour file as a starting point for the conversion process to monochrome.

I began by cropping the image to remove the edges of the frame and concentrate attention on the distant mountains.

I then used the exposure tools (in this case Levels and the Contrast slider) to brighten the image, particularly in the highlights, again to draw attention to the light on the mountains.

I also increased clarity and structure to enhance the detail in the foreground stones (these can be seen in the screen grab below and the result is in ‘the Final Colour Image’ also below)

The next step was the conversion to B&W. For this image I again used one of the presets available as a download for Capture One Pro 7 from Capture One Complete.

In this case I used ‘B&W Style 7’ – although I’ll usually look at the effects of using the other styles and presets, this remains one of my favourites. As is my way I use these as a starting point and then I fine-tune the result to suit my own vision and adapt them for each individual image.

I then added a vignette to darken the corners and adjusted the exposure curve to alter the contrast and lift the midtones.

The penultimate step was to darken the sky through the use of a gradient local adjustment layer,

before cloning out dust marks, sharpening and then exporting for printing.

Image Title: ‘Frozen’

Location: Loch na h’Achlaise, Rannoch Moor, Scotland

Equipment: Alpa TC Camera, Schneider 36mm lens, Phase One P45+ digital back, Gitzo tripod with Manfrotto 410 geared head, Lee 0.6 stop ND graduated and 6 stop ND filters

Exposure details: f22, 1mins 29secs, ISO 50

All the best,

Steve Gosling

Ramp up your efficiency with Local Adjustments

I hope by now you’ve had the chance to explore using Local Adjustments on your images. It has certainly brought the ‘darkroom’ back to my photography.

Capture One Pro 7 allows you to add up to ten different local adjustment layers with individual changes to Color, Exposure, Clarity, Moiré and Sharpening.

The so-called extra features that I am going to describe here are the ability to Copy, Invert and Fill a mask. These three actions can help you save time, and aid in the creativity of your images.

The not-so-red robin

The title image here is a little colorless and flat with no adjustments made in Capture One Pro 7.

My plan for this image is to improve the saturation and clarity of the robin and make it stand out more from the background. I’ll also apply sharpening to only the robin itself, as there are no details to sharpen in this shallow depth of field image.

I’ll start by drawing a mask on the robin. I have selected a fairly hard brush so I can get a good accurate edge.

I am drawing the mask with a Wacom Pen and Tablet, which I find much easier. I wrote about this in more detail in a recent blog post if you want to know more.

It was pretty straightforward to draw this mask so far, but I’ll need to reduce the brush size and add in the beak. I can use the Wacom tablet’s Precision Mode to help with drawing this small area.

To save a bit of time, I don’t need to brush in the centre of the robin (see the first screen grab of the mask) as I can just use the ‘Fill Mask’ command. This will fill in the ‘hole’ in the centre of the mask.

Access this by clicking on the small arrow in the top right of the Local Adjustments Tool. The mask is now automatically filled in.

If I need to, I can clean up the edges a little, but I am pretty happy with the first result! You can also see I have named the layer ‘Robin’ so I can keep track of what layer does what. This is very useful if you have several layers to keep track of. To name a layer, just click on the default name.

Now I can set my adjustments for the robin itself.

I have increased the Saturation, applied some sharpening (I had disabled all sharpening in the Background layer, simply by choosing the Preset ‘No Sharpening’ in the Sharpening Tool ), increased the Clarity and Structure and finally made a selective color correction of the chest feathers with an increase in Saturation and reduction of Lightness.

It looks much better now.

Now to work on the background. It would be a waste of time to mask out the background as I already have the inverse – the robin. First of all, I will make a new empty layer by clicking the plus icon, and call it Isolated Background.

Then copy the mask from the Robin layer to this new layer in the same menu.

Now, the Robin layer and Isolated background layer match, so the final step is to invert it, so I just have my background masked.

Now, the mask looks like this.

Perfect! For the background I have decided to desaturate and darken it a little, soften it with some negative Clarity and make sure no sharpening is applied.

Here is the final result alongside the original image. I hope you agree it is somewhat improved.

Conclusion

Fill, Invert and Copy mask functions are simple but can certainly shave a few minutes off here and there when creating multiple layers. Don’t forget that even after copying or inverting masks, they can still be edited with the Draw and Erase mask brushes.

Best regards,

David