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Find the Best Focused Images in No Time

If you shoot a large quantity of images in a short period of time, for example with portrait or fashion work, it can often be time consuming to select the images with the correct focus point.

Fortunately in Capture One Pro 7, the Focus Mask function can take on the hard work of finding the images that have the most accurate focus. The Focus Mask works by analyzing each individual image and determining the sharpest areas. If you are used to features like focus ‘peaking’ with video capture, then the functionality is similar.

Once analyzed the sharpest areas of the image are overlaid with a coloured mask.

How to use the Focus Mask

The Focus Mask can be activated by choosing either View>Show Focus Mask, or clicking on the Focus Mask icon in the toolbar.

Any image in the Viewer (as well as the Browser) is then analyzed for the sharpest areas, represented with the coloured mask as seen in the introduction. In the Capture One preferences, you can change the mask colour and behaviour.

The Threshold controls how sensitive the mask is. A low number will show the sharpest areas of the image and also the near-sharp areas. A high number will show only the sharpest areas of an image. The analysis will sometimes misrepresent sharpness for noisy images, or branches from a tree out of focus. I do not recommended using the Focus Mask with images taken with a pocket-sized camera with a small pixel size at high ISO values, unless you tune the threshold to a high number.

The colour and opacity of the mask can also be changed to your choosing in the same dialog box.

Using Focus Mask and the Loupe Together

It’s a good idea to use the Focus Mask in combination with the Loupe Tool to zoom in and review at 100 % full detail enabling you to select the most accurately focused images, since the Focus Mask and the Loupe Tool can operate in the Browser as well as the Viewer.

Hide the Viewer by choosing View>Hide Viewer from the main menu. You will then be left with thumbnails only. Just as before you can turn on the Focus Mask, waiting a few seconds for the analysis to take place and the Focus Mask to appear.

Choose the Loupe tool by hitting “p” on the keyboard or selecting it from the cursor tools.

Click and hold on the sharper images indicated by the Focus Mask to verify.

This method gives you a rapid workflow to verify and choose the images with the most accurate focus. Additionally you could use the Star Rating tags OR colour tags to mark those that you have selected.

– Use 1 -5 on the keyboard for a rating of 1 to 5 stars.

– Use the ‘+’ key to tag an image as Green.

All the best,

Niels

Get Better Organized with Sessions in Capture One Pro 7

When working in Capture One 7 Pro, you basically have two different methods of organizing your images and image adjustments. You can use either:

Catalogs or Sessions

A session is an easy, straightforward and efficient way of organizing your images, as all files, adjustments and metadata are kept inside the Session folder. This method makes it easy to archive or move your data to another computer, by simply moving the entire Session folder.

When creating a new Session, a simple folder structure, including some basic predefined folders, will be created for you:

Capture folder
Selects folder
Trash folder
Output folder

A Session folder will, by default, have a Capture folder, which is the default location for saving files when shooting tethered or when importing from a memory card.

The Selects folder is a default folder ready for holding selected images from the Session. The keyboard shortcut Cmd + J (Mac) or Ctrl + J (PC) will automatically move selected files to the Selects folder.

The Trash folder will hold all deleted images. Whenever you delete an image from the session, the image and its adjustments will simply be moved to the Session Trash folder. You can always go into the Trash folder and move any deleted files, including their adjustments, back to the original folder with a simple drag and drop. The Output folder is where all the processed image files are saved by default.

Create a Session for each job

It’s generally a good idea to create a new Session for every new job you have. This way you never mix up images from different jobs or different clients. You can easily switch between Sessions in Capture One 7 Pro. To do so, simply use the dropdown Session selector on the Library Tool tab or locate the Session you want to open in the Finder and double-click on the “.cosessiondb “ file (located within the Session folder).

The default Session gives you a basic Session workflow, but often you will need to add more Session folders in order to better organize your images.

How to add more folders to a Session

There are different ways to add additional Session folders.

The following method works both on Mac and PC.

1) In Capture One 7 Pro select the Library Tool tab and create a new Session from the menu item “New Session”, or by clicking the “+” button next to the Session selector. In this example I have created a new Session named “2013 05 – Italy”, the name of the Session is also shown at the top of the Capture One window. I always use the naming convention: Year, Month and then the name of the event. This naming convention makes it easier for me to go back and find older Sessions.

2) Right-click on any of the predefined Session folders Capture, Select, Output or Trash and select “Show in System folders”. This will locate the selected predefined session folder inside the System Folder tree.

3) Now go one level up in the System Folder tree and select the folder with the Session name. Right-click and select “new inside”. You can then select “Folder” and give the new folder a name.

4) Repeat this procedure for every new folder you would like to add.

5) Finally you can add these new folders to the Session Favorites by right-clicking on the folders in the “System Folders” tree and select “Add to Favorites”

Once you’ve added the new folders to your Session, they will show up in the Session Favorites list and be part of the Session. The Session database will keep information about all images saved in these folders and you can now use the Search and Filtering functionality in Capture One and for instance create Smart Albums based on specific search criteria.

On the Mac there is another special method that you can use:

1) In Capture One Pro 7 select the Library Tool tab and create a new Session.

2) Right-click on the Session name at the very top of the Capture One window (2013 05 – Italy.cosessiondb) and select the option to open the Session folder in the Finder

By right-clicking on the name of the Session on the top of the Capture One window, you can
directly open the Session folder in the Finder.

Folder selector when right-clicking on the Session name at
the very top of the Capture One window

3) In the Finder create the folders you need, quickly and easily.

4) Select the folders created in Finder and then drag them directly into the Session Favorites area in the Library Tool tab of Capture One.

5) The newly created folders will now show up in the list of Session Favorites.

You don’t need to use the default predefined “Capture Folder” as capture folder. Right click on any of your just added folders in the Session Folders list or in the Session Favorite list and select “Set as Capture folder”. This will set the selected folder as the Capture folder. In the Session Folders List you will now see a camera icon indicating that this folder is the Capture folder.

In my workflow I always keep the default Capture Folder even if I only import from memory cards. I will add additional image folders to the session as just explained, but I will still import directly to the Capture Folder. I use the Capture Folder as a “work in progress” folder but once I have finished editing the files, I move them to the different Session folders, I’ve added to the session.

All the best,

Niels

Fixing Chromatic Aberration in Macro Images

The Lens Tool in Capture One 7 has the ability to apply automatic lens correction for a large number of cameras and lens combinations, and will automatically adjust for a number of lens artifacts like distortion, light falloff and chromatic aberration.

In order to do lens correction for a specific lens, Phase One has to measure the lens and extracted data that describes how the different lens parameters behave. These measurements are done at typical focus distances and describe very well the performance of the lens at focusing distances from normal close-ups to infinity.

However, when using a lens for macro photography the focusing distances can be quite far from those used when the lens was measured for analysis. Sometimes you can achieve better results by doing a manual chromatic aberration analysis on the individual image in the Lens Tool.

If we zoom into this macro image and look at the slightly out of focus high contrast edge, we see a strong blue color caused by the chromatic aberration in the lens.

Because this is a macro image, the automatic lens corrections does not efficiently remove the chromatic aberration.

In the Lens Tool you have the option to perform an individual Chromatic Aberration analysis on the selected image. Click on the orange arrow to the right of the tool and you will access a dropdown menu with the option “Analyze”.

Click “Analyze” and after a few seconds a new Chromatic Aberration correction will be calculated based on the selected image. We now see that the previous strong blue color on the edge of the flower has been corrected. If you click on the orange arrow, you will see a check mark next to the file name. This check mark now indicates that the chromatic aberration reduction is based on data retrieved from this specific image.

So, for this macro image, it’s possible to achieve a much better chromatic aberration correction by making an analysis on the image instead of using the “Default” correction for the lens.

All the best,

Niels

How to Optimise Your Workspace

Using Workspaces in Capture One Pro 7 is an easy way to customise and optimise the interface and the way you work with images. Capture One Pro 7 includes some default workspaces optimised for how most professional photographers work, but you can still make your own workspaces to:

– Make your favourite tools more accessible, where you want them.

– Change the layout and content of the toolbar

– Make different workspaces for different tasks (Importing, Editing, Shooting, Focus Checking)

By streamlining the interface, functions and options can be found quickly and easily. Different tasks will also require focus on different parts of the software. For example, whilst selecting images from a shoot or moving images in your catalog, it is not necessary to have the tools on display, thereby creating more screen real estate for image viewing.

Switching Workspaces

Switching between Workspaces is easily done in the Window > Workspaces menu found in the toolbar. It’s also here you can save and delete your custom Workspaces.

Building and Saving a Workspace

The simplified workspace in Capture One Pro 7 looks like this:

Many elements of the Workspace can be changed. A few examples:

– Contents of the toolbar

– Adding / Removing tools from a Tool Tab

– Changing the position of tools in a Tool Tab

– Adding / Removing Tool Tabs or Creating Custom Tools Tabs

– Creating floating windows

– Position of the browser and tools

Example

In the following example we can make some changes to the Toolbar and the Tool Tabs.

Toolbar
Right-click on the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar.

This will bring up the following menu:

Then simply drag and drop the required icons from the available selection into the toolbar.

Tool Tabs

To add a Tool Tab, right click on the Tool Tab Area and choose Add Tool Tab. A list of Tool Tabs that have not yet been added will be shown in the menu.

Choose one of the available ones and it will be added to the Tool Tab area.

Cmd-click drag to change the order of the Tool Tabs.

To add a tool to the currently open Tool Tab, right-click on the Tool Tab itself and choose Add Tool. If you don’t want a tool docked with the other tools, either drag it from the rest of the tools to the placement you want, or you use the menu Window > Create Floating Tool and create a floating version of whichever tool you want.

Play around with the options in the View menu to find the workspace setup that suits you. When you are happy with your new Workspace, choose Window>Workspace>Save Workspace.

All the best,

Niels