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Open Up the Deep Shadows with Capture One’s Levels Tool

Capture One comes with several tools for dealing with high dynamic range images, such as the High Dynamic Range tool, the Local Adjustments Layers tool and traditional tools like the Levels and Curves tool.

Despite having these different tools, opening up shadow details while retaining highlights and mid tones can sometimes be quite a challenge when you go for an overall natural and pleasing look.

For some images, the “Mid tone” slider in the Levels tool is the right tool to use.

The “Mid tone” slider works mainly on the mid tones for minor changes, but it increasingly prioritizes the darker tones in larger adjustments.

The left image is without any adjustments. The image is exposed to ensure that the clouds do not clip. As a result, the castle ruin, cliffs and the coast are underexposed and almost without details. The image to the right has been adjusted in Capture One. The “Mid tone” slider in the Levels tool has been used to open up the deepest shadows, and this has been combined with some highlight recovery and color edits on the blue sky.

In a previous blog post, I showed a trick about how the LCC tool can be used to deal with images with a large dynamic range. This LCC trick will often lead to fantastic results, but sometimes it causes a problematic halo effect around hard contrast edge as is the case with this picture.

On the image to the left, it is easy to see the halo effect on the castle ruin. The LCC has been used to open op the shadows, but because the images contains such a high contrast between the edges of the hill, the ruin and the bright sky, a strong halo appears. Therefore, another method to correct this image is required.

By using the “Mid tone” slider in the Levels Tool, I primarily brighten up the darkest part of the image. Naturally, using the “Mid tone” slider also brightens the mid tones and highlights. To counter this, I also apply some highlight recovery with the Highlight slider in the High Dynamic Range tool and some negative exposure compensation. The result is much better details in the shadows without the halo effect.

If I need still more details in the shadows, I try to use the curve tool too. The curve preset “Shadows -Brighter” is a good starting point as it is specially designed to open the deepest shadows in an image.

Finally, I add some saturation and set the highlight slider in the Levels tool to ensure that the final image utilizes the full data range.

At the Outskirts of Monte Fitz Roy, Argentina

Above El Chaltern and well before Monte Fitz Roy, deep in Patagonia, there’s a wonderful national park with some very photogenic walking tracks. Even better, you can hire some of the young mountaineers in the area who will carry your gear from camp to camp, just for a bit of training (and a small amount of cash).

We’d spent a couple of nights at a camp above El Chaltern, waiting and watching the weather as it crossed the ranges in the distance, and now we were walking ten kilometres across to the base of Cerro Torre and a second camp. This stream was at one of our rest stops, but a rest from walking inevitably saw us wandering around with our cameras, looking for things to photograph.

I loved this oddly shaped rock, seemingly a towering mountain on a micro scale, surrounded by a flooding stream. Well, perhaps my imagination was getting away with me, but I thought it looked interesting enough to pull out my camera.

There are two techniques used for capturing this image.

The first is the use of a tilt-shift lens, a Canon TS-E 24mm on an EOS 1Ds Mark II. Canon has since upgraded both. Generally speaking, a tilt-shift lens is used to reduce distortion. When photographing buildings, rather than pointing your lens up to include the top of the building (and creating unwanted converging vertical lines), you shift the lens upwards while keeping the camera back parallel to the building. The result is a technically correct perspective.

However, if you shift the lens and tilt the camera the opposite way, you can distort the edges of the image, effectively stretching the scene. This works well with the distant mountains, stretching them so they look a little higher than they actually appeared through a wide-angle lens.

The photo below shows the straight photo without the lens shift. Note the height of the mountains in the background.

Compare this with the following image that includes a lens shift, and a re-framing of the image as well. The two compositions are very similar, but not identical, but the main difference is that the mountains loom larger and appear more impressive. I like this!

The second technique is the use of a neutral density filter. The ND filter allowed me to lengthen my shutter speed. This exposure is 60 seconds at f8 (it’s a 10x ND filter), during which time the water is recorded as a silvery smear and the clouds have also been beautifully blurred.

Compare the result with the same angle taken at a more conventional 1/250 second (see the previous photo). The clouds are more distinct and the water has much sharper reflections. In comparison, I like the ND filter effect because it takes the photographs one step away from reality.

In the days of film, we had to deal with reciprocity failure and colour shifts because the different layers in the film had different responses to light. I think some digital sensors are similarly affected with colour shifts at very long exposures and this shows up as a colour cast. This is the original exposure from the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II before editing in Capture One.

The magenta colour cast can be quite enchanting, but not for every photograph you take. Fortunately, it’s an easy matter to correct the colour balance – simply use the White Balance Picker in Capture One and the image’s natural colours immediately appear.

To process this image, I also had to make some strong adjustments to the Brightness and Saturation. I also added in three Local Adjustments, lightening up the middle ground and adding a little sharpening to the rock.

Imperial Shag

It was a bleak morning on Bleaker Island in the Falklands. However, if you like photographing birds, then the Falklands is a great location no matter what the weather is like, although transport from island to island isn’t without its challenges. Although there are small airfields dotted around, most people visit as part of an expedition ship and I was no exception, travelling with Peregrine Adventures.

Where we landed on Bleaker Island was home to two colonies of birds, Rockhopper Penguins and the Imperial Shag. The weather was cold, overcast and very windy. We even had a couple of snow showers pass over which was great for atmosphere, but not particularly helpful for photography.

As usual, there were strict rules as to how close we could get to the birds and our group was strung out along a fence line. It was hard to know what the island was like in fairer weather, but I have no doubt it would be very picturesque!

At the end of the fence was a colony of shags who used a stretch of land just in front of us as a runway. The birds would gather speed and throw themselves into the wind and out to sea. It was a perfect location for shooting the Imperial Shag on the wing, but I confess to shooting several hundred frames of which only a couple were satisfactory.

And then, of course, there was the unsatisfactory nature of the light. It was dull and lifeless, so I figured this was a time I could use Capture One to breathe in some colour and excitement!

The first adjustments made in Capture One were to crop the image so the bird was positioned in the centre of the frame, rather than on the left side. I’d actually prefer there to be a little more room on the left than I have – and that could be easily arranged later in Photoshop. I also adjusted the exposure and contrast to produce as much detail in the shag as possible, being mindful that its white and dark feathers had to be carefully managed.

In this way, the Imperial Shag is natural and honest. This is what I saw. Now, I may get into trouble with the purists for the next few steps!

My first Local Adjustment layer darkens down the sky, with a soft edge brush just above the bird.

I then repeated this with a second Local Adjustment layer, but I positioned the adjustment brush a little higher. I find two or more small adjustments usually produce a better result than one larger adjustment.

Then I added my third Local Adjustment layer and lightened the eye and surrounding feathers. From other photographs I have seen of the Imperial Shag, I think these colours are reasonably realistic – I haven’t added in any colour saturation, just increased the contrast and exposure appropriately.

The fourth Local Adjustment Layer darkens down the top and right hand edges a little more to contain the eye – some people will like this vignetting, others will not. I like it! And at this stage, I stopped, because I figured I couldn’t get into too much trouble for the adjustments I had made. However, the image still lacks a little punch…

So I couldn’t help myself! The final Local Adjustment layer reduces the background exposure and increases the colour saturation, which brings up the colour in the blurred grasses in the background and further darkens the sky. I have masked the shag so that its colours and exposure are not affected and I’m quite happy with the result!

If you’d like to see in more detail how I worked on this file, you can access a short video on the Better Photography website by clicking here.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine publisher based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com/. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com/.

Gentoo Penguin

Carcass Island in the Falklands is owned by Rob McGill. It’s tiny and, if you can get there, accommodation is in the owner’s house and meals are taken with the family. This isn’t at all surprising as there are no streets, shops or other amenities – and that is undoubtedly the attraction.

We disembarked at Carcass Island as part of our Peregrine Expedition through the Falklands, South Georgia Island and Antarctica. It was only a whistle-stop in the afternoon with just enough time to walk across the isthmus to the windward side. Here we saw Magellanic penguins, but it wasn’t until I returned to the beach on the lee of the island that I met lots of Gentoo penguins.

Walking along the beach, we looked down at the penguins who barely acknowledged our presence. One of the highlights of visiting these remote locations is that the wildlife are relatively unafraid of humans. However, a human perspective creates a relatively boring camera angle. One of the best angles for a penguin is around penguin height, so I lay down on my stomach and put my camera to my eye.

The issue on this day was the wind-blown sand which added to the atmosphere in the photographs, but worried me a little as I had several weeks left and I didn’t want to lose a camera due to mechanical failure! However, I needn’t have worried as the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and 300mm f2.8 telephoto had sufficient weather-proofing to handle the little breeze on Carcass Island!

As always, time is short. You are always balancing your opportunities: do I stay here longer and hope to get an even better photograph, or do I move on and hope to discover something else?

Back on board the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, I would look through my files for an image with a difference. Everyone had great photographs of penguins (although using a telephoto with the lens wide-open at f2.8 helped to create a slightly different look to a compact camera), so I was relying on my subjects to provide the sparkle!

I’m not sure how you view and edit your photographs, but I really like to start with a file that is precisely focused. It annoys me when my focus is slightly out and although you can try to salvage it with unsharp masking techniques, nothing beats an image that is focused correctly in the first place.

However, enlarging each image in turn to see if it is sharp around the eyes takes time. It’s not slow if you have a fast computer, but it’s time consuming nevertheless. This is where Capture One Pro 6 really helps. Turning on its Focus Mask feature, Capture One colours areas of sharp focus with a green mask (you can change the colour of the mask to any colour you like). This allows you to instantly recognise if a photograph is sharp or not.

For instance, with the series of a Gentoo penguin making a call, I could tell instantly if my subject was in sharp focus or not.

Of course, if you have several great shots, it then becomes a matter of which one do you use? I felt I had two contenders – one with the Gentoo’s head back and beak open, a second with the head thrust forward but the beak closed. I’m still not sure which one is the best…

The original raw files were quite acceptable, but lacking a little in contrast and colour. Fixing them was very straightforward using Capture One. If you’d like to see how I worked on this file, you can access a short video on the Better Photography website here.

See all the images Peter chose here