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Achieving Perfect Skin Tones Using Capture One

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

One of the more difficult aspects of photographing people is getting the skin tone right in order to get that beautiful, natural look. Capture One has some great tools that will help you to achieve perfect skin tones.

Join beauty and portrait photographer Jonas Nordqvist as he demonstrates the process in this step-by-step guide. Remember that you can download a free Capture One trial here.

In this blog post, I will break down my workflow for you, so you get a better understanding how my process works and get a feel for how powerful Capture One Pro 11 really is.
With that said, every photo is different, and I adapt my work process depending on the image. But, every photo starts in Capture One, either shooting tethered or importing from a memory card into a unique session folder for that specific shoot.

Capture One > Photoshop > Capture One > Exported product

Import and working in sessions

I always shoot my work tethered when its physically possible and the cable doesn’t hold me down. Capture One has a great engine for tethered capture, and it comes with a lot of perks like showing the rest of the team what you create without having anyone hanging on your shoulder. Another thing that I usually do is some minor adjustments as well as setting the white balance which will be passed on to every image captured. In the shot below I felt that the backdrop was too saturated, so I toned it down to get rid of distractions.

All my files go directly into a Session folder which I love working with. Every Session contains all the files from that shoot; RAW-files with settings, retouched PSD-files, exported jpg and so on, making it easy and handy to work with. I can simply move the whole folder to another hard drive when I want. More simple than working with big catalogues.

The RAW process

Basically, the RAW process for me is to correct tonal flaws and imperfections that the image has, both in color and luminosity.  Usually, I don’t do any big changes or the final color grading here. Instead, that’s the final step after I am done with all my retouch processes.

Analyzing the image

Let’s talk about this image. This was a beauty test shoot with Edda, a model from Nordic Model Agency in my home city. The shot was taken in studio with a beauty dish slightly above the model. I also used a soft box under the model to bring some shadows back.

Before I start editing, it’s good to come up with a game plan for how the end result should look. This is totally up to your creativity and there is no right or wrong.

I see three things I like to correct. First is the exposure that I feel is on the brighter side of the spectrum. Next is the skin tone. If you look carefully, you see a shifting tone of saturation and hue on the neck and camera left forehead. The last thing that strikes me is the background, which is too saturated and a bit dark for the look I was going for.

White balance

The first step of the RAW process is normally adjusting the white balance of the shot, even if I feel that it’s spot on, I go ahead and experiment until it feels right. The correct way is to use a gray card to meter the right value. But this can also make a warm summer evening look like mid overcast day, which you generally don’t want. For this image, I just made it a little warmer which I usually tend to do.

Exposure

Exposure is normally set right where I want it, but I tend to make some minor adjustments if needed. A good tip is to go with the mood you want, not the “correct” way.

If you watched a movie, it would look weird if every scene had the same exposure day and night, right?

For this beauty shot, I feel like it’s a bit too overexposed so I´ll dial down the exposure.

I still feel that it’s too bright in some areas so I’ll use the High Dynamic Range and bring back some details in the highlights. This tool is amazing still making it look natural. If you want to use these settings more selectively, you can use a layer to brush the settings to where you need it.

Clarity

Do we really need clarity on a head shot? Too much can make your photo look cheap, but if you use it carefully, you don’t need to worry about it. The Capture One team has done a great job separating Clarity and Structure to make the changes you need. For this image, I bumped up the value slightly on both, making the image look sharper.

Lens corrections

Capture One has great built-in profiles to correct flaws from your lens. Let’s say you shoot wide open (low aperture value), or with a wide-angle lens, this can be very useful.

This shot was taken at f/10 on a 100mm macro lens, so no corrections need to be done.

Changing the background color using layers and Color Editor

Like I mentioned before, I’m not pleased with the backdrop color, so my goal is to reduce the saturation and maybe make it a little bit brighter.

I went ahead and created a new filled layer called “pink backdrop,” and under the advanced tab in the Color Editor, I selected the color picker to select the background color. To easier see what color is in your selection go and check the box “view selected color range.” By doing this, some parts of the image will be shown in color and some parts in black and white. The colors that are visible in the picture are within your selected color range, and the unselected colors turn black and white. Here, I will fine tune the selection to have only the pink background selected. For a more precise selection, move the Color Editor window out from the rest of the tools and then expand it.

I still had some pink colors on the color range, so I used the “Erase mask” tool to mask it away. Now I adjusted the saturation and lightness to the look I want.

Skin tone

If we look at the skin, as I mentioned before, we can see some areas shifting in tones as well as saturation. The most outstanding shifts in this area are on the neck and camera left forehead which shifts to a more saturated orange tone. This is normal, and with a trained eye, it’s easy to spot on a lot of images. A great way to fix this is by using the Uniformity tools in the Color Editor tab. This process will save me tons of work in Photoshop.

I created a new local adjustment layer called “Skin tone” and drew a mask around the subject’s skin. There are different ways of doing a mask, but I’m most familiar with the shift-technique. While holding down shift, I click and draw the mask around the edges of the model and when I am all the way around, I use “Fill mask.” Here I also mask out the lips and other makeup areas that I don’t want to change.

The Skin tone tab has two groups of sliders; Amount and Uniformity. In the amount group, you selectively change the skin tones to a preferred look with hue, saturation, and lightness. The Uniformity tools are used to even out different variables which is very powerful.

Again, we use the color picker and try to select a natural tone somewhere on the skin. Then I drag the Hue slider under Uniformity up to 100 to easier see which tone I selected. If it’s too green, or too red, I’ll select a new spot or adjust the selection on the color wheel.

Resetting the Hue slider again, then I carefully try to find a value on Hue and Saturation that will correct the tone shifting but still looks natural and does a fairly subdued change.

Exporting the image to a PSD

When I feel that I am done with the RAW process, it’s time to export the image to Photoshop for further retouching. When right-clicking the image, you have the option to ‘Edit With,’ which will place the image next to the RAW file in Capture One. Here I use PSD format, 16 bit and Adobe RGB profile.

Make sure to select ‘Crop as Path (PSD),’ as you will have the full image available if needed. Any crop you might have made in Capture One will be included as a path for instant cropping in Photoshop.

Round-trip with PSD file

When all the retouch is done, I can go back to Capture One and there I’ll find my file in the output folder. The great thing about this is that I have access to all of Capture One tools and can apply them to any PSD file as I like. This fits perfectly with my workflow and makes it all very easy to do the final edits on multiple images for a story. This also allows you to make more room for drastic edits, high contrast and mixing with different colors as you like. Or you can try any of the Capture One styles. As in the RAW-process, I try to keep it natural and subdued.

In my process, this is usually where I do my final color grading, make a black and white copy and without having to retouch all over again. A great tip is to make different variants of the image, so you can compare what crop you like the best, or maybe if the image looks better in black and white.

The first step on this image will be to add a slightly darker/tanned look to the skin. There are multiple ways of doing this, but I will be doing it in the advanced color editor by selecting reds and yellows and then slightly bring down the lightness and saturation.

Another favorite tool that I tend to use often is the Color Balance. Making the shadows “cold” and the highlights “warm” will add a nice depth to the image, but don’t push it too much!

 

Contrast is key, and you might have noticed that I haven’t added any yet. But when I do, which I always do, I do it with curves and very often the luminosity curve. For this image, I will do a small s-curve with luminosity, and then I darkened the image slightly with the RGB-curve.

Almost done

Everyone is familiar with the dilemma of cropping an image, and I am no exception. With Capture One you can save different aspect ratios depending on what you are exporting the image for. Magazines can be 8,5×11 and then there is Instagram that uses 4×5 as the longest vertical.

Before the image is exported, I will add some grain to it. The grain will make the image look more analog, realistic and can cover up too much retouch. Make sure to select an export recipe and turn on the proofing, the symbol that looks like a pair of glasses. With this, you  will see how the image will look in the resolution you export in. I made different recipes for a variety of purposes like Instagram, my website, client proofs and so on.

Before imageAfter image

Before/after

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How to create stunning black and white images

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

While there’s minimal work involved in turning a color image into black and white, there’s a few more steps to creating stunning black and white photography. Brand Ambassador Martin Bailey shares his workflow on one of his images, showing his process to emphasize the level of control you have in Capture One. Watch the step-by-step video tutorial that accompanies this blog post to see Martin’s edits in action.

If you don’t already have Capture One – make sure to download a 30-day free trial here.

Each year, I travel to Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan, to lead my minimalist winter landscape photography tour. Much of the work I make from the locations we visit is converted to black and white, and Capture One enables me to create beautifully toned black and white images without the need for third party plugins. Being able to work directly on my raw files affords me a number of important benefits. I can save on disk space, because I don’t have to save large PSD or TIFF files. I can also revisit and tweak my processing without having to completely reprocess it in a third-party application. And I get to reap the benefits of the ever-improving processing engine as Capture One is upgraded over the years.

Today we’re going to take this image, straight out of the camera:

And convert it to this black and white image:

Here are the steps that I follow to create my high contrast black and white image of what I call “The Boat Graveyard” in Hokkaido, Japan. Some of the shortcuts I use are custom shortcuts, that may be different to yours, but this is another one of the many things that I love about Capture One. We can customize it to suit and speed up our workflow, enabling us to quickly work through our images.

First, let’s enable Black and White and reduce the Blue channel to -20, to darken the blue in the sky a little.

Then, on the Background layer (as opposed to creating a layer) let’s adjust the Levels to brighten the whites by moving the white point to -226, to open up the whites in the image, and move the midpoint to -0.18 to increase the contrast a little.

Let’s also add 40 Clarity in Punch mode and 12 Structure.

And we can increase the contrast more by applying a somewhat aggressive Luma Curve to darken the shadows and mid-tones, and lighten the highlights slightly. It’s a good idea to also turn on Exposure Warnings, so that you can see if you start to push it too far. We don’t want the whites to get too bright, or the shadows to get too deep.

I also increase the High Dynamic Range Highlight slider to 38 to reduce the highlights and increase contrast further.

We can use the Gradient tool with the SHIFT key to draw a mask over the horizon line and apply another pretty aggressive Luma Curve to the sky, with a strong S curve. The Luma curve works mainly on the luminosity or brightness of the image. We can also add a very subtle S curve to the RGB curve, to slightly darken the blue in the sky at the same time as adding more contrast.

As we bring out contrast in the sky, the dust spots from the sensor start to become prominent, so we can use the dust removal tool to remove them. And finally, for this layer, let’s increase the Clarity a little further, to around 15.

To bring down the bright patch in the bottom left of the sky, let’s add another Adjustment layer and paint in a feathered mask to darken down the shadows a little with a Luma Curve.

Now we’ll create a new Adjustments layer, and paint in a new mask over the foreground, and use the new Refine Mask feature to fine tune this along the ridge of the snow, then delete what’s left over the sea with the Erase brush. Once we have all of the foreground snow and boats selected with our mask, let’s add a Luma curve and a bit of an RGB curve, as well as a slight increase in the High Dynamic Range Shadows slider, all to brighten the mid-tones and highlights in the snow.

Finally, we use a number of Heal layers to clone out the bits of grass in the foreground to add the finishing touches.

Another thing that really helps me to speed up my workflow, is that once I’ve made my changes to an image like this, I often copy my adjustments to the clipboard, and apply them to other images with just a few keystrokes. Of course, if I’ve been using masks, I have to adjust them to match the content of the new image, but it’s still a lot faster than doing everything from scratch on each image.

I used to spend a lot of time after returning from my tours just to get through my initial edits so that I can start to blog about my adventures and use the images to market future tours. Now that I’m using Capture One, my workflow is so streamlined that I am able to keep up with my processing each evening, and come home with most if not all of my work processed. This is a huge time saver and reduces the stress as I try to catch up with business after my tours.

 

 

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Advanced Masks and Adjustments – Bridging the filter gap

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

Filters are a key component to most landscape photographers’ kit lists, but every now and then, we face a situation where the addition of those clever pieces of “neutral density glass” can’t quite cut it alone. However, by combining Capture One 11’s advanced masking features, adjustment layers, and dynamic range recovery tools, we can get that image back to exactly what we saw with a few simple steps.

Step 1 – The challenges at capture.

Well, there I was, stood in the freezing cold looking out over Yosemite Valley following New Year’s Eve in California – and the sky had been exceptionally kind to me. What started out as flat and grey overhead had rapidly turned into a fire-filled sky above our heads.

While my iPhone did a great job of capturing the sky above, it had certainly oversaturated the orange tones, and simply couldn’t handle the difference in light levels from above and below – even in its coveted “HDR mode.” To be fair, it’s a huge difference, and any camera would have struggled with the choice of exposing for the sky or the ground below without some form of assistance.

Step 2 – Let’s add some filters.

Of course, there is a simple solution to this problem – our handy “Graduated Neutral Density” (or “GND”) filters come in various configurations to allow for such differences in light, and in most situations, do a great job.

In this case, the use of a Medium GND (“medium” refers to the transition size between dark and light areas of the filter) allowed my XF IQ3 Trichromatic to expose correctly for the sky above, as well as record all the detail in the ground below.

But there’s still a problem with this scene, even with the use of some amazing glass filters. Whether it’s a reverse, medium, hard or soft GND filter in use, we’re faced with the same challenge: the scene is not “linear” across the brightness profile, and the lightest part of the capture doesn’t match the standard filter designs that exist on the market.

We have mountains which are being darkened even further by the filter and bright areas of the shot which are not affected enough to maintain the detail I wanted. In essence, our scene (like many) is not regular enough.

Of course, it would technically be possible to have a custom glass filter made for this exact scene, but in reality, that’s not a viable option.

 

Step 3 – Using our Dynamic Range.

Luckily, Capture One can recover a lot of the detail that our cameras are capable of storing – detail which isn’t obvious in the initial RAW file, from the shadows and highlights of each image we capture.

With 15 stops of dynamic range in the Phase One IQ3 Trichromatic 100MP Digital Back, I knew there was a lot more detail in the image than shown on-screen at the time I was previewing. As such, I left happy knowing that I had no warning signs for any completely over (or under) exposed areas across the entire shot. Using the histogram and those warnings to ensure we’ve got as much data as possible, in this scenario, was as far as it was possible to go in the field.

The glass filter had worked as designed, and got me to 70% there with the image; it was time to get Capture One flexing its muscles to finish the job.

 

Step 4 – Isolating the sky with “Auto Mask”.

Thinking back to our “ideal” filter profile (dark in the sky, medium over the band of granite rocks through Bridal Veil Falls and El Capitan, and then light in the foreground of the forest) – that’s exactly what we’re going to generate in Capture One.

Cutting out complex areas such as skylines with trees across them used to be a time-consuming task. Luckily, Capture One now makes this so easy to do that it can be completed in just a few steps.

Once the image is loaded and all lens profiles and standard white balance adjustments (if any) are made in Capture One, we move across to the “Exposure” tab and create a new empty adjustment layer by clicking the bottom “+” sign under the layers panel.

Clicking and holding the paintbrush icon, we’re going to select “Always Display Mask” at this point, while we’re using the advanced features of the mask tool. By right-clicking anywhere on the image to bring up the brush options, I can tell Capture One that I need a medium size brush (400-500px), soft edge (22), 100% opacity and flow, and to make sure we have “Auto Mask” selected.

By doing this, our paintbrush changes to add a third “inner circle” to the brush tool.

To mask our sky accurately, we’re going to brush along that line of the mountains with the inner circle over the sky, and the middle circle just overlapping the rocks we want to remove from the mask. With the brush set to 100% opacity, going over the same area multiple times will have no effect anyway, so I tend to do this in manageable chunks rather than all in one go, just in case a mistake is made later on.

Each time we release the brush, Capture One analyses the scene and masks only the areas that we asked it to cover (effectively “cutting out” the rest from the mask itself).

Once we’ve finished drawing roughly over the mountain edges, we need to close the mask by painting up each side and across the top of the image to cover the sky. Next, right-click our layer name (in this case I’ve called it “Sky”) and select “Fill Mask” – the entire area will then turn red while we have our mask displayed (hit “M” on the keyboard to turn the mask on or off if you’d prefer).

Step 5 – Refining the edges.

While Capture One is a very clever tool, every now and then even Auto-Mask can get a little confused by our outlines. When fully zoomed in on this image, I did notice that a few of the trees were added to the mask itself.  This is where we can make use of the fantastic “Refine Mask” function to resolve any anomalies.

Again, a right-click on the layer name, then “Refine Mask” brings up a floating window over the image (it helps to be viewing at 100% at this point). Small alterations in the radius slider will improve the cut-out that Capture One has created, and in this case, a value of 50 gave me a near-perfect outline with just a few minor tweaks remaining for the Eraser tool to remove later on.

 

Step 6 – Adjusting the sky.

So, we have our sky completely masked, at a level of intricate detail which would have previously taken hours to achieve.

Using the “High Dynamic Range” slider to now recover the highlights specifically across the sky brought back a lot of the detail on the horizon, and a further reduction of exposure (-0.82) brought the scene back to a level that I remembered.

But there was still a small issue, even with those changes.

Remember that initial raw shot? I’d already used a GND filter – so the top of the image was already darker than the middle and bottom. By reducing the exposure to correct the brightness of the horizon, the top of the image had become way too dark.

In Capture One, an easy fix: Clicking and holding the layer’s paintbrush icon gives us one more option: “Display Grayscale Mask.” This removes the image from the viewer and shows only the effect of the mask itself.

Using this, and the Eraser tool (again, click and hold on the paintbrush under the layer name), I could adjust the brush size and strength of the effect by right-clicking the image and painting across the top in 10% opacity increments until I got the result I was looking for.

Step 7 – The rock and the hard place.

Just as with the sky, our perfectly straight filter transition had also affected the granite mountains which make Yosemite so special and recognizable around the world. They were simply too dark overall.

I also wanted to bring back more of the texture in the rock faces themselves and reduce the blue tone that had crept into the image at the point of capture.

Using the same technique, I created a detailed mask and outline of the rocks themselves, and then further refined some of the areas that Auto-Mask found challenging (such as the transition between trees and hillside).

Flipping between the “Exposure” and “Color” tabs, this is probably the most significant set of compound changes to one section of the image:

We now have those amazing mountains really taking their place in the scene, standing out with increased contrast, clarity, a warmer tone and reduced blues in the shadow areas.

 

Step 8 – Finishing touches.

There were just two final things to correct.

First, it was the glow above El Capitan. While perfectly natural as the cloud thinned out over the mountains, the “halo effect” was a little distracting when I looked at the shot from afar.

This needed a subtle, but important, tweak – and guess what, that meant another mask!

Once again, using a mix of “Auto-Mask” and the “Refine” tools, it was easy to isolate the glow, and while I didn’t want to remove it completely, it was reduced to a level that was less distracting.

Finally, the subtle change that was needed to bring the image back to my recollection and reference iPhone shot; a few tweaks to the color balance of the shadows, midtones, and highlights to warm the image slightly, and that was it.

As an added bonus, for the first time ever, I had absolutely no sensor or lens dust to remove (something to do with remembering to actually clean everything beforehand!)

So, there we have it. A view of the amazing Yosemite Valley at sunrise; a view that I’ll never forget and one that can now hopefully be enjoyed by others around the world.

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