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Print Fine Art Images directly from Capture One Pro 9

I have done a few months of comparisons between printing from Capture One Pro 9 directly and exporting tiffs from Capture One Pro 9 to doing additional work in Photoshop. There are things that can be done in Photoshop with selections and masks, and advanced sharpening workflows that cannot be done in Capture One Pro 9. But, with the quality of files that you are capable of getting from Capture One Pro 9, there might be less of a need for that additional work in Photoshop, and with some images it might be possible to skip other processing, resizing, and sharpening software altogether before printing.

Download free 30-day trial of Capture One Pro 9

Before I print in Capture One Pro 9, there are a few things that I do to set up the interface and tools that allow more control and ease in making those final adjustments before printing.

Setting up your Capture One Pro 9 Workspace for Printing

Display calibration:

This should go without saying, but having consistent color and brightness settings for your display will make the editing and printing process easier and more repeatable. There are a few things to keep in mind when creating your settings.

One of the most important things is getting your brightness correct, so that your adjustment will be accurately reflected when viewing the print under normal conditions. Dody Thompson, Edward Weston’s last assistant and a fantastic photographer in her own right, wrote about Edward bringing his prints out of the darkroom and evaluating them under a bright skylight. Now people always complain that museums light his work too dimly (mostly for preservation and conservation purposes) and that they are always too hard to see. Our eyes tend adjust for the dimmer environment naturally after being in the gallery for a short while, and if there is a room full of Edward Weston prints that all have a similar range of tones, they will look consistent and beautiful.

But, we are not Edward Weston, so we better get the monitor settings right. A good place to start for a normal room with normal room lighting is around 105 cd/m2. I’m glad we no longer have to work in dimly lit offices looking at CRT displays for all those hours of editing, and a normal room light with those settings should be fine.

Background and Proof Margins:

The Capture One Pro 9 default dark gray interface is great for long hours of editing, but when it becomes time to print black and white, you might be surprised at how dark your images look when compared to a lighter background border.

Unless you are printing completely to the edge of the paper, you are going to have some paper white, or mat board, or white gallery walls around your prints. Having that bright white reference point is going to make your prints seem really dark if they were previewed with the default dark interface only. To lessen the need for additional proofing and reprints, there are two things I do to make sure the overall brightness is correct before sending it to the printer.

I go to Preferences, choose Appearance and change the background color to white (I’d prefer a 2% gray, but white will do just as well here). That will give you a new white point as a reference for the brightest areas in your image. It will also make the shadows appear darker than when it was previewed with the darker background. I also change the proof margins to have a little more white background showing. The default setting is 25 and I change it to 32. That isn’t critical, but I want to see it more in the center of the display with slightly more white space around the image.

Now I am ready to do any final brightness and contrast adjustments with one last Local Adjustment layer and Luma curve.

Final Printing Adjustments

I do my final tonal edits with a new local adjustment layer called Final Printing Adjustment, using a curve adjustment and an inverted mask (you can see my previous post on the Phase One blog to see how I use Curves in Local Adjustments). I use this curve adjustment similarly to how I’d use a Levels adjustment, by moving the black point and white point output sliders and controlling the toe and shoulder of the curve to prevent any abrupt tonal shifts. Doing this on the top-most Local Adjustment layer allows it to be affected by everything below, whereas a Levels tool will take effect before the Local Adjustment layers.

This last step is generally a global adjustment, but an added benefit of using a Local Adjustment layer is that I can erase the mask in any areas that are too heavily affected by the final adjustment.

Printing by the Numbers:

It is true that the print on the page is all that matters and pure numbers will never tell you exactly how you are going to feel about a print once the ink hits the page. But with calibrated printers and a way to match luminance values to a printed target, you can understand what that reading of 7, or 248, is REALLY going to look like when printed. I use a combination of the Curves tool and color readouts to do a mental soft proof, sometimes with a print of a step wedge with the inks and paper I intend to use. Like most things, it isn’t essential, but can be useful, especially if you are still learning what a printer or paper is capable of doing. I created a 256 step target with RGB and black ink labels for the last 2, 5, 10, and 20 percent of values at either end of the scale. You can download a version of the file with and without the labels here.

Using Color Readouts:

The next step is to use some kind of color readout to see exactly what the image tonal values are, and to make sure there are no large areas blocking up in the shadows or blowing out in the highlights.

Under the Color Picker icon there are several options for different tools. The Color Readout tool is all the way at the bottom of the list. The number of readouts you will use varies from image to image, but once you have the tool active, there will be the same number of readouts in the same position for every image. For that reason alone, I tend to keep the number of readouts fairly low—maybe three to five. That way, I can easily move them around without too much aggravation. You are really only looking at one or two highlight and shadow areas and a midtone area.

When printing with black and white we usually use ink percentages, rather than RGB values, so it’s a good idea to have that target I created or some other scale handy to easily translate luminance values to ink percentages.

Exposure Warnings for Output Thresholds:

It is easy to check for highlight and shadow clipping in Photoshop by creating a new Levels adjustment layer on the top of your layer stack, and, while holding down the option/alt key (the image will turn white if moving the black point slider or black if moving the white point slider), move the input slider to where you start to have parts of the image fill in with bits of black (or white if checking highlight clipping).

When working in Capture One, you can do something similar with the exposure warning tool. To define the clipping point you need to go to preferences, and choose the warnings option. I put my settings for the highlights at 253, and 3 for the shadows. This will show you at which point you reach the beginning of paper white and 100% ink density.

I generally do not like to have anything lighter than a 5% gray and usually nothing very large. Similarly, I do not like to have large areas of 100% ink. I might have larger areas, or even whole images made up of 92%-98% ink, but there are subtle gradations in those darkest tones, and being able to accurately control and pre-visualize them is helpful in making that kind of dark and moody work. One reason I use dedicated black and white printers is to be able to control the inks at low end of the grayscale.

Local Adjustments for Output Sharpening:

Sharpening can be a contentious subject, and there are people firmly entrenched in different camps. I know there are strong opinions and formulae that people have for sharpening for different print sizes and media. My belief is that it is better to under-sharpen than to over-sharpen.

If I am printing directly from Capture One I will use a new local adjustment with an unsharp mask setting strictly for output. If there are areas with a lot of sky or smooth water, I will usually protect those areas with a mask. The same can be done with a different local adjustment for noise reduction.

If there are no areas that I need to mask, I will generally use the same local adjustment layer that I used for the final tonal adjustments.

Sharpening in the Print Menu:

The final print sharpening built into Capture One is a bit of a black box, and the degree of sharpening is based on print size, output resolution, and paper type. Most of the sharpening effect is controlled with the local adjustment layer, but I use a small amount of sharpening in the Capture One print menu. You will need to do some experimenting to see what settings work well for you, but I start with it set between 5 and 20. I’ve found that this produces enough of a sharpening effect in the print without introducing artifacts and unwanted halos.

Another way I have started to address output sharpening is to make the setting very low in the print menu, and use a local adjustment layer for increasing the sharpness and previewing how it will look in the viewer at something close to print size.

Film Grain:

Due to my background in large format, the film grain options are something I don’t use too often. The only time I use them is when I have done some sharpening and noise reduction, and want to hide that with the randomness of the film grain. In most cases I use the Fine Grain or Tabular Grain settings with the Impact setting to the point where the grain is just barely noticeable. That is a personal preference, and I have seen some very effective use of harsher and larger grain settings for different types of images and matching prints made with small format film cameras. It is a personal decision that needs to be relevant to your work and have a definite purpose.

Output Scaling:

One of the new features in Capture One 9 is the updated interpolation engine, and I have been doing some preliminary testing to see if allowing Capture One to do the scaling to the printer’s native resolution is a better option than allowing the printer driver or RIP to do the interpolation. QuadToneRIP converts the input resolution of every image to 720 pixels per inch, and if you are printing from outside of Capture One, the operating system (on OS X) or the RIP (QTRgui on Windows) is doing the up-resing. I don’t have a clear answer on the exact formula OS X uses, but on Windows it is a simple bilinear interpolation. I’m still working on these tests, but one thing I love about Capture One is discovering how new features can be used in fine art printing environments.

Wait, where’s the proof?

Capture One takes an interesting approach to soft proofing, and it makes final printing adjustments easy. Capture One always displays how the image will look with the selected output ICC profile used in the current Process Recipe in the Output tool tab.

The grayscale working space I use, and what the Piezography system is designed for, is Gray Gamma 2.2. That has the same gamma as Adobe (RGB 1998) and that is what I leave my output recipe set to, and I let the black and white tool handle the conversion.

When I am doing my color to black and white conversion and all of my local adjustment, I leave the process recipe set to Adobe RBG 1998 so I can easily turn off the “enable black and white” setting and see the color version. If I were to do the editing in GG22, and turned off the “enable black and white” option, the image would be a desaturated version of the color image, without any of the black and white filtration. The only time I change to PhaseOne GG22 is before exporting a tiff to do more work in Photoshop or printing with a different RIP or print layout tool. This workflow seems to work well across all the dedicated black and white printing systems, but other options might be better suited to your specific requirements and print toning methods.

Making the Print

Printing Black and White with Color Color Managed Toning

I prefer to do this kind of work in QuadToneRIP, but if you want to be able to control the final print color from within Capture One, you can go back to the black and white tool, and click on the Split Tone tab. This will allow you to select a hue for the light tones and hard tones separately, and control the degree of coloration with the saturation slider. If you use this option, you will need to make sure you are printing with a color managed workflow and printing in the color mode in the printer set-up dialog, and not the printer’s own black and white mode.

Capture One has resources that discuss the use of specific paper and printer ICC profiles and soft proofing before printing. These color management and print mode settings will vary based on the different printers and ink systems you might be using, so you will need to consult your printer driver or third-party developer for specific recommendations. But, as good as a soft proof might be, the real proof is in the print – especially when working in black and white.

Using the Printer’s dedicated print modes, Epson ABW or other Printer’s Monochrome Modes:

These print modes use the multiple black inks and the manufacturers’ software and driver settings for controlling the image tone and print color. This method can produce slightly better prints than using the color print mode and controlling the color through Capture One and ICC profiles. I personally like to have more control over the way the gray inks are blended and how color inks are introduced for shifting the print color warmer or cooler, so I don’t use these manufacturers’ print modes. They don’t allow you to accurately see what your image will look like before printing, and the settings can be vague and require some trial and error to dial in what will work best for your images. The results from the Epson ABW are decent and might be acceptable for people making the occasional black and white print, but they aren’t as good of a print as what is possible with other dedicated black and white software and RIPs.

Dedicated Black and White Printing with Capture One Pro 9

I am a big advocate for a dedicated black and white printing system. I personally use a modified Jon Cone Piezography system, but have also seen great prints made with good profiles for use with the Eboni-6 ink set, created and popularized by Paul Roark. These systems work with Epson and Roland Printers exclusively, and this post is about integrating these dedicated black and white printer workflows with Capture One Pro.

Why Not Just Use the Built in Black and White Features for Your Printer

If you compare a print made with the Default Epson Driver using the Advanced Black and White print mode and one made with QuadToneRIP, you’ll see that the print made with QTR is slightly smoother than the one made with ABW. That is partly due to the way ABW introduces a slight shadow compression that creates a little more contrast than a print made with QuadToneRIP, but that isn’t exactly what makes a print made with QTR better. The QTR print has smoother highlights, and better subtle midtone gradation. It also appears sharper, like there is more information in the original file. There isn’t really any more information in the file, but for whatever reason, ABW can’t resolve it.

The differences between a well made QTR profile and a Piezography print are subtle, but the Piezography print is still better. There is more uniform paper coverage, and because of that, it can render more detail than the dithered inks. The image also appears to be in the paper rather than sitting on top of it.

Printing the dots between the dots:

Black and white prints with OEM Epson inks are made from three dilutions of black and gray inks, and the inks need to be heavily dithered to render the lighter tones in the print. When the inks are so heavily dithered, the printer spreads the individual ink dots further apart, allowing the paper white to show through. This is fine for most photographers, but if you are using Capture One, you want more than “most photographers”. You want the most you can get from your photographs.

With more shades of gray inks in the printer, the inks are laid down with much less dithering, creating the appearance of smoother tonal transitions. Additionally, there is more overlap of each neighboring shade of ink, often three or four overlapping inks for any given tone in the image. These overlapping inks fill in those spaces between the dots of the other shades, providing a more even coverage of the paper and creating a richer feeling print. The actual density measurements might be the same from one system to the next, but it is a three dimensional presence and depth in the print that we are after. It is like comparing the appearance of an RC gelatin-silver print and a good silver-chloride contact print. The densities might match for each of the steps measured, but the contact print will feel more alive.

Driving a Dedicated Black and White Printer with QuadToneRIP

Piezography and Eboni inks use QuadToneRIP to drive a dedicated black and white printer with as many as seven dilutions of black and gray inks. Printing with these black and white ink sets is integrated into the normal printing system on OS X and is similar to the standard printing workflow when using Capture One on a Mac.

On a PC, you will need to export a tiff from Capture One to print through the Windows QTRgui, the dedicated QuadToneRIP printing environment on Windows. That would be the case for printing with QuadToneRIP if you were working from Lightroom, Photoshop, Qimage, or whatever your favorite image editing program is. If you are unfamiliar with QuadToneRip, I included a few links here that are good places to get your feet wet.

No matter how good your black and white images look on the screen, there is nothing like holding one in your hand. And knowing the characteristics of your printing materials and what they are possible of producing, and processing the file to get the most out of it is where digital black and white can reach beyond what was possible in the traditional darkroom.

Best regards,

Richard Boutwell
B&W Mastery

To learn more, sign up for Richard’s upcoming webinar on Fine Art Printing

Download free 30-day trial of Capture One Pro 9

Work smarter, not harder!

Why do we edit pictures?

There is a lot of different answers to that question. For me personally, it’s mainly to give the image the “feel” that I want it to have, and to ensure the overall image quality. My editing process consists mainly of adjusting color, contrast and details. I don’t do larger multiple composition work, clone in or out larger areas or do heavy skin and body retouching.

This workflow means that I don’t need the extensive possibilities offered through Photoshop, and instead can use Capture One Pro 9 as a one-stop software for all my editing, sorting, rating and IPTC needs. For me this means I get a highly efficient workflow that allows me to do a lot of work in a short amount of time – not only on assignments where time is of the essence, but also everyday in the office. A focused workflow enables me to be very effective and thereby adopt a “work smarter not harder” mentality.

I find Capture One Pro 9, combined with the highest image quality, to be the strongest asset to me as a photographer.

The new engine in Capture One Pro 9, specifically the changes to the Contrast Tool, is something I’m very happy to see. The Contrast Tool doesn’t allow adjustments to become too contrasty too fast, which older versions had a habit of doing. This is further helped by the High Dynamic Range Shadow and Highlight Tool, as well as the Clarity Tool, which allows me to control contrast very well.

Image without and with shadow/highlight 20/20

Another feature that I really like in Capture One Pro 9 is the Film Grain tool. This tool gives the images, especially when printed in large scale, a film-like look instead of the “perfect” digital files and thereby adds that last bit of detail and feel.

Without and with Tabular Grain 50/50 – 100 % zoom

The Local Adjustment Tool also got an upgrade in Capture One Pro 9, which is very useful for both detailed work and broader adjustments using, for example, the Gradient Mask tool.

Without and with Local Adjustments with the Gradient Mask too

With all these great new improvements to Capture One Pro 9, I was excited to be invited to test the Beta version well before the release. While testing the beta version of Capture One Pro 9, I did a photo essay of a dirt bike rider named Ronni, here in my home city of Copenhagen.

I wanted to have a heavy contrast/rough style to the edited images, something that matched the location and sport while at the same time allowing me to test the new engine of Capture One Pro 9 and it’s improvements, specifically those improvements for contrast.

With this goal in mind, I set out to sort and edit the photos. Below you can see a step-by-step run through of my workflow:

The original RAW, directly from the camera.

The first thing I need to secure, when I start to edit my pictures, is a good base. Therefore I start by establishing the starting point for dynamic range and colors using the Levels tool. I use the RGB Levels tool to secure dynamic range, followed by the three separate channel Levels tool windows to reach my desired colors for the shadows, midtones and highlights (this is more important for color images, but also has some effect on B&W images).

Correcting Levels for desired details and colors in the whole dynamic range in the Levels tool

After the base dynamic range and color is secured, I switch to black and white mode using the Black & White tool. Here we can edit each color channel separately for greater effect, and even use the Color Editor tool for even more possibilities.

Using the Black & White tool and color editor to control how the colors transform into black and white

Now that the image is monochrome, we need to add contrast to achieve the desired feel of the image. For this series I wanted to have a dark and moody effect, so I added a lot of contrast, balancing on the dark tones, but without getting all black. When I reached the right contrast, I then used the HDR Shadow slider to balance the dark areas, and the HDR Highlight Slider, along with the Brightness slider to tone down to sky. All of this greatly achieved the dark moody look I was after.

Correcting the exposure, contrast, brightness and dynamic range in the photo for the desired effect + tool corrections

To guide the viewer towards the centre of the frame, where the action is, I here added some vignette to the frame, using the Vignetting tool.

Adding vignette + tool corrections

At this stage it’s time to add detail. To do this I used the Clarity tool to bring a bit more details forward, and the Noise Reduction tool for a clean file, which I can then add beautiful Film Grain to. It might seem a bit odd to first use Noise Reduction and then add back noise; but in my mind there is a clear difference between the digital noise, and the beautiful film noise from Capture One Pro 9. The Film Grain also helps to further strengthen the dark and moody look I was going for.

Adding details with clarity, noise reduction and film grain + tool corrections

For the final touch-up I use the Local Adjustment tool,for areas that needed special attention. I used it to get a darker sky, to add a bit more Clarity to areas that needed it, and then finally to darken a few highlighted areas, all without ruining other areas.

Putting the final touch to the photo with local adjustment to create the last dramatic effects + tool corrections

I’m very happy with the overall results of the series and am especially pleased with the new engine in Capture One Pro 9. Capture One Pro 9 gives me even more creative possibilities, in a fast and effective workflow, and still deliveries second-to-none image quality.

Best regards,

Esben Zøllner Olesen

www.esbenzollnerolesen.com

www.facebook.com/PhotoEZO

How to upgrade your Catalogs and Sessions to Capture One Pro 9

At the end of 2015 we released Capture One Pro 9 with new features, better quality and even more ways to work with your images. For those of you who already have existing Capture One 8 or earlier Catalogs or Sessions, you may be wondering how you bring those into Capture One Pro 9?

We are all very careful with our important images assets, so its only natural that we want to be cautious when moving from versions or from one application to another.

Fortunately, it is extremely easy to bring your older Catalogs and Sessions into version 9 and revert back if you want to as well.

We also don’t automatically ‘upgrade’ your legacy images (those worked on in earlier versions than Capture One 9) as some small differences in the look of the image may occur. It’s your choice, not ours, to change your images.

In this post I will cover upgrading to the latest processing engine too.

Here we have a Session (Catalogs are coming later in the post) that was created on in Capture One Pro 8…

To open this in Capture One Pro 9, simply choose File > Open in Capture One and point to that Session. The following dialog box will pop up:

Click Upgrade Session and it will open up straight away in Capture One Pro 9. Settings and Adjustments are preserved.

If we browse back to the Session folder we can see an automated backup has been created in the Session folder of the original Capture One Pro 8 .cosessiondb file, now named cosession.db.backup. A completely new, Capture One Pro 9 sessiondb has been created for use in Capture One Pro 9 only.

If you want to revert back to Capture One version 8, simply delete the newly created .cosessiondb file and delete the appended .backup naming on the cosessiondb.backup file.

For a Catalog, the Process is somewhat similar, but with a small variation for Mac and PC.

Again, here is a Catalog that was created in Capture One Pro 8…..

Using File > Open again in Capture One Pro 9, we see another similar dialog box…

As with the Session, a new Catalog database is created and the original database is kept safe and renamed. If you are using a Mac, right-click on the Catalog file and choose Show Package Contents.

If you are on a PC – you will note that the Catalog file is not packaged but a series of folders. Simply browse the folders and inside you will see the .backup Catalog as in the Mac system below…..

Once again, if you want to revert to the old Catalog, simply delete the new .cocatalogdb file and append the name of the .cocatalogdb.backup file.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, we do not automatically upgrade the process engine to the Capture One 9 process engine.

The process engine of the currently selected image is shown in the Base Characteristics tool…….

Note, the Engine says Capture One 8 and the Upgrade button to the right is visible.

To upgrade this image to the Capture One 9 Engine, simply click on the Upgrade button. To upgrade a batch of images, simply select them all first and then click Upgrade.

If you want to keep the image in both engines, simply Clone the image before upgrading. This is also a good way to compare the new engine to old!

An alternative course of action is to simply duplicate the Session or duplicate the Catalog and use that duplicate in Capture One 9.

But with either way you can freely experiment with Capture One 9 on older images as well as new.

Best regards,

David

Master your B&W conversion with the new Luma Curve

I participated in the Capture One Pro 9 beta testing program and got super excited about a few of its new features. Some of these updates will serve the productivity and quality demands of commercial photographers, but I am looking at them from the standpoint of discerning fine-art photographers and print makers.

In this post I’ll focus on some of the more interesting and powerful features specific to my way of working with digital black and white.

“This is what I measure my inkjet prints against”

My background is as a large format photographer working almost exclusively in black and white. I grew up with my hands in Pyro and Amidol, making contact prints from 8×10 negatives, and spent years working as a darkroom assistant before going on to be a professional printer for other photographers. Those Azo and Amidol prints remain the gold standard for me in the way they render visual clarity, midtone separation, and final print color. They are what I measure my inkjet prints against when printing for myself or for clients.

Most of my personal work still revolves around film, drum scans, and platinum/palladium printing, but digital capture and inkjet printing are taking on a larger role, and I want the prints to be consistent from one format to another. Using Capture One, I incorporate techniques and aesthetics honed in the darkroom, and translate them to a purely digital environment. My blog describes these digital black and white techniques, and I offer in-person and remote lessons that are individually tailored to photographers wanting to get the best from their digital images.

How I use Capture One 9 for Digital Black and White

I use the Exposure and Contrast tools to get a good starting point for making a black and white conversion with Capture One Pro 9. From here, I might do some additional work with the Color Balance and Color Editor, while enabling black and white to fine-tune the conversion. Then I use a variety of Local Adjustment techniques and export a grayscale tiff to Photoshop for any final adjustments before sharpening and printing.

Download free 30-day trial of Capture One Pro 9

“Less of a need to use Photoshop”

As I work more with Capture One Pro 9 and some of the new tools introduced in the update, I’m finding less of a need to use Photoshop for those final adjustments, and I have been testing workflows for printing directly from Capture One. I described my basic workflow with Capture One in this earlier post on my bwmastery.com blog, and this post will go into a little detail about how I use some of the new features in Capture One 9 for working in black and white.

The new Luma Curves

One of the more specialized aspects of image editors like Photoshop is the ability to define the blending mode for an adjustment. For the majority of the adjustment layers in my contrast and color correcting work, I use a “normal”, “color”, or “luminosity” blending mode. The new Curves tool in Capture One 9 offers a similar ability using the Luma option. This might seem like just a nice feature, but here’s a quick example of the difference this can make in the editing process. One of the things that affects hue and saturation is contrast, or the light and darkness of a given color. In the previous version of the Curves tool, you could only adjust the RGB values as a whole, or on a channel by channel basis. You still have that option with Capture One Pro 9, but you also have the ability to change the lightness and darkness without changing the color or saturation.

“Can be a big deal”

Changing contrast and brightness without affecting saturation can be a big deal when working in black and white, because changing saturation can affect your black and white filtration settings—sometimes that is a good thing (it can accentuate dramatic effects), but sometimes it can end up hurting the picture instead.

In the illustration below with the two picture of the barn, one has an RGB Curve adjustment, and the other has a Luma Curve adjustment. The blue sky is made darker about equally with the yellow filtration of the black and white conversion, but the deeper shadows start to block up and you end up losing some of the nice details in the stuff leaning against the barn. You could compensate for this in Capture One 8 (as well as in version 9) by selecting that color in the Color Editor and then changing the hue, saturation, or lightness for the offending color, but the new Curves tool gives a better starting place for your black and white conversion, and finer control over your image.

Luma Curve with the same black and white filtration settings

RGB Curve with the same black and white filtration settings

The color read-outs show how different the Luma and RGB options can be with even just a small S-curve. The shadows can block up quickly with a little yellow filtration, and the Luma curve can be a good option for retaining detail, but not hurt the rest of the yellows, reds, and lighter blues through the midtones and highlights.

Curves, now available in Local Adjustments

Maybe the most exciting new feature of Capture One 9 is that it has integrated the Curves tool to work with Local Adjustments using editable masks. I believe this is the first RAW editor to have this capability, and if I were not already a dedicated Capture One user, this would have earned my loyalty.

I am a huge proponent of using curves adjustment layers and layer masks in Photoshop as a means of quickly and intuitively making tonal edits and then using the brush tool to gradually paint in the adjustment. This process is based around the use of curves adjustments and is central to my creative editing work. Until now, the lack of curves has been one of the drawbacks of Capture One’s Local Adjustment controls. I worked around this limitation by using the exposure and high dynamic range controls, but missed the ability to click the color picker, select a tone in the image, and move it lighter or darker by simply dragging it to another point on the curve or using the arrow keys to nudge it up and down. The combination of seeing the tones change in the image, and being able to define the input and output points of different tones, is a powerful editing tool.

Integrating curves into your Local Adjustment workflow

You might want to take a quick read of my few posts on intuitive localized contrast control on my site. This will give you a good understanding of why I think curves and masks are so important.

One thing I talked about in my Black and White Mastery Capture One webinar session from August 2015 is the importance of seeing what the adjustment is doing to the whole image before painting or masking in the adjustment. Most people will make a blind adjustment, begin to paint in the mask, and then go back and readjust the settings afterward. That can be needlessly time-consuming and might not reveal creative possibilities.

My approach is to create a new Local Adjustment, then immediately invert the mask (right-click on the name of the layer to get this option). Now, any adjustment will be visible across the entire image and you can see how different tonalities are affected in proportion to each other. Once you are happy with the adjustment, invert the mask again, select a brush with a low opacity and flow, and gradually paint in the adjustment. The goal for these local adjustments is to use as few layers as possible (but as many as needed), with different layers for different kinds of effects.

Being able to see the maximum effect of the adjustment also allows you to use the same layer for different parts of the image without fear that you might “take it too far” when painting in the adjustment. It allows you to see more possibilities that the picture itself might reveal, and turns image editing into process of creative discovery.

Joshua Tree National Park, 2012

This was made a few years ago after a long day of hiking and photographing. It was hand-held in fast-failing light. I chose this picture for this sequence to demonstrate how well Capture One can bring something like this back to life. These are meant to show an opposite approach to using the RGB curve over a Luma curve.

RAW file with no adjustments

Basic adjustments on the way towards the black and white conversion

This kind of color is too much for my taste, but the goal is a good range of tones for the black and white conversion. I look at this this step as though I’m making sausage.

Default color to black and white filtration

The default filtration settings don’t take advantage of the red in the rocks and doesn’t separate the reds and blues in the sky.

A slight yellow/red filtration with a Luma Curve

Same yellow/red filtration with a RGB Curve

This step is to test whether the contrast increase with a curve is better done with the new Luma option or the standard RGB option. You can create a cloned variant in this step to see which setting works best for your particular image. In this case, the Luma option didn’t handle the separation in the rocks as nicely as the RGB option did. As the barn pictures showed, each case might be different so it is a good idea to do a quick test first. If you don’t want to test both ways you could just use the Luma curve, and then increase saturation of different colors in the Color Editor afterwards (or the single slider in the Exposure tool).

Curves in Local Adjustments

The following few screenshots illustrate the workflow I detailed above. I don’t detail every setting and brush stroke for each step, but give a few examples of the different ways the Curves can be used working with Local Adjustments.

Create a new Local Adjustment, name it, and then right-click (or control+click) for the “Invert Mask” option

Then choose an appropriately sized brush with low “Opacity” and “Flow” settings.

The inverted mask is visible with the overlay color

You can see the mask is inverted by pressing “m” on the keyboard.

Making the adjustment to the Curve to see the effect on the whole image.

Now you can add a control point to the Curve by clicking on the Curve or using a tool to click within the image for the tone(s) you want to edit. Then you can use the arrow keys to see the read-out of the input and output points. Once you are done you can reinvent the mask and paint in the adjustment.

Example of a contrast boost using only a Curve and an inverted mask to see how it affects the structure of the whole picture before. Then reinvert and gradually build up contrast.

Use a similar method for increasing contrast, and using any of the other options available in Local Adjustments. Be aware that any changes to the Curve will be applied after any other adjustments you might make.

Example of the kind of intuitive localized contrast control gradually with several adjustments

Example of painting in the adjustment for additional contrast. Be sure to paint without the mask visible so you can gauge the degree that the adjustment is coming through. Doing this work gradually allows you to understand the structure of your image and lets you visually balance the composition using tonal adjustments.

You can also use an new Local Adjustment with an inverted mask on the top of the stack for any final adjustments before exporting or printing. I use the Curve similar to a Levels adjustment after doing any local contrast control. You can also use the same layer for any modification during soft proofing for different kinds of process recipes.

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Best regards,

Richard Boutwell
B&W Mastery