Processed with Capture One Pro
Processed in Lightroom Classic with AI noise reduction.
The never ending choice of processing power. Which is better? I’m not seeing a great deal of difference between Lightroom and Capture One. Paying 199.88 per year for Lightroom and $179 for Capture One. Have gone away from LIghtroom as Capture One has better processing from my Fuji Trans-X files. Which would you choose?
Everyone is talking about AI taking over photograph (along with illustration, coding, and just about every other creative endeavor). So I asked Google’s Bard to give me 5 excuses for not taking pictures today. The Bard not only gave me the excuses but also ways to get around the excuses.
Here are 5 excuses for not doing photography today:
Photography can be a time-consuming hobby or profession, and it’s easy to let other things take priority. But if you’re passionate about photography, it’s important to make time for it. Even if you can only spare a few minutes each day, you can still make progress and improve your skills.
It’s true that having good gear can make photography easier, but it’s not essential. You can take great photos with even the most basic equipment. If you’re serious about photography, investing in some good gear can be worthwhile, but don’t let the lack of gear stop you from getting started.
Everyone starts out as a beginner, and it takes time and practice to improve your photography skills. Don’t compare yourself to other photographers, and don’t be afraid to experiment. The more you shoot, the better you’ll become.
Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s okay. Failure is a part of the learning process. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from taking risks and trying new things.
Sometimes it can be hard to find inspiration, but there are plenty of things you can do to get motivated. Look at other photographers’ work, read photography books and magazines, or take a class. The most important thing is to keep shooting, even when you’re not feeling inspired.
If you’re making excuses not to do photography, it’s time to face your fears and get out there and start shooting. You might be surprised at what you can create.
Same thing applies to writing blog posts. Something I’ve gotten away from for way too long.
Recently watch this video from Capture One Pro where David Grover talks with Joe McNally about shooting at the Olympics. During the course of the discussion Joe mentions that he shot about 53,000 images during the 16 days of the Olympics. If you want to get the shot you have to take the shot. Interesting discussion on the trials of shooting a pandemic Olympics. Or you can just watch it so you can be amazed by the great images Joe always produces.
In the digital age we are so lucky to not have the costs of film and processing. You try dividing 53,000 images by 36 shots per role and you get a feel for the national debt. (Hint: 1473 rolls of film). Plus with digital you can always dial in the correct color balance.
Moral of the story is that if you are not taking a lot of pictures you should be.
Recently while watching a webinar on Capture One Pro one of the attendees wished that he could adjust the order that the Fujifilm Simulations were listed when selecting the profile to use on an image.
The reasoning was that he wasn’t sure which simulation was the one he wanted to use on an image. I didn’t see a real need as I only use a couple of them and it easy just mouse over each simulation to see what it does to the image.
Given that the Auto simulation is the simulation that you have set in you Fujifilm camera, I rarely find that I need to look at more than two other simulations. In camera I tend to use STD which is PROVIA (STANDARD). The more I thought about it the more I realized that my default simulation works a lot of the time. What I did realize is that I change most when there is a lot of sky or no sky. When the sky make a big part of the image i tend to use CLASSIC CHROME while if there is little or no sky, I tend to stay with PROVIA or if the image calls for it I will crank it up with Velvia see previous post about that. Now on big sky images it is mostly personal preference but I tend to use CLASSIC CHROME for its more muted blues (with a hint of green) but if the sky isn’t necessarly the subject I’ll probably use PROVIA.
What I have found is that I’ve come to know the simulations by how they treat the blue parts of the image:
So as I look at the image I can decide on which simulation based on what I want the blue to do in the image. Then go right to simulation I want.
It takes some time to get used to what each simulation does to colors and contrast but once you do you can quickly dial in what you want. The same thing works for the black and white simulations (although those are all right together). If you want a dark sky go with the Red filter.
The recent upgrade to Capture One Pro (version 21.1.1 also 14.1.1) has added what they call Style Brushes. You can make your own style brushes plus there are a number of quite nice standard style brushes. Style brushes differ from Styles in that Styles takes over the whole layer. If you are on the background layer when you apply a style it may/will change setting of different effects. Style Brushes on the other hand are more specific. When you choose a style brush you get a new layer with no applied mask. You then brush in the style exactly where you want it to be.
You can create your own style brushes too. Posting on creating your own will have to wait. Today’s image was created using several standard style brushes plus one of my own (called Clarity Plus) that allows you to slowly brush clarity on to my image. I used it mostly along the line of blue on the right past the engine to the end of the wings on the left.
Style Brushes really do make you think differently about how you process your images. I’ve change my workflow because these are so easy to incorporate. More to come…
Sometimes images demand that you go outside your normal style, outside your comfort zone. And sometimes images demand that you just go in there and push the boundaries. To everyone who thinks this is too over the top saturated, yeah but I love it.
You can must be playful with you images.
I really enjoyed going to PhotoshopWorld for quite a number of years. I think the grand total was 14 although it might have been 13. Does not matter. What matters as a photographer is that you connect with other photographers so that you can learn with them, learn from them, and become better at what you love to do.
Each time they had the event I would make sure that I helped any new attendees feel at home and to remind them to make sure they introduced themselves to the people that would be sitting next to them at any of the sessions. After all we were all attending the session because we had the same interests in learning and especially in learning specific processes to enhance our photography or graphic design or videography skills.
I made a lot of good friends over the years at each PSW conference. Always someone new to meet as well as to catch up with friends from previous PSW’s. I actually met John when I invited him to join me for a buffet breakfast at Mandalay Bay a number of years ago. The only thing we had in common at that point was we were both wearing our attendee badges. There after we would see each other before the opening ceremony. John was from Boston and soon I had met the intrepid photography group from Boston.
Thru John I met Deb, and John B, and Darren Clark (who wasn’t from Boston but somehow was adopted by the other three.) Each year and sometimes twice a year we would see each other. The last PhotoshopWorld was fall of 2019. I have not seen John since. Now I won’t anymore as he suddenly passes away a few days ago, way to early. So I am extremely sad to see that he is gone but glad that he and I made the effort to see our mutual interests and become friends.
Find people that are like you, they are out there. Make friends. You will be better off for it.
I went remote the other day and took my laptop along for the ride. As I did a lot of image making I took along a drive and created a new Capture One catalog for the trip. I didn’t do a lot of editing while on the move so when I got back I just copied the images to my at home storage location and then imported them into my main Capture One catalog.
When the images are already in the correct place you do not need to copy them anywhere so there is an option on the import to just add the images in their current location to the open catalog. This is real handy if you have already downloaded you images and do not need the import process to copy them from an external drive.
The thing you must remember is that after you are done ingesting the images and are ready to go back to importing the images from the camera SD card you need to change back to the method you use for copying the images off your SD to their in computer location.
If you don’t remember that then the next time you import your images they will stay on you SD card and the catalog will think they will always be in that location. I forgot that step the other day after taking images of a soon to be dead flower in my front yard. I did the import, left the SD card in the slot and happily processes the good images.
Later i took the SD card out of the slot put it back in my camera and formatted it. The images that I thought had been downloaded had not been and the next time I opened my main catalog the images were marked as offline which is 100% true now that I think about it but perplexed me at the time. I ended up losing the images.
When attached to your computer the SD card looks just like another disk drive and Capture One will happily use it as such. One thing I’m rather surprised about is that Capture One does not seem to have overall presets for the import process. Not that would have saved me. For the next 30 days please find me in the corner wearing my dunce cap.
Using the “Rule of Thirds” or other constructs to ensure your image is balanced and working towards where the eye goes first in a image is a way to improve your images or at least verify the image against a standard grid.
I was watching a webinar yesterday and the presenter didn’t know that the Crop Tool in Capture One could display a “Rule of Thirds” or other grids as an overlay on an image. You can also show the grid at anytime by clicking on the Grid Icon on the Toolbar at the of the Capture One workspace.
So at any point in time you can show the currently configured grid by just clicking on the icon. You can also set up to display the current grid every time you select the crop tool. This will allow you to crop and position an image to a pleasing position. You turn on the grid in the crop tool by checking the Show Grid While Cropping checkbox in the Crop tool.
The Grid tool controls which of three different grids Capture One provides displays when activated. The most common and adjustable one is the Rectangular grid. The Long Edge and Short Edge values determine how many lines in each direction. The 3×3 pattern is your standard Rule of Thirds. You can make any number of grids with this option although at some point you may have more lines than image if you get carried away. Similar to the Rectangular grid is the Golden Ratio grid with I won’t go into much here other than to say it a center weighted 3×3 grid.
You can change the color of the grid so if you are working on an image with one predominate color you can find something that you can actually see. Follow Crop keeps the grid contained in the area of the crop. The image with the rectangular overlay looks like this.
The other option is the Fibonacci Spiral which is starts with a small square and doubles the size of the square over and over 1×1, 2×2, 4×4 etc. Which gives a spiral which that can be used to move from the subject of the image around and around as the eye would go.
The Clockwise and Mirror checkboxes are used to determine which quarter of the image the spiral starts on.
So Capture One has the tools to aid you in balancing your image that can come in handy. I usually have the 3×3 Rectangular grid set when I crop. It doesn’t hurt to see where things line up but remember you are the image maker and if you want to place the subject of the image somewhere other than what some rules says, go ahead and do it. If you are trying for balance the Grid Tool just might help.
I’ve been watching Paul Reiffer‘s mostly weekly Youtube video’s on processing images in Capture One. I think that I’ve become proficient in the use of Capture One Pro (now on version 21). Watching the videos has pointed out the need to be nuanced in how you manipulate the images. You don’t really want to get close to what you want, you want to get exactly what you want. In recent video’s he has pointed out more than once that images submitted by his viewers have missed the little things like getting the white point of the image right.
Before watching Paul I would have published the above image without checking if the obviously whitest area on this Egret’s back had blown out. When processing an image when the cursor is over any area of the image there are 4 numbers just under the Cursor Tools at the top. My screen grab lost the cursor so you just have to image it pointing to the Egret’s back. These 4 numbers are the amount of each color plus the luminance where the cursor (Hand or whatever) is directly over. If you see 255,255,255 then you have reached the limit of what Capture One can do and you now have no data from the image at that point. This means that printing the image would have a point where there would be no ink on the paper.
By using your High Dynamic Range tab you can move the whites down try and bring back the information at that point. Anything under about 248 will bring back some of the information. In some cases, like when you have the sun in you image, no amount of tweaking will bring back the image as that particular point was just overexposed and total blown out.
It doesn’t take long to get the general feel for software like Capture One Pro but you need to pay attention to the details to get the most out of your images. Check the histogram and if you have some bits up near the right side you may want to see if you can bring them back into image.
Below is a recent editing session from Paul. Good stuff.
If you don’t use Capture One Pro you can get a fully functioning 30 trial here.