Capture One – Page 2 – The Common Sense Photographer

A First Look At Color Grading

Posted on July 25, 2020July 25, 2020 by Jim Roberts

I’ve been thinking about “Color Grading” a lot lately. Anyone processing photos digitally has so many people giving their opinions on to color grade your images that it can be very confusing about the way to get the best from your still images. The movie industry is the origin of the color grading where it involves a lot of technical terms like Log, S-Log and other things that I have no clue of their meaning. In a movie you use color grading to link the parts of a story by creating an overall feel by using consistent colors to different parts of a movie or to reinforce the images on the screen. For more information on color grading in movies start with this video: Why are Films Shot In Two Colors?

I’d like to put that at the far end of the workflow of developing an image. There are a lot of things you can or should do before you get to that final color grade step. If you do them correctly then you may not need to spend any time at all fixing the color in you images.

The first step you should take is to make sure you monitors are calibrated. Use any of the available hardware tools for to get the color right before you start. I use the Datacolor Spyder X Pro. If you don’t get the colors that you are seeing right then you have no chance of getting them right when you are adjusting them.

All the discussion below assumes that fact that you are shooting in raw for whatever camera system you are using. If you don’t shoot raw then any other discussion about color or color grading is moot as the camera has already decided what you image is going to look like.

Next is using a good color profile for your image. You can start with the color profiles you camera manufacturer provides with each camera. The processed jpg image you see on the back of you camera using one of the profiles that you manufacturer has provided. Standard, Landscape, and Vivid are some of the profiles provided. (Hint: set your camera to Vivid when shooting sunsets). Current versions of Lightroom and Capture One can be set to use the camera profile when importing you images. If you are using Lightroom you may need to explore beyond the standard Adobe Color profile that Lightroom applies as a default. There are a number of other profiles that Adobe provides that may enhance your image.

And then there is color temperature. Getting the white balance right is so important. Cameras today do a pretty good job of getting the white balance correct. Having a correct white balance means that your other colors will look right too. I find it interesting that most of the time I watch someone else process an image they tend to want to “warm the image up a bit”. Cameras may just be leaning a little to the cool side.

If you, like me, is using a Fujifilm Trans-X camara there are a number of film simulations that are provided as profiles you can use. The film simulation that you have your camera set to will be used by Lightroom or Capture One to process the raw files when they are imported. You can also change the profile after import if you find a profile that works better for a particular image.

If you have picked the profile that pleases you then normally you won’t need to do a lot of saturation adjustments. Although it doesn’t hurt to see what the saturation slider does to the image. I’ll leave you to adjusting the contrast, white and black points, clarity, and other such things for another time.

The big thing for me is that if I’ve applied a Fujifilm film simulation to an image I’ve already chosen how I want my image color graded. So I don’t do a lot of further color processing on my images. For the above “Sunset with Blue Sky” image I used the Fujifilm Provia simulation and just lightened and saturated the blues a bit. Other than that it is the sunset I saw that day. It was a great day for sunset images.

Working Hard On an Image, Behind the Scenes

Posted on July 16, 2020July 16, 2020 by Jim Roberts

Yesterday’s post was an image I admit I had a struggle getting to a point where I was happy with it. Today I want to show how I started out with the image and how I got it to a place where it got two (count them, two) Wow’s on Instagram.

Like I said yesterday I really wasn’t happy with the series of images I took of my wifes new Persian Shield plant. I captured the images with my X-T2 and the Fujinon XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR Lens. The plant was out in the back lanai and was shot about 2 hours after sunrise. The plant was in the shade of another plant so there was just indirect daylight on the image.

This is the image as it came from the camera with the standard Capture One import processing applied. I shoot using the STD/Provia camera profile as a default and I think I had this image underexposed by a full stop. I usually have a -2/3 stop compensation but I didn’t want any extraneous sun blowing out the image.

THe image is pretty boring as there isn’t a main subject or focal point, mostly purple leaves. After staring at it for a while I decided to try a 4×5 crop of part of the image to see if I could find a better balance. Below is the image after cropping.

There are a few adjustments on the image and I changed the camera profile to Velvia as this image is all about the bright purple. I adjusted black and white points. As an aside I usually have the levels tool set those points but end up back off the white point as I always think it gets to bright if left at the defaults. I made a few HDR adjustments and added a little clarity.

My final processing was done with Nik Software (version 3.0? which it the latest). I do all the Nik adjustments in Photoshop so that I can control and if necessary re-adjust any changes. Once I open an image in Photoshop I don’t make any further in Capture One. If I find I need to make an adjustment like cleaning up a dust spot I delete the Photoshop .psd file and start again. To convert to Photoshop you use the Edit With menu item and choose Photoshop as your destination. Capture One creates the .psd and launches Photoshop to process your image as a Variant.

Once the image is in Photoshop the first thing I do is convert the background layer to a smart object. I do this so much I set up a hotkey to automate this process but you can right click on the layer or go to the Layers menu to make it a smart object. I then launch Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 and apply any filters I want to get the image looking right. My tastes change over time but I usually apply the Detail Extract to sharpen up the image and a bit of Pro Contrast which gives it more depth. And finally use the Darken/Lighten Center as a Vignette.

Once the image is processed by Nik I bring it back into Photoshop. In this case I added Nik’s Dfine 2 to reduce a little noise as this image was shot at ISO 640. After applying the changes the layers panel looks like the below. I you then want to adjust something in Color Efex or Dfine you can click on the filter to bring up Nik with the same filters.

Smart Object Layer with Nik Software Applied.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with borders on my images. Alway used to be black 10px border but now I’m testing a white border. In either case I have an action that applies the black border that I can adjust the style to white if it fits my mood.

With all the adjustments done I close and save the .psd file which update the variant in Capture One. I usually then compare the variant with the base adjusted image. If there is something more I need to do in Photoshop I can use the Image/Open WIth menu item to bring it back into Photoshop with all the layers intact.

And the final image looks like this.

Creating a Style in Capture One

Posted on July 13, 2020July 13, 2020 by Jim Roberts

As stated in the previous post you can create new styles to make it easier and faster to develop an image to a specific look. You can pick and choose which adjustments you wish to include in each style. To start from the Styles and Presets panel click on the ellipses (…) on the panel header and the Save Style dialog will pop up. Select the values you want to have in your style then click the save button at the bottom of the dialog. You then give the style a name and a place to live in the hierarchy. Get verbose with the naming. If you have a Fujifilm Classic Chrome style you might want to put that in the name.

There may be some options that do not make sense or make sense only with specific images from the same camera. For instance if you have an image from a recent Fujifilm X series camera they you can apply the Classic Chrome film simulation and save it as a style. If you then attempt to use the style on an image from another non-Fujifilm camera you are not going to get the color grading that the Classic Chrome simulation provides.

Capture One Styles Versus Presets

Posted on July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 by jrnoded

If you were wondering what the difference between a style and a preset in Capture One (I’m on the latest version Capture One Pro 20 (13.1.1)) I’m about to tell you.

A preset is specific adjustment for a single tool. You can make a preset for something like Vignetting where you find yourself commonly applying a -0.5 amount a lot. You set the Vignetting amount to what you want like 0.5 or -0.75 then click on the three lines icon (they call it the hamburger icon) and click Save User Preset. You give it a name like Minus 0.75 or Plus 0.5. Once saved you can quickly apply it to your current image by clicking on the hamburger icon again and picking the preset you want. Note that some of the tools come with standard set of presets that you might want to explore. Check out the Levels presets.

A Style allows you to save the current state of multiple tools. If you have a look or color grade for a particular shoot you can save the state of multiple tools. This makes it quite quick to apply a look to multiple images quickly and consistently. In this particular case I adjusted the above image and really liked the color and contrast so I created a style. Creating a style gives you the option of which tool changes you want to incorporate into the style.

I then edited another image using that style to create a very similar feel. Makes it quite easy to get a cohesive feel to your images.

Once you have applied a style (or more than one since that is also allowed) you can make further adjustments to any of the tools to hone in on the image that you saw when you made the image. In this image I added a little more contrast.

Healing in Capture One Pro 20

Posted on July 8, 2020July 8, 2020 by jrnoded

It is unusual for a company to show off new software features before the are released. The Capture One Pro team were apparently too excited about the new features to hold off showing off the new stuff. So in early May, David Grover, at Capture One published a You Tube video on the new features which were healing tool layers and clone tool layers. They were so excited (and so was I). At the end of May the new version of Capture One Pro 20¹ came out and the new healing and cloning tools were really quite good.

I’ve been using them for a while now and I’m really quite pleased with the results i am getting. I’ve become braver and braver with the touch ups I’ve been doing. I started with just healing the dust spots that seem to be permanently attached to my sensor. Previously the did have a spot removal tool that did work but not on big ticket items ² and basically on the background layer. The new tools put the healing or cloning on their own layer.

I’ve using the healing brush on the below image to clear up what has become a standard sight at the theme parks over the last 10 years where they keep adding more and more rides and features. These new rides mean a long time with construction equipment in the parks and in your images. Not much you can do about it. Here is an image of Bluto’s Barge Ride and Islands of Adventure that I took at the annual pass preview when the Universal reopened in June.

And here is the image after adding a heal layer to hide the construction equipment in the back ground.

The new tools do a very good job in this case. Also got rid of some wires under the left crows nest. Nice not having to go over to Photoshop to clean up images. You can get a 30 day trial if you wish to explore Capture One. There are also less expensive versions for specific camera manufacturers

¹ For some unknown reason the first version of Capture One Pro 20 was 20.0.0, then 20.0.1 then switch to 13.1.0 then another release at 13.1.1. Latest is 13.1.1.

² It was good for spot healing but was not great for removing anything bigger such as a power line.

Just A Kit Lens (Not)

Posted on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by Jim Roberts

You can usually spend a lot of money on more and more lenses as you progress as a photographer. But sometimes you forget the good things you have, like the kit lens you bought when you first bought into a camera brand. In my case it was the Fujifilm X series and the lens was their Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS. It is a really good lens and probably should not have had the “kit” nomenclature.

I purchased the lens along with the Fujifilm X-T1 in June of 2014. So I’ve had it 6 years. Lately it was mostly gathering dust on the shelf as I was using mostly Fujifilm’s profession lenses. I have the Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR as my go to lens for everyday shooting. Nice and sharp, constant F2.8, basically the equivalent of the standard 24mm-70mm full frame lens.

Recently, I ended up getting a preview entry to Universal Studios just before they opened to the general public. A test run with annual pass holders. Didn’t have any real problems during the day.

Biggest question was which lens to bring as the whole trip was more about making pictures than riding rides. If I’m going to the parks and its going to get dark then I will probably take my 35mm F1.4 lens just for the extra stop of light. Since this was going to be all daylight, i would have normally taken the XF16-55mmF2.8. The drawback of that lens is by itself it weighs in at 1.4 pounds. The XF18-55mmF2.8-4 on the other hand is just 0.7 pounds. Since the trip would all be in daylight and wide open apertures were not going to be needed (even if the difference at full extension was F4 instead of F2.8). I was not planning on taking more than one lens so I put the XF18-55mmF2.8-4 on my X-T2 and ventured out in to the pandemic’ed world.

With the lighter lens it was a little easier to carry and I have to say produced some nice sharp images.

Above is a crop of the image and if you click and enlarge you will see that there is nothing wrong with the sharpness of that lens.

So maybe it’s time to revisit you “kit” lenses and see what they can still do.

The image was process in Capture One 20 Pro.

Processing Fujifilm Raw Files In Capture One Pro (Part One)

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Jim Roberts

I’ve actually had a copy of Capture One Pro¹ since version 4 and am now on the current version 12.1.3. With version 12 there is a lot of integration for Fujifilm cameras. One of the best things about it is the integration of the Fujifilm film simulations. When processing raw files in Capture One you can use the same ICC profile that Fujifilm uses when converting images to jpg in camera. In Capture One 12 this is done thru the Base Characteristics Tool². This means that you can set your preferred film simulation in camera and have the same simulation applied to your raw files imported into Capture One.

When the Fujifilm .raf raw files are imported Capture One applies default values to a number of properties. On import Capture One reads the file and auto applies the film simulation you have your camera set to. If you set your camera to display images in Classic Chrome, Velvia (VIVID), or any of the other Fujifilm simulations. Capture One will read you image and apply the correct film simulation. The Base Characteristics Curve field is set to Auto.

Auto means that it applied the same simulation you had selected in your camera.

You can then leave it at auto or change it to any of the other film simulations on the list. As you move you mouse over each of the choices the image will be adjusted to mirror the simulation under the mouse cursor. In the following image I had camera set Classic Chrome. a simulation it took me a long time to use but is pretty much my standard now.

Changing the curve to Classic Chrome does not change the image at all.

If you change the curve to Velvia (VIVID) the image does change dramatically.

This is a great feature in that you start with an image that you shot and reviewed (and hopefully liked) on your camera and bring it into Capture One looking very much the same.

If you are thinking in black and white you can set your camera to one of the ACROS modes (I usually use ACROS+G) the images with automatically be set the chosen black and white rendition on import.

Top image is ACROS+G and the bottom ACROS+R.

Note that tests that I did show that the in camera highlights, dynamic range, sharpness, and noise adjustments that can take place in camera for processing direct to jpeg do not seem to be applied to the image when importing the raw file. This is probably good as you have a lot more fine adjustments that you can do in Capture One than you can do in camera, never was sure what a +2 sharpness would do to an image.

Speaking of sharpness Capture One does quite a good job of base sharpening on the images as they are ingested and I find that I rarely have to touch the sharpness sliders. Usually only around eyes etc which I do on a layer rather than overall sharpening.

Images taken with Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 16-55mm F2.8 lens.

¹ There is a specific Fujifilm only version of the latest Capture One that, while not having the full feature set of Capture One Pro, does the specific have capabilities that I am discussing today.
² If you don’t see it on a tool tab you can add it by right clicking on the tool bar and adding it to the tool tab which makes the most sense for your work flow. I have mine on my exposure tab.

Capture One and the Monkeys

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Jim Roberts

I’m now using Capture One (version 12) almost exclusively. The control over noise and the Fujifilm Color Curves make for some stunning images. I’ve also found that the Fujinon XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR Lens is really good for capturing the action in the theater in the round environment at The Festival of the Lion King at Disneys Animal Kingdom here in Florida. I can eliminate the noise that should be there when shooting at ISO 640 at F2.8. And the picture is so sharp.

Monkeys — Fujifilm X-T2 and Fujinon XF80mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR = ISO 640 F2.8 1/125s

I ended up with a white balance of 1260k after much experimentation. The lighting in the theater was quite blue and it made it interesting to say the least. I’m happy with the outcome. The image is so sharp and under control. That is what I’m finding I can do with Capture One.

Capture One vs Lightroom

Posted on May 13, 2019 by Jim Roberts

I’m trying to switch from Lightroom to Capture One. Mostly because the latest version have incorporated a better engine for processing Fujifilm X files. Because Fujifilm’s X-Trans sensor has a different pattern for capturing raw images then the standard Bayer filter found on most cameras there is a different computation required for demosaicing an image. There has always been issues both real and imagined with Lightroom and processing of Fujifilm Files.

Additionally while the camera profiles provided by Lightroom have always been pleasing to me the close connection between the Fujifilm engineers and the Capture One engineers means that when the profiles are applied in Capture One they are as close as you can get to get the intended color renditions.

So I’ve been experiment with the two software products to see which works better for me. (Your results may vary). I have to admit that I find the interface for Capture One a bit more daunting than Lightroom but then I’ve been using Lightroom a long time.

All well and good that both the will process my raw files. What I’m finding is a problem is a reoccurrence of an earlier issue with sharping the raw image. Lightroom recently changed the default algorithm for sharpening with an increase in Amount fo 40. And I usually don’t even change the amount on most images. Works OK at the defaults. The problem is when you want/need to increase the sharpening Lightroom introduces what some people call “worms” into the image. Not sure you can see it but just changing Amount from 40 to 77 causes all sorts of issues.

You can reduce the issue by reducing the Detail slider towards zero. Except that it also reduces the sharpening. This image is 2:1 section of a moon image and you can see that you get artifacts around areas of contrast change.

For comparison here is the same image of the almost full moon processed in Lightroom and Camera Raw. Image was taken with Fujifilm X-T2 with the XF 100-400mm telephoto lens and 1.4 teleconverter giving a 560mm. The image was cropped down to a 2400 by 2400 mp square.

Lightroom Moon — Moon Processed in Lightroom

CaptureOne Moon — Image Processed in Capture One

The Capture One image is sharper to me.

I’ve also noticed other slight variation in the produced images that are not issues just slightly different between the two software packages. One of the stranger ones is that the as shot color temperature is different for each application. Capture One color temperature is a few degrees cooler than Lightroom. I can’t explain that one at all.

Rose Processed in Lightroom with Classic Chrome camera profile

Rose processed in Capture One with Classic Chrome Profile

It is really impossible to process the same image exactly the same way in both applications so for the most part you are still processing to you personal taste and as long as you are using a calibrated monitor you should get good results out of both applications with Capture One creating the sharper image.

Post Processing Tools And Fuji X-Trans

Posted on May 20, 2017 by Jim Roberts

A recent update to Capture One Pro (10.1.1) has enhanced processing for Fujifilm X-Trans sensors. And if you are on Adobe Lightroom CC (15.10) image processing for the X-Trans sensor seems to be pretty stable. Since I have both I thought it might be interesting to see if there is any difference or distinctions for using one over the other.

I choose the image “Basket (Details)” as a test of how each one works. The image was taken with the XF 50-140mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR on my Fujifilm X-T2. It was shot at 1/125 sec. at F5.6 with ISO at 1000 and auto white balance. In Lightroom I used the Camera Profile Provia/Standard. I used an imported ICC Fujifilm Provia/Standard profile in Capture One. So both images had the same starting point.

The two end results were very similar. I think the Lightroom edit is a bit brighter but the Capture One noise processing is a bit nicer. I did do the processing for the Capture One version first and was pretty happy with the result. I then tried to match the Capture One output in Lightroom, it was hard to get the two images to match. Click on the images to see full size peep your pixels images. Really thing that Capture One did a better job on noise processing.