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.