Flat Art Reproduction

Uniform light via Capture One’s Lens Tool

• Setting up perfect uniform light for a flat art reproduction can be difficult and time-consuming.

• The Lens Correction Tool in Capture One can be used for creating a uniformly lit image when applying light for flat art reproductions.

• The LCC (Lens Cast Correction) feature will compensate not only for color cast and the light fall-off of the lens, but also for any variation and color shift in the illumination of the flat art.

How to apply uniform light with Capture One?

In this example I lit the painting with only one lamp just to illustrate that even such a non-uniform light distribution can be made uniform by the software.

I used the highlight warning and the Levels-highlight slider to provoke clipping making it is easy to see the light distribution. The left image above is without Light Fall-off compensation. The right image above is with Light fall-off compensation applied. The entire background in this image is evenly lit and there is no clipping in the painting.

Steps for how to apply uniform light:

1. Place the flat-art on a flat background of matte white or matte gray material.
2. Light the flat-art. Try to obtain reasonable uniform light across the art.
3. Photograph the flat-art.
4. Remove the flat-art and photograph the background with the lens slightly out of focus. This image will serve as a “light” reference.
5. In Capture One use the image of the background to make a LCC file.
6. Apply the LCC file to the image of the flat-art. Make sure that both Color Cast and Light fall-off is checked, as this compensates for any variations in the illumination of the flat-art. The flat art will now look as if it was lit and captured with perfectly uniform light.