The Secret HDR Tool
January 13, 2011 37 Comments
Used in the right way, the LCC Calibration feature in Capture One’s Lens Tool can be used to create beautiful HDR images.
The LCC feature is designed to calibrate and compensate for unwanted Lens Color Cast as well as Light Falloff in the lens. It is the Light Falloff compensation feature we will demonstrate here.
For HDR purposes, the trick is to use the file you want to work with as the reference file for the LCC Calibration. In this case, the LCC Calibration file generates a gain map of the different lightness variations in the image. Bright parts of the image will not be gained, but dark areas will get a high gain factor. When the LCC Light Falloff compensation is set to 100%, the system tries to even out the lightness differences in the image. Of course, this does not make sense, but if you set the Light Falloff compensation to something between 10-35%, you will achieve a very useful effect.
Combine this with some negative Exposure compensation and you can achieve some really amazing HDR images.
Create Beautiful HDR Images
The image on the left has come straight out of the camera and shows a too wide dynamic range. The foreground is much too dark, and the sky is almost blown out. The image on the right is the result of applying a LCC Light Falloff compensation of 35% combined with some negative Exposure compensation. Surely a stunning improvement of the image.
A step by step instruction:
Step 1:
Create a LCC Calibration file in the Lens Tool. Use “Exclude Dust” as dust in the image is inappropriate here.
The Color Cast and the Light Falloff check boxes are both automatically checked after the LCC Calibration file has been generated.
Step2:
Uncheck the Color Cast check box and adjust the Light Falloff slider to somewhere between 10% and 35%.
With Light Falloff at 35%, the image looks much more natural with plenty of details in the originally dark foreground.
Step 3:
In order to recover the highlight details and to restore the original twilight feel of the image, I add some negative Exposure as well as some Saturation.
Two more examples of how the LCC tool can be used as a very efficient HDR tool:
Capture One also has a specially designed High Dynamic Range Tool, which is used to handle images with High Dynamic Range. Normally, I will try to see if I can achieve what I want using this tool. However, sometimes I find that I can do even more dramatic corrections by using the LCC feature or by combining both techniques.
thats a cool feature indeed, but it doesn’t work correctly. I tried this with a raw from my 5d mark II but when i create the LCC, the Color Cast and the Light Falloff check boxes aren’t checked automatically, it’s even not possible to check these two boxes manually. whats wrong there? Hope somewhere can help with that. i tried this with the up do date version 6.
thanks, stefan
Me too!
Interesting HDR-tool.
Color Cast and Light falloff are not checked and can not be after making LCC profile.
Nikon D 700 NEF-file
Looking for a reason.
Ib
Works perfectly with Phase One images so far as I can tell… I guess it was not written for Canon or Nikon..
that cant be the reason for the problem. the file in the example pictures above are also from a canon (CR2 file) you can see that one of the images.
so, can anybody help with that? professor????
I have SONY A700, it is working, bur I have to restart my Capture One Pro…
Hello, my first pseudo HDR:
http://blog.fotografia.zelinski.biz.pl/index.php/2011/01/13/the-secret-hdr/
Thanks a lot Professor
jz
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Very interesting! Hope to test it soon!
A very useful tool, especially for those architectural interiors where the highlight and shadow sliders aren’t enough but true HDR is too heavy handed. Working with a Nikon D300, I had no problems with the check boxes. (Mac 10.6.6)
Amazing Professor!
Works awesome. I retweaked some images and this technique worked better (and faster) than my previous methodology. Worked on P1 and .nef files on Mac 10.6.6.
Well done Professor- this is the best tip so far. Keep them coming!
Steve
A great lesson! Worked for me as intended with an Olympus .orf raw file.
And a thank you to Phase One for presenting lessons and tips like this to help learn how to get the most from this excellent software. A welcome change from not too long ago!
Does not work well enough. My Raw files from my Nikon D3X can not be analyzed in Capture 6.
as Jarek Żeliński allready said, my problem (first post) was fixed after restarting capture one.
Works great for me with 5DII. Why is this a secret feature?! I wish I would have known about this ages ago, I’ve never thought the shadow tool worked as well as ACR’s but combined with this I’ve got all I need. There ought to be a dedicated slider for this, I love it. (A radius control would be great too, but it looks great as is)
Works GREAT
hmm – if I swap sessions & try analyse an image it does not work as described
after analyse my Color Cast and the Light Falloff check boxes aren’t checked automatically
(they are always greyed out, so cannot select)
however:
if I RESTART C1, then the boxes ARE checked… (thnx Jarek)
I can get it to work using CR2 files, Canon 5dII, but does not work on the exact same file that has be converted to DNG via LR3. I get greyed out checkboxes even if I restart CO 6.1.
What is also interesting, I get a “Lens Cast Calibration contains clipped data. Bad color cast may occur.” warning when I use a DNG but no warning on the CR2 file.
This works with Sony’s A900 ARW-files too.
These small tricks are very welcome indeed, but I hope that the users who bother write about their results also get a proper response when the recipe is not working for them. But I see no such responses here?
It’s a long way to go via help desk or the forum, when an issue could easily be solved here in the right context with a small amount of guidance.
Other wise this tends to be a “his masters voice” communication.
Best regards,
Eigil
It works an absolute treat with my D700′s NEF files. Great tip, thank you! I never would have discovered it myself!
Most of the time I try to use this tool, C1 crashes. It mostly seems to happen when I’m trying to select anything from one of the drop-down menus on that tab. I’m using this with Mamiya ZD .MEF files. Mind you, I find C1 to be extraordinarily buggy and prone to crashes in general, so perhaps this is to be expected.
Wonderful tool! thanks for the tip. Exactly what I was looking for
For HDR look for specific software like Photomatix… It’s a Must !
Saluti
Stefano
Wow, I didn’t know that the LCC tool can be that powerful. Could be really useful on weddings where you rarely have time for multiple exposures… Thanks to the professor!
Thanks TG – glad you enjoyed the tip
Just looking back at articles and saw this one. I tested it out (CR2 files, C1 Pro 6.4.2, MacBook Pro OS 10.7.3). Work wonderfully for a location job I did recently that did not allow for extra lighting on the factory floor. I compared files that I tweaked and then did this. I liked this result (with some tweaks) over the old way I did it.
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Keep up the great writing.
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