Black and White: Working with Styles and Presets

October 27, 2011 by 1 Comment

In order to achieve a specific look when doing Black and White work, you often need to combine a number of tools even though your original image is well exposed. Capture One Pro 6 comes with a number of specific Black and White Styles that can inspire you to create different Black and White looks. You can use the Black and White Tool Tab to get a nice overview of the Styles as well as the other relevant tools for creating beautiful Black and White images.

Capture One Pro 6 also includes a number of Black and White Presets showcasing how you can create very specific looks by using different combinations of the tool. These include Presets that utilize the Color Sensitivity sliders and Presets that include Split Toning. When preset stacking is allowed, you can combine Presets for Split Toning with Presets for Color Balance.

Use the built in Styles and Presets to be inspired; optimize them according to your personal taste and save them for future use.

 

Styles for Black and White:

The Styles and Presets can be found in the Black and White Tool Tab. This gives you easy access to both the built in Styles and to your own Styles via the User Styles.

In the example above, the Style “B&W – Old Look 1” has been used. This style uses the Black and White Tool to convert the color image to a black and white image and to add the brown/yellowish toning. Besides changing the color, this Style also increases the Contrast, adds a strong Vignetting and adds some negative Clarity. Also note that if you select multiple images, you can apply the Style to all the selected images at once.

3 different built in Black and White Styles. From left to right: B&W-Old look 1, B&W-Old look 2 and B&W-landscape 1.

 

Presets for Black and White:

The Black and White Tool has 2 tabs, one dealing with the conversion of colors into grey tones, and one dealing with color toning of the converted black and white image.

In the Presets dropdown menu, you will find Presets for both color conversion and toning. You can set up the tool to allow stacking of presets which allows you to combine presets. For instance, you can select “Color – Landscape 1” for the color conversion and select ”Split Toning – Blue Brown 2” for the toning like in the picture below.

The same image with 3 different Black and White Presets applied. From left to right: “Split Toning – BlueBrown 2”, “Split Toning – BlueRed 2” and “Split Toning – YellowBlue 2”.

The Presets named “Toning” rather than “Split toning” refer to a number of Presets where the Hue for the shadow and highlight toning have the same values.

These images have the same Color Sensitivity conversion but different Black and White (Toning) Presets applied. The upper left image has no Toning applied.

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Black and White conversions

October 20, 2011 by 10 Comments

The Black and White Tool in Capture One Pro 6 is split into two sub-tools placed on individual tabs. The Color Sensitivity tool deals with the conversion from color to black and white while the Split Toning tool deals with toning of converted gray tones.

The Color Sensitivity tool gives you full control of how the conversion from color to black and white takes place. You can control the conversion in 6 color bands.

Controlling the conversion in color bands is very powerful, and it enables you to create great black and white images from colorful landscape, nature or portrait images.

It is important to remember that it is still essential to have a good white balance when you want to create black and white images. The conversion tool works strictly according to colors. For instance, if the whole image has a blue cast, you may not get the desired or expected conversion.

The image above shows 3 versions of the same original image. The left image is the color version. The center image shows the default black and white version you get by just enabling the Black and White tool with the check mark. As can be seen in this image, the red color of the rose and the green color of the leaves get the same gray tone with no clear separation between rose and leaves. For the right image, I have used the individual color sensitivity sliders to lighten up the red color and to darken the color of the leaves. To darken the leaves, I used both the yellow and the green slider as they both affect the gray tones of the leaves.

For portraits, it is often interesting to utilize the red and yellow sliders as they both affect the skin tone colors.  For natural skin without makeup, the skin tone pigments vary between reddish and yellowish tones. Traditional panchromatic film made a conversion that turned red colors dark which can have an interesting effect for portraits of women wearing red lipstick. In the example below, the red sensitivity slider has been used to make the lips darker.

On a Mac, you can temporarily reset the slider positions in the Black and White tool, and this makes it easy to toggle between your adjustments and no adjustments. Hold down the option key and click on the tool reset icon. The tool is reset only as long as the mouse key is pressed down. This feature is currently only available on Mac.

Remember, it is always a good idea to use variants when you want to test out different conversions.

Three variants testing different Black and White conversions. Notice the different color of the lips.

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The Black and White Tool Tab

October 13, 2011 by 4 Comments

Capture One Pro 6 comes with a powerful Black and White tool located in the Color Tool Tab. Besides this tool, Capture One Pro 6 also has a specific Black and White Tool Tab which includes a number of relevant tools to perform Black and White conversion. 

As there are many Tool Tabs in Capture One, the Black and White Tool Tab is not visible by default. If you produce Black and White work often, I would strongly recommend enabling this Tool Tab.

Remember, you can always customize a Tool Tab. If you are missing a tool or find one you never use, just add or delete it. By default, Capture One remembers how you arrange the tools, and Capture One’s layout is stored in the default Workspace. You can always save the current layout as a named workspace to allow you to return to that specific layout again.

The left image is straight out of the camera. The center image is a black and white version made by simply desaturating the colors in the image, and this is by no means a very interesting image. The last image is made with the Black and White tool as well as some of the other tools found in the Black and White Tool Tab. This image is based on the Black and White tool preset called “Color – Landscape 1”.  This preset brings down the lightness of the blue sky which gives a dramatic contrast to the dunes and the light tower, creating a much more interesting image. 

To enable the Black and White Tool Tab, simply right click on the Tool Tab bar.   That gives you the opportunity to select the “Black and White” Tool Tab in the “Add Tool Tab” menu.

The image above shows the layout of the Black and White Tool Tab. In the Black and White tool, the preset “Color – Landscape 1” has been selected. You can use the tool presets as inspiration for how you would like your image to appear. Scroll down the preset list, and you will immediately see the effect of each selected preset. Start by selecting the presets that gives you the overall look and finish that you want. Then, you can fine-tune the result using the other tools. For example, a Black and White image will often need much more contrast than a color version of the same image.

Stay tuned for more Black and White tips next week.

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