Preview Sizes and Offline Editing in Capture One Pro 7

January 31, 2013 by 2 Comments

PS101107-004_cr

One of the great benefits of working with Catalogs in Capture One Pro 7 is the ability to work on your images – even when they are ‘offline’.

When you work with a Catalog in Capture One Pro 7, you can choose to store your original images inside the Catalog itself or you can store them at their existing location, for example on external hard drives.

The Catalog contains a preview image of every raw file in the Catalog, so even if you don’t have access to your storage media, you can still work with your image Catalog, edit metadata, organise it and even make visual adjustments.

Why do we use Previews in Capture One?

Every time an image is imported into a Catalog, Capture One Pro 7 creates an exact preview of the raw file and stores it within the Catalog.  Most operations in Capture One Pro 7 actually work with the preview, as it is much faster to use the smaller preview file than constantly having to read the much larger raw file.

Therefore, the images you see in the Browser and Viewer are the preview images. Capture One Pro 7 only needs to access the full raw file in order to show the image in the viewer if you need to view the image at 100% or if you work on a monitor with an extremely high resolution.  Capture One Pro 7 also does some smart caching, by reading images before and after the currently selected image thus making the shift to the next or previous image faster.

The preview will of course visually match the output image based on the adjustments made in Capture One Pro 7.

Preview Sizes in the Capture One Catalog

The size of the preview inside the Catalog file can be controlled by the Preferences Dialogue under the Image Tab.

prefs

By default, the preview size is set at 2560 pixels in Capture One Pro 7 while the preview size was only 1024 pixels in version 6. Because Capture One Pro 7 now uses a much smarter method for compressing the preview files, the new default preview at 2560 pixels takes up roughly the same space as the old preview at 1024 pixels in Capture One 6.

The new high resolution default preview in Capture One Pro 7 really gives you great benefits when you work with offline files. The 2560 pixels give such a high resolution that you may not notice that you are working with offline images. Typically, you can even zoom into the images to about 50% without missing details in the images.

If you are working a lot with your images offline, it makes sense to use a larger preview size. A large preview will increase loading times for previews in the application, but on more powerful computers this will be less noticeable. Larger preview image sizes will also increase the general size of the Catalog.

Catalog Size Comparison

The following table shows the Catalog size for different number of images and preview sizes for Canon 5D Mark III raw files placed outside the Catalog.

Nr. of images

1000

5000

10000

25000

%
RAW size( Gbyte)

28

140

280

700

100%
preview size = 2560 (default)

1.62

8.12

16.24

40.6

5.8%
preview size = 1440

0.53

2.63

5.26

13.15

1.9%
preview size = 1024

0.28

1.41

2.82

7.05

1.0%
preview size = 640

0.15

0.76

1.52

3.8

0.5%

From the table, you can see that using the default preview size at 2560 pixels only takes up 5.8% more space than the original raw files but you get such a nice and large preview file for working with offline files.  On the other hand, the Catalog will take up 40.6 Gbyte if you have added 25000 images.  So, if you find that the “offline” preview quality is good enough with 1440 or 1024 pixels, then your catalog can actually be considerably smaller.

Changing Preview Sizes

To change the preview size, simply select a new value in the pull down menu.

Any changes made here will only affect images imported after the change has been made.  The previews of existing images will have the size set in the preferences at the time of import.

If necessary, you can update existing images with a smaller or larger size preview by :

1. Choose the new preview size

  1. Select the images in the Catalog to be updated
  2. Go to File>Regenerate Previews.  The Activity Monitor will show the progress of the preview generation.

Existing previews will be replaced with the new preview size.  Subsequent imports will also be made with the new size.

This may be useful to do if you have in the past chosen a smaller preview size and would like the benefit of a larger preview size.

All the best,

Niels

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Top Processing Tip 2: Exporting to the ‘Long Edge’

October 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

There is a very simple way in the Process Recipe tool of Capture One Pro 6  that enables you to output a batch of images to a specific size on the long or short edge of an image.

Instead of scaling the image to other options like width and height or percentage scale, using the Long Edge or Short Edge option is very useful when outputting a range of images that are a mix of portrait and landscape.

This avoids images of different file sizes when they are a mix of portrait and landscape.  It is also useful if the selection of images differ somewhat in their ratio of width to height and do not fit into a specific output size.

The Process Recipe Tool

To setup a recipe in this way, see the following screen shot of the Process Recipe tool…

Note under ‘Scale’ we set the option to Long Edge.  Beneath that option we can then choose

dimensions in Pixels (px), Inches (in), Millimetres (mm) and Centimetres (cm).

In this case the Long Edge of the Image is set to be 1280 pixels long.

Therefore a mix of Landscape and Portrait images will be sized in a similar way for presentation on the web.

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Top Processing Tip 1: Using Sub Folders in Recipes

September 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

Introduction

Recipes in Capture One Pro 6 are a very powerful way of managing multiple outputs from a batch of images.   Output Recipes can be customized and subsequently have any number of recipes processed simultaneously.

Images can be processed for output as TIFF, JPEG or DNG. Capture One Pro 6 provides a range of options for setting the file compression, bit depth, color space, resolution and size.  Hence, images can be scaled easily making it possible to produce a range of outputs for different purposes.  To help manage these various different outputs, within the Advanced tab of the Recipe Tool is an option to manage the location of the exported files.

Process Recipe – Advanced Tab

In the following example we have two process recipes…

One creates a high quality TIFF

The second creates an image for the web sized at 1280 x 1024 pixels.

In the Advanced tab, there is a further option called Subfolder which will automatically create a subfolder of that name within the chosen output folder.

Therefore when the export is complete it is easy to locate the different kinds of files that have been exported.

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Photography Travelogues – Finding the right balance

June 28, 2012 by 5 Comments

Young Street Merchants in Hosap, Eastern Turkey

Our bus stopped at the top of the hill at the entrance to the Hosap castle, so it didn’t take the residents in the town below too long to work out that potential customers were about! However, to sell to us, we also had a price: they had to pose for a photograph!

Does the colour look approximately correct in the photograph above?

We can see it is late in the day with yellow sunlight kissing the tops of the background hills, leaving the shadows cooler and almost blue. It’s an emotive response to colour, but is it accurate? And should it be accurate?

Often, the colours we use in our photographs are technically incorrect (depending on the colour model we’re using as a reference), but they still look pretty good!

For instance, your camera uses its white balance system to set a ‘correct’ colour balance, but since the camera doesn’t know what the light is like, it can only adjust the white balance to a theoretical ‘zero’ or ‘correct’ position.

Speaking non-technically, white balance is the term used for getting the colour cast correct at the point of capture, or when processing the raw file. It uses a temperature (yellow/blue) and tint (magenta/green) colour model to make colour adjustments. Colour balance is when we change the colour cast, usually during editing the file. The colour balance dialog uses the three red/cyan, green/magenta and blue/yellow channels. Both approaches to controlling the colour cast in a photograph can achieve similar results and  are sometimes referred to interchangeably.

This is the image with the white balance suggested by the camera. The camera has seen the warmth in the light and neutralised it, but perhaps cooling the colour a little bit too much.

If you’re not  happy with the colour balance, you can use the white balance tool in Capture One to change it. Using the white balance picker, click on objects that are white or neutral in colour, or that  should be or could be neutral.

In this image, I have clicked the white balance picker on the girl’s white handkerchief, but I think it has too many optical brighteners in it because the result is much too blue.

In this third example, I have clicked on the grey roadway on the right of the image. Whether the road should be neutral grey or not isn’t really the point, because the rest of the image looks just right. I find using the white balance picker on various areas in the image while processing in Capture One is a useful way for determining the best colour balance, even if the white balance setting isn’t ‘accurate’ or ‘correct’!

You also have to be aware of how your viewers feel about certain colours. For instance, technically speaking, snow at high altitudes in the shadows is blue, but if it looks too blue in a photograph, it can look unnatural to many people. For this reason, snow photos can benefit from a slightly warmer colour balance, even though this may be technically incorrect.

So, if a technically correct colour balance isn’t necessarily the best, why do our cameras try to set it?

Whether we end up using a technically correct colour balance in our final edit is one matter; starting our photographic editing with a technically correct colour balance within our image file is another.

Many photographers find it very useful to start with a correctly colour balanced file. It helps ground their creative process and it also gives them a place to return if colours go awry.

So, unless you are sure about the colour balance you want in the final image, good camera practice dictates that we aim to produce image files which can produce a neutral or natural white balance. This is one of the reasons shooting raw files is so important because you can always reset the white balance within a raw file, something that can be much more difficult (if not impossible) to do with a JPEG file.

In the hero image at the top of the page, I have used two white balance settings. The girls in the foreground have a warm white balance setting, while the background has a cooler, bluer setting. Providing this subtle colour contrast also helps bring the subjects forward, emphasising them against the cooler background.

I hope you like it!

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Photography Travelogues: In The Shadow of Mount Ararat

June 21, 2012 by 4 Comments

Peter Eastway

Mount Ararat in Turkey is steeped in history and tradition. Just prior to this photo being taken, we were on a mountain opposite Ararat viewing what many believe are the remains of Noah’s Ark. If not Noah’s, it’s certainly in the shape of a huge ‘boat like’ structure, but how it came to be resting several thousand feet above the valley floor, no one could tell me!

These are Kurdish women and we assumed this was their village. The main road is behind us and we had stopped to admire the view of Mount Ararat. The air was so clear that even distant objects seemed very close.

However, just below the road, our guide Mehmet spotted these women having a chat. He walked down and started talking to them. They seemed to be friendly enough, enjoying a laugh, so I wandered down too. I sat off to the side, not able to understand a word that was said. Mehmet later explained that he didn’t understand much of their dialect either, and perhaps that was why they were all laughing so much.

Mehmet spent probably 10 minutes talking to the women before he asked if he could take a photograph (our guide is also a keen photographer).

More laughter followed and the matriarch acquiesced, but the point to take away is the process Mehmet went through.

Rather than just stumbling on these people and pulling out a camera straight away, Mehmet spent time talking to them. This is far less confrontational. Imagine if you were sitting in your front yard and some Kurdish tourists walked by and started photographing you? You mightn’t be so worried if you were in a public place like a market or a showground, but in your own home, you’d probably be a little concerned about who these people were.

By spending time talking to people, you can allay their fears. Once they knew we were a bunch of photographers from Australia, just having a holiday in Turkey, suddenly we’re no longer a threat. They know something about us.

This doesn’t necessarily mean they want us to take their photograph, of course. The woman in the background didn’t want the camera pointed at her, although she changed her mind when Mehmet offered them a small monetary thank you.

Note, we didn’t offer to pay them up front. All the photos were taken first and it was only when he was leaving that Mehmet offered the matriarch some money. He did this because he knew how tough life could be in this part of the world and he just wanted to show his appreciation.

I don’t have anything against paying to take a photograph. It’s true that it can change the nature of the relationship between the photographer and the subject, but for photographs like these, it’s not really that important. I’m not working as a documentary photographer or a photojournalist; rather I want to take an environmental portrait that shows how these women live.

However, there may be times when the subjects are used to being photographed (many people in cities and at popular tourist destinations are quite savvy) and ask for a small contribution. Personally, I think this is a fair exchange.

Peter EastwayThe original exposure as processed in Capture One.

Everything about this scene is as we found it, the only difference is that instead of the women focusing on themselves, they are looking up at Mehmet and another photographer who is standing camera-left out of frame.  Yet by having the matriarch conversing with Mehmet, and the other women reacting, the image begins to tell a story.

As there were 10 of us taking photographs (Mehmet was quite amazing in organising this), we only had time for a few frames each. However, shooting with a wide-angle lens, I was able to position myself to the side and allow the matriarch to focus on the others while I quietly clicked away.

A wide-angle lens is often considered taboo for portraiture. The reason is because a wide-angle lens stretches subjects towards the edge of the frame, making them look fatter and heavier than they really are. However, if you don’t place your subjects on the edges of the frame, then the stretching doesn’t happen (well, it doesn’t happen to them).

In defence of the wide-angle for environmental portraiture, the expansive angle-of-view provides context for the subjects, and when you’re in an exotic location like Eastern Turkey, it’s definitely sensible to make the most of the landscape.

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Fixing heavy burn-outs with the Color Editor

June 7, 2012 by 6 Comments

A camera with a large dynamic range will allow you to better retain the details in both the shadows and highlights at the same time.

Not all camera manufacturers have realized the importance of having a large dynamic range, and images shot with these cameras are more likely to show clipped highlight details.

When working with a RAW file you do have the possibly to recover some of the clipped highlights details as all three color channels typically do not clip data at the same exposure level.

As you get to know your camera, you will learn how much overexposure an image can handle while it is still possible to recover all details. The benefit of doing this is to get brighter shadows and more headroom to open up the deep shadows without showing noise.

Sometimes, you end up with images where the highlights are too blown out and all attempts to recover the clipped data leads to strange looking colors close to the burned-out areas. Capture One Pro 6’s Color Editor can be the only solution to fix such false colors.

The image above was shot with a camera with a limited dynamic range. To the left, you can see the image straight out of the camera where the highlights are clearly burned out. To the right, you can see the image after the highlights has been recovered and the false colors fixed with the Color Editor.

Capture One’s High Dynamic Range tool is the tool to start with when fixing the burned-out highlights. As the image was shot with a camera with a limited dynamic range, there is very limited headroom for the highlights. I can barely recover the details and I get some false greenish color in the recovered zones.

To fix the false color, I’ll use Capture One’s Advanced Color Editor. I’ll make the correction in an Adjustments Layer as I don’t know for sure whether the false color also appear as a natural part of the image.

1. Add a new adjustments layer in the Adjustments Tool by clicking the ‘+’ icon.

2. Invert the mask as you want to make sure that you work on the whole image while setting up the right parameters for the tool.

3. Pick the false greenish color with the color picker.

4. Adjust the selection by checking the “View selected color range” on.

5. Reduce the Smoothness slider and turn the hue a little towards the green color in order to isolate the false color.

6. Uncheck the “View selected color range” and adjust the hue to a more yellow/brown tone.

7. Invert the mask and brush in the color corrections.

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The Flow of Light

May 29, 2012 by 6 Comments

Although I am an advocate of the ‘get it right in camera’ school of photography, I strongly believe in the role that editing plays in our craft, just as the dark room did when printing from negatives in the past. The raw file is the negative, Capture One the darkroom. I continue to use graduated filters for balancing exposure in camera, but sometimes the light still needs a little help.

Before image editing, there is session editing. In this example I made five tripod-mounted exposures. In the original selection I chose CF008429, but a few months later on reflection I marginally prefer the way the rocks are slightly more concealed in CF008428, and that is the exposure I am processing here.

Very little of this image is truly sharp, it is really all about mood and the swirling motion of the water. But what should be sharp needs to be checked at 100%.

Having worked on the image I have saved a clone variant (F3), and then reset it using the reset adjustments button. Thus the ‘original’ is on the right, with the finished image on the left here. The unprocessed raw file looks OK, but I felt the magenta emphasis was too dominant so I have tweaked the white balance, reducing magenta considerably and yellow slightly.

A local adjustment is the digital equivalent of dark room dodge and burn, and I still feel these tools are the ones that best enable tonal balancing, a vital prerequisite of good printing. The first of my local adjustments (layer 1) selects the stones and some of the water, lightening and adding a little saturation. I have avoided the white water areas in the middle zone, which are already bright enough.

The light on the horizon is extremely strong, bright and somewhat ‘clipped’ so layer 2 calms this down. It is painted on using a soft edged brush, the adjustment parameter being Contrast -50. I applied these strokes quickly with an oversized brush to get a feel for the effect, and then I refined the selection back with the erase tool.

The brushes in Capture One are superbly configurable, and with zero hardness they give a wonderfully soft edge, allowing for extremely organic adjustments. I try to imagine I am painting with light.

Layer 3 simply increases the contrast in the sky, which is otherwise rather bland contrasting with the much busier coastal landscape. The contrast increase of 30 is balanced by a saturation reduction of the same value, as contrast would otherwise increase the saturation unnaturally.

The final layer lifts the stones and the ‘forewater’ by quite a bit, increasing contrast (and decreasing saturation accordingly) as well, to enhance their physical presence in the picture space.

In addition to the local adjustments, a small amount of vignetting has been applied on the background layer to ‘hold the corners’. The overall exposure has been reduced marginally (-0.2) and contrast and saturation have received small increases to give a more filmic rendering to the image. For sharpening I use the minimal ‘pre-sharpening 1’ in the sharpening presets. A few dustspots have been removed, and I have straightened the horizon with the straighten tool, resulting in some minor cropping. It’s hard to frame the camera completely perfectly when the light is changing this quickly!

The overall colour the IQ180 produces is usually very well balanced and while the white balance sometimes needs tweaking it is rarely necessary to do further changes to colour when seeking a natural result.

In the end all these changes are very personal, and in keeping with my current thinking, and desire to emphasise the physicality of nature, and ‘the flow of light’ in a print. I can imagine coming back to it in five years time and preferring the softer and more dreamy feel of the original raw file!

PS The “Dummy” title of the session indicates that I have not created a session for this shoot, but rather browsed from my computer hard drive to find the files. The Dummy is simply my default title of this type of session.

Joe Cornish is a professional landscape photographer, writer, printer and broadcaster based in North Yorkshire, England. Joe is a regular contributor to http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/, and his gallery website is http://www.joecornishgallery.co.uk/

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Removing Color Moiré with Capture One 6

May 10, 2012 by 3 Comments

Capture One Pro 6 includes a powerful tool for fixing color moiré. It can be used both globally on an image and in a local adjustments layer.

Many cameras will, once in a while, show color moiré if high frequency patterns are part of the image.

Most DSLR and Micro Four Thirds cameras use antialiasing filters to avoid or minimize the appearance of moiré. However, many new cameras use lower strength antialiasing filters, or have no antialiasing filter at all in order to prioritize sharpness.

When using these cameras with the kit lens, typically you would hardly ever experience problems with moiré because these lenses are not sharp enough to provoke moiré on high frequency patterns.

But, if you use high quality primes to achieve really sharp images, you also run the risk of getting moiré.

The image on the left is shot with a mirrorless camera using a sharp prime lens. The high frequency pattern on the balcony fence shows strong color moiré. The image on the right is after fixing the color moiré in Capture One Pro 6.

When you suspect a moiré problem in one of your images, you need to zoom to 100% in Capture One’s viewer to verify that there is a real moiré problem – sometimes it is only the low-resolution preview that shows moiré.

Once you have located a real color moiré problem, like in the example below, select the Detail Tool Tab where the Moiré Tool is located.

Color moiré can be removed globally from an image but when you remove color moiré, you risk color bleeding in other parts of the image that you may not pay attention to. Therefore, it is better to apply the color moiré correction in a Local Adjustments Layer.

Step by step guide to remove color moiré:

1. Add a new Local Adjustments Layer

2. Inverse the mask. This is only an intermediate state. By inverting the mask, we work on the whole image which is necessary when setting up the parameters for the Moiré Tool.

3. Set the pattern size to maximum to make sure that the color moiré filter covers a whole period of false colors.

4. Now drag the amount slider until the color moiré disappears. You should use as low a value as possible to remove the moiré.

5. Reduce the pattern size to the minimum size that still fully removes the moiré. Now we have found the minimum values required to remove the moiré. This is important, as it will minimize the risk of unwanted color bleeding.

6. We only want to use the values locally, so invert the mask again.

7. Select a suitable bush size and brush away the color moiré.

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Photography Travelogues: The golden hour at Monte Fitz Roy

April 26, 2012 by 3 Comments

Fitz Roy Sunrise

Most landscape photographers have heard of the ‘alpenglow’, ‘alpine  glow’ or the ‘golden hour’.  It’s generally meant to describe sunlight before sunrise or after sunset, the light coming from below the horizon and being reflected off airborne snow, water or ice particles in the atmosphere. Photographers like it because the light bounced back to earth is strongly coloured and looks great in photographs.

While you can get an alpenglow anywhere, it seems to have its strongest manifestation in alpine regions. Indeed, when I think of Patagonia, I recall images of towering peaks photographed in dramatic lighting with rich reds and oranges. Or perhaps it was just my diet of National Geographic magazines that gave me this impression.

I camped out in the foothills of Monte Fitz Roy in Patagonia for a few nights, hoping to see the mountains lit by the alpenglow in the early morning. I would have preferred the evening alpenglow because then I could sleep in, but sunset wasn’t going to be much use because the mountains would be backlit.

Luck didn’t seem to be on our side when I went to bed that night. It was overcast and drizzling, so unless something dramatic happened, we were in for a drab and grey morning.

The alarm woke me at an ungodly hour. I was travelling with Darren Leal and a group of photographers, and Darren had in mind a location called Duck Lake from which we could photograph Monte Fitz Roy. As I stepped out of my tent, I looked towards the sky, hoping to see stars, but there were none. In fact, the cloud seemed thicker and heavier, if anything.

Even though our viewpoint was only a kilometre or so away, you never know what the weather is going to do and dawn was still an hour away. We grabbed our cameras and tripods and headed along the trail.

From time to time I’d look skyward, hoping against hope for a miracle, but there were no stars to be seen and, after a while, I lost interest. Maybe the following morning would be better. I concentrated on the path ahead which was becoming rougher and more difficult, my torch-light leading the way.

About ten minutes later, I saw a strange light on the ground in the distance. It was a most unusual shape and it took me a little while to work out what it was: the lake. Even better, the light was the clear blue sky being reflected off its glassy surface.

The weather had changed overnight, clearing completely and so the cloud I had seen in camp was a band of rising mist or low cloud. As the light grew stronger, the mountain range began to glow above and in the lake. We had clear weather, all we needed now was the alpenglow to come.

We did get a little alpenglow that morning, but it wasn’t like the photos I had seen in National Geographic all those years ago. Interestingly, we got some great colour at sunrise, but the pre-dawn remained silvery.

Despite this, I love the soft light at this time of the day and, with a little help from Capture One, I was able to bring the colour out.

The original file (above) shows how the camera recorded the scene. I was using a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, rated at ISO 800, using a 100mm Macro lens. There are lots of lovely details in the rock faces and the rising cloud bank seems perfectly positioned – I couldn’t have asked for a better morning.

What I noticed was that there is already a good deal of red and orange in the mountain rock faces, so by increasing the colour saturation in the file, I’m able to create my own alpenglow. However, using the saturation slider alone was not the solution as you can see below.

When using the saturation slider alone, not only are the reds and yellows enhanced, so are the blues of the sky. The effect looks a little unnatural. What I want to do is increase the colour saturation in the reds and yellows without touching the blues.

This is where Capture One Pro can help. Using the Advanced Colour Editor tool, I used the Pick Color Correction tool to select the colours on the mountain face. I then increased the Smoothness to include similar colours, and then increased the Saturation slider to bring the mountain side to life.

Sometimes I will select two or three similar colours and increase the saturation of all three, but to a lesser extent individually. This produces a similar strength, but it is spread over a wider range of colours and looks a little more natural.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com/. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com/.

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Photography Travelogues: At the outskirts of Monte Fitz Roy, Argentina

March 15, 2012 by 6 Comments

Alpine Stream under Monte Fitz Roy

Above El Chaltern and well before Monte Fitz Roy, deep in Patagonia, there’s a wonderful national park with some very photogenic walking  tracks. Even better, you can hire some of the young mountaineers in the area who will carry your gear from camp to camp, just for a bit of training (and a small amount of cash).

We’d spent a couple of nights at a camp above El Chaltern, waiting and watching the weather as it crossed the ranges in the distance, and now we were walking ten kilometres across to the base of Cerro Torre and a second camp. This stream was at one of our rest stops, but a rest from walking inevitably saw us wandering around with our cameras, looking for things to photograph.

I loved this oddly shaped rock, seemingly a towering mountain on a micro scale, surrounded by a flooding stream. Well, perhaps my imagination was getting away with me, but I thought it looked interesting enough to pull out my camera.

There are two techniques used for capturing this image.

The first is the use of a tilt-shift lens, a Canon TS-E 24mm on an EOS 1Ds Mark II. Canon has since upgraded both. Generally speaking, a tilt-shift lens is used to reduce distortion. When photographing buildings, rather than pointing your lens up to include the top of the building (and creating unwanted converging vertical lines), you shift the lens upwards while keeping the camera back parallel to the building. The result is a technically correct perspective.

However, if you shift the lens and tilt the camera the opposite way, you can distort the edges of the image, effectively stretching the scene. This works well with the distant mountains, stretching them so they look a little higher than they actually appeared through a wide-angle lens.

The photo below shows the straight photo without the lens shift. Note the height of the mountains in the background.

Compare this with the following image that includes a lens shift, and a re-framing of the image as well. The two compositions are very similar, but not identical, but the main difference is that the mountains loom larger and appear more impressive. I like this!

The second technique is the use of a neutral density filter. The ND filter allowed me to lengthen my shutter speed. This exposure is 60 seconds at f8 (it’s a 10x ND filter), during which time the water is recorded as a silvery smear and the clouds have also been beautifully blurred.

Compare the result with the same angle taken at a more conventional 1/250 second (see the previous photo). The clouds are more distinct and the water has much sharper reflections. In comparison, I like the ND filter effect because it takes the photographs one step away from reality.

In the days of film, we had to deal with reciprocity failure and colour shifts because the different layers in the film had different responses to light. I think some digital sensors are similarly affected with colour shifts at very long exposures and this shows up as a colour cast. This is the original exposure from the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II before editing in Capture One.

The magenta colour cast can be quite enchanting, but not for every photograph you take. Fortunately, it’s an easy matter to correct the colour balance – simply use the White Balance Picker in Capture One and the image’s natural colours immediately appear.

To process this image, I also had to make some strong adjustments to the Brightness and Saturation. I also added in three Local Adjustments, lightening up the middle ground and adding a little sharpening to the rock.

Peter Eastway is a professional photographer and photography magazine editor based in Sydney, Australia. To see more of his photography, visit http://www.petereastway.com/. Peter also offers an online Landscape Photography MasterClass. Details can be found at http://www.betterphotography.com/.

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