Crop outside the image!

May 5, 2011 by 3 Comments

Once in a while when correcting an image for keystone or lens distortion, you might find that you end up losing an important part of the image.

In the crop tool in Capture One, you have the option to allow cropping outside the image.  When correcting for keystone or lens distortion in Capture One Pro 6, this can be a very helpful feature.

At first it may not seem to be a useful solution of the problem, but when combined with the Content Aware Fill in Adobe Photoshop CS5, it turns out to be a super easy and powerful solution.

The image above was shot with a wide angle lens as it was impossible to get further away from the castle. On the right side, you see the image after Keystone correction. Only by allowing Capture One to crop outside the image, was it possible to keep the entire castle building within the image. After cropping, the missing lower left foreground was easily fixed with Content Aware Fill.

In the Crop Tool in Capture One, you find the checkbox that allows you to crop outside the image. Once set, you can make a crop that covers the entire castle.

With the Magic Wand Tool in Adobe Photoshop CS5, you can easily select the gray areas from the regions outside the original image. Once selected, use the Content Aware Fill option.

The Content Aware Fill will fill in the missing part of the image with contents from the adjacent regions in the real image.  It is done so intelligently that you, in most cases, won’t be able to do a better fill manually.

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Keystone – 80 % vs. 100 % correction

April 21, 2011 by Leave a comment

Capture One Pro 6 has a very strong and efficient Keystone Correction tool.

Keystone correction is made super simple by the use of the 3 different Keystone correction cursor tools:  Keystone Vertical, Keystone Horizontal and Keystone.

When using the Keystone cursor tool, the image will be corrected for both Keystone as well as any horizontal or vertical misalignment.

Capture One Pro 6’s method for correcting Keystone is mathematically identical to how an image would be corrected if it was shot with a technical camera.

When using the Keystone Vertical cursor tool for correcting the keystone of a building shot from below, Capture One Pro 6 will automatically set the amount of correction to 80 % and not 100 %. The 80 % correction looks more natural to the human brain than the 100 % correction.

The images above are three versions of a building shoot from below. The 80 % correction, automatically set when using the Keystone Vertical cursor tool, makes the building look straight while the 100% correction makes the building look wider at the top than at the bottom.

Use Keystone Correction at 80 % to achieve a natural look

If the image above had been shot with a technical camera with an ideal lens pointing horizontally, the image would be identical to the rightmost version with 100 % correction. In this version, the height of each window in the building are exactly the same and this confuses the brain, as we expect the windows to look smaller and smaller the further away they are. In the middle version with 80 % correction, the height of the windows look just a little bit smaller the further away they get. This is just enough to allow the brain to accept the building as looking naturally parallel and seen from below.

If you shoot a building from a position where you are able to point your camera almost horizontally, then you may want a 100 % correction.  You can still use the Keystone Vertical cursor tool, but you will need to change the default 80 % correction in the tool to 100 %.

How to use the Keystone cursor tools:

Step 1: Select the Keystone Vertical cursor tool from either the Keystone Correction tool or from the general cursor-tool toolbar. 

Step2:  Align the vertical guides with the vertical lines in the building. To obtain better precision, you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to zoom into and out of the image while aligning the guides.

Step 3: Press the Apply button and the image will be corrected. Notice that the Amount slider has automatically been set at 80%. Also notice that the image has been rotated, as the camera was not perfectly aligned horizontally.

When using the Keystone cursor tools Keystone Horizontal or Keystone then a 100 % correction is used as this often makes more sense for these kinds of corrections.

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Chromatic Aberration?

March 24, 2011 by 4 Comments

 

Zoom lenses covering large zoom ranges often compromise image quality in various ways – but almost all show some degree of chromatic aberration.  Especially zoom lenses going ultra wide have a tendency to show lots of chromatic aberration in the wide end of the zoom range.

The Lens Tool in Capture One Pro 6 can automatically fix chromatic aberration in any RAW file by analyzing the content of the image.  This ensures the best possible correction customized for your images compared to corrections based on a few lenses in a lab.

With tool presets for the Lens Tool, you can create presets for your own lenses.  Lens Tool presets work very well even if your capture conditions are not 100% identical.

The two pictures above show a 200 % zoom of the left side of a picture which has been shot with a prosumer zoom lens at its widest zoom range. The left image shows a severe amount of chromatic aberration with lots of magenta and green colors along all vertical structures in the image. This level of chromatic aberration is quite disturbing and should be fixed. To the right, you see the same area after it has been fixed in the Lens Tool in Capture One Pro 6. All the false colors have been removed and the image looks natural.

 

Create your own presets to deal with chromatic aberration

To fix a problem with chromatic aberration, open the Lens Correction Tool found in the Lens Tool tab.  Under the drop down menu for chromatic aberration select analyze.  After a few seconds, a correction based on the result from the analysis will be applied.  If you have zoomed into an area of the image with severe chromatic aberration, you will immediately see the fantastic effect of the tool.

When photographing landscapes with wide primes, I usually shoot at f5.6-f10. With the lenses I use, I find that the amount of chromatic aberration is practically constant in that f-stop range which means that you can make presets that works perfectly.

When using zoom lenses, the amount of chromatic aberration is highly dependent on the zoom rate (focal length) which makes it more difficult to use presets. Nevertheless, I find them quite useful.  For my carry-around zoom lens, I find that I only need to fix chromatic aberration for the widest end. I have made three presets: one for 17mm, one for 20mm and one for 23mm.   

The benefit of using a well-made preset is that you can correct a series of shoots very fast by copying and pasting the correction from the preset to a selection of images.  Remember that the Search and Filters functionality in Capture One Pro 6 can help you find all shots made with a specific lens and focal length.

When selecting an image for making a preset, you should select an image which has been shot at your typical shooting f stop and focus distance. It is also important that your target image contains structures all the way from the center to the edges of the image. If you plan to shoot an image for making a good preset, consider turning your camera to insure good coverage from corner to corner like in the image below.

Often you will see that zoom lenses with large zoom ranges also suffer from barrel distortion and some sharpness fall-off. When making your presets, you can off cause add these types of corrections to your preset.

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Creative Split Toning

March 7, 2011 by 16 Comments

Capture One Pro 6 allows you to adjust an image with the Levels Tool with individual control of each color channel. This allows you to perform creative split toning where you can tone the shadows and the highlights individually.

The above are examples of images with split toning via the Levels Tool in Capture One Pro 6.  Only the upper left image is without toning.

 

Work with split tones in the Levels Tool

Start by making a neutral white balance for the image. This will help you later if you want to achieve the same look for another image by reusing the adjustments. Remember, you can always save the tool adjustments in a tool preset.

For an easier overview, I rearrange the tool layout by adding a total of three Levels Tools to the exposure tab. Doing so, I can have one Levels Tool for each of the three color channels.

To tone the shadows with, for instance, more Red, increase the Red Shadow target level. To decrease the Red in the shadow, increase the Red Shadow levels. 

In the highlights, it works the opposite way.  To tone the highlights with more Red, decrease the Highlight levels slider.  To decrease the Red in the highlights, decrease the Highlight target level slider.

When toning via the R, G and B levels, it is good to remember the color circle.  For instance, if you want a yellow highlight you will have to work with the color opposite yellow in the color circle which is the Blue color. So decreasing Blue means more yellow.

The figure above shows the color circle with the position of the primary colors R, G and B and the complementary colors C, M and Y opposite the primary colors. Having this color circle in mind, it is obvious that Yellow is less Blue, Magenta is less Green and Cyan is less Red.

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Working with graduation filters in Capture One Pro 6

February 17, 2011 by 3 Comments

You can easily make a Local Adjustment Layer in Capture One Pro 6 that will work similarly to a physical graduation filter.

Graduation filters can often be used to improve landscape images. Typically, the sky is too bright compared to the foreground and in a normally exposed image this will lead to loss of color intensity in the sky as well as loss of definition of the clouds.  A graduation filter can balance this out in a pleasing and natural looking way.

A Local Adjustment Layer in Capture One Pro 6 can be copied to other images.  A graduation type Local Adjustment Layer will often work equally well for similarly composed images, and the ability to paste the local adjustments to other images can speed up the enhancement process dramatically.

The image on the left has come straight out of the camera. It is a typical landscape example where the sky is too bright compared to the foreground and the haze makes the blue sky look muddy. The image on the right has been corrected in Capture One Pro 6 with a graduation filter like Local Adjustment Layer.

How to make a graduation filter in Capture One Pro 6

To make a graduation filter in the Local Adjustments Tool, you start by adding a new Adjustments Layer.

The secret in making a graduation like adjustments layer is to set the Hardness to 0 and to select a brush with a large Size. The effect of the graduation filter needs to blend into the image very softly in order for the image to look natural. When adjusting for the right Brush size, I place the Brush cursor almost in the upper left corner of the image. I adjust the size until the circle fills approximately 80 % of the height of the sky. Then, I draw the mask by moving the curser parallel to the upper limit of the image all the way from the left side to the right side of the image.

We have now established the graduated mask for the local adjustment layer. Now it is time to set up the needed adjustments. For this example, I bring down the brightness to around -20 to -30.  It helps a lot but the sky still has a muddy blue color and an additional correction in the Color Editor is needed.  I pick the color of the muddy blue sky and make a correction of the Saturation by +23 and Lightness by -15.

Often, I add a second graduation filter like adjustments layer to optimize the foreground.  The principles are the same as before but this time the graduation is for the bottom and up: Set Hardness to 0 and adjust Size until the outer circle covers about 80% of the distance from the bottom of the image to the horizon.  Again, draw the mask parallel to the edges of the image but this time along the bottom of the image.  Often I bring up the brightness a bit and add some Color Edits.

Once you master the basic ideas of the graduation filter it is easy to experiment to see what works best for you.  I often try to optimize the graduation for a better match to the actual split line between the sky and the landscape. Instead of drawing the mask straight parallel to the edges of the image I try to largely follow this split line. If you do so, then make sure that you apply the mask fully at the edges of the image. Remember that if you optimize the graduation mask for a specific image then it should only be used for this.

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