Dealing with haze when using telephoto lenses

March 17, 2011 by 3 Comments

When shooting landscape pictures with telephoto lenses, you will sometime see that the colors are influenced by haze. It is not just a question of having the right White Balance. It also has to do with the fact that when an object is viewed over a long distance, it will be viewed through lots of air which in itself adds color to the object.

Sometimes, this colored haze just adds the right look and feel to the image but at other times it may just be an unwanted distraction to the landscape.

Capture One Pro’s levels adjustments tool for individual color channels is the perfect tool to deal with such haze problems. 

Use individual levels adjustments

The image on the left shows some typical long distance haze which makes the colors look a little washed out with a distinct bluish cast. The image on the right has been corrected with individual Levels Tools for each color channel. Not only has the bluish cast disappeared, but the blue sky and the green color of the mountain slopes now appear much more natural.

When looking at the uncorrected RAW image from the above example in the Levels Tool, you will notice that the histogram doesn’t start at 0 and that the R, G and B histograms start at quite different levels.  This is a sure sign of haze.

To compensate for the haze effect, open the Levels Tool for the individual color channels, and set the shadow sliders at the beginning of each histogram and the highlight sliders at the end. Only an individual Levels Tool can correct for this type of haze.

Filed under Capture One Tips & Tricks, Photography Best Practice Tagged with , , , , ,

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.

Filed under Capture One Tips & Tricks Tagged with , , ,

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