The FILM LOOK with Levels Adjustments?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- In this photography tutorial, we'll take a look at editing images only using the levels adjustment tool in Capture One to manipulate an image in various ways including how to get film looks such as Kodak Portra, Ektar, Fuji Veliva, FC160 and other looks.
If you are a channel sponsor you'll have access to all of these looks as Capture One presets - check out the community tab for the channel.
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Ted Forbes
The Art of Photography
2830 S. Hulen, Studio 133
Fort Worth, TX 76109
USA
My name is Ted Forbes and I make videos about photography. I’ve been making photographs most of my life and I have a tremendously deep passion for photography that I want to share with you on TH-cam.
The Art of Photography is my channel and I produce photography videos to provide a 360 degree look into the world of making images. We all want to get better so lets do this together!
I make videos covering famous photographers, photography techniques, composition, the history of photography, philosophy and much more.
I also have a strong community of photographers who watch the show and we frequently do social media challenges for photographers to submit their own work. I feature the best and most interesting on the show when we do these so come check it out and get involved!
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I've used Levels in Photoshop for lighting adjustments, but always refrained from using it for color correction. This was really helpful and enlightening, and shows the actual potential of this tool. Think I'll be taking another look at that Levels tool next time I'm editing a photo!
I really like that you actually explain what each of the level sliders do. I've watched other C1 tutorials and they just do without explaining the why. For those of us that are not colour theory trained it's really helpful when these concepts are explained properly. Thanks so much!
Add to dictionary: Kodakified: verb: the process of replicating vintage film looks using the digital darkroom circa 2018.
Finally!!! Someone who knows what they’re talking about photography and color on TH-cam !!!
Sir, this is the best video about a creative use of levels that I have seen. Thanks a lot!
Excellent video. I finished a postgrad in photography recently and working on my personal vision and style. One of the things I am trying to get better at is at seeing and manipulating colors, so this video is just perfect for that (I like the levels tool a lot but never used it to manipulate color). I love the cinematic look as well (big movie junkie), so your examples are just perfect. 4 years on and this video is still relevant as ever. Thanks for making it and keeping it here!
Thanks for the video. Because subtlety is such a huge part of this, I will make these changes in a new Capture One layer. I fill the layer and then set the opacity to 80%. Then I do the changes on that layer.
I can then sync those changes to all of the photos in a set and just adjust the opacity up if I want to make it stronger, or down if I want to back off the changes. I find that works great when I want to give a consistent tone to a series of photos, as trying to back off each R,G,B channel in a bunch of photos just too time consuming.
I can't thank you enough for this tutorial video, this will make your channel grow bigger than ever.
"Film is always an interpretation of what we see in the real world"
Lookin' at you there Velvia! ;)
Interestingly, every time I got hit by the "Digital is evil and lies, you must use film for accurate colour reproduction" argument, I would ask what film they use - and the answer was ALWAYS Velvia. And then I would laugh at them. Because Velvia. And Colour accuracy. Doesn't go in the same sentence.
From my experience, Velvia popped the greens a lot too. It was the film you used if you wanted the 'jump out on Instagram' look, before instagram.
Interestingly, here in the UK, Fuji films were generally more popular (amount discerning photographers) than Kodak - so its interesting to hear about how the different weather and climate effected how the different companies developed their film.
Finally a tutorial...thanks, it's been a while would be such an understatement :) Keep them coming please.
Great video, I have burned through a lot of the beginner TH-cam vids now and they have seemed a bit repetitive. Glad I found your channel to take thinks to the next level. Thank you!
Top shelf tutorial. Used Levels before to tweak colours but never fully grasped what was happening. Enjoyed the connections to the days of film. Thank you!
please make more tutorials like this
I've always used level adjustments but never thought on this approach. There's always something new to learn. Thanks!!
aaaand with this video you finally got my sub. Very nice to hear the deeper motivation and the discussion about film. As a child of the digital age I missed out on playing with film. Thanks
Great video! The sequential presentation of the concepts made the tool look so simple but yet it is so powerful. Thanks 🙏!
I find it interesting that people seem to think digital gives a more realistic look, and is not at the discretion of engineers. Instead of Kodak choosing our colors, it's just the camera manufacturers. Funny that we reached "perfection" and then found it a bit boring. Thanks for the tips! I've been meaning to give Levels more of a chance ...
P.S. Love the historic nugget about Fuji's film characteristics!
I do still think digital makes an image more "realistic". But that's more because of the sharpness or clarity rather. And personally, that's why I'm NOT in favor of digital technology for my own work (even outside of photography). Even though about 10-15 years ago I became fascinated with digital technology in photography, because it lets you take such clear and sharp images as much as you want, after a few years I found myself adding things like grain and even blur. Most pixel-peepers would probably find that insane, but I indeed got bored with the clarity and felt I needed to add some "flavor", and more than just changing levels and colors or anything like that. - It just has this undeniable "directness" that, some people find amazing (and it is), but at some point becomes boring and rather unattractive to me. So I prefer the "directness" of light slammed onto film, as opposed to having these almost hyper realistic digital captures.
I do mostly agree about it looking more realistic, but also I wish I could find the information I'm looking for about how the actual sensor data looks before it's interpreted by a RAW converter (a big mess). So I should have also added that Adobe or Capture One (etc) are also doing the work of the film and paper companies. But I guess that's just getting off track ... I have also found myself seriously bored with "perfection." I feel like if I were a product or architecture photographer, it would be great, but maybe we are finally reaching the point where we are choosing different film types and different cameras for different work. Outside of billboards, it's almost as if most people expects a digital camera to be able to fill all roles. Versatility is great, but to round back to Ted's topic, I think the Sony/mirrorless revolution is our best bet at a camera adaptable enough to properly cover more ground well. Still waiting for the 8x10 feel, though ...
Excellent video and it's clear you have a film background and understood how film color casting works. This is a lost art that I used to implement while as a photographer when using film we implemented the subtle adjustment to color balance Kodak ektachrome 64 film stock every day we worked. You're very subtle about how you inform the new digital user what they need to understand about photography and color use, instead of telling them plug n play presets which doesn't explain the science of color. As I said excellent video! Thanks for sharing!
Another excellent tutorial. I like the focus on specific tools (and end goals) rather than trying to cover all elements of editing a specific image. These software modules are ultimately individual tools so they deserve to be appraised on their own contribution to the whole. I'm currently focussed on Capture one 11's layers and masking. Not as advanced as Photoshops but when you consider they are now part of the non destructive raw process, the potential is incredible.
Hi Ted. Great video. I've been using Capture One 11 for about a week or so now and love it. I've learned so much from TH-cam, including your videos!!!
One thing I've started to use on almost everything is layers. I think that if you do these level manipulations that you show on 1 or more layers, you can really go to town and even use masks.
Handy tip: create the layer, set the opacity to 70 or 80 before doing anything. That way you can dial down the effects, but even up a little if you wanted to afterwards.....
Keep them coming......
Oh, one thing I forgot: you asked for ideas for future videos. I would like to find out how to do the "orange & teal" look in C1 Pro 11. I've seen several for LR, but none for C1...... I know it's being used a lot, I just want to see if I can recreate something similar and then play around with other color combos......
Still trying to find my " signature look".....
Thanks again.
Thanks for the Capture One demonstration. I tried to like Lightroom but I always found myself coming back to Capture One, which I use almost exclusively now. There's not that many videos online compared to Lightroom. As always, keep up the great work!
This was so incredibly helpful. You explain things so well. Thank you!!
Thanks Ted. I have watched a lot of Capture One webinars but couldn't find one on this particular aspect. I really like Capture One for my Fujifilm stuff. Excellent demos and very interesting references to film stock looks.
Best explanation I’ve ever seen. Now I almost understand and will try to put to use on my next session with C1 20.
Super interesting point towards the end about Fujifilm being designed for weather in Tokyo!
Great tutorials! I’m switching from Lightroom to c1 at the moment. This really helps!
Patrick van Nerum
Same for me. I also switched from Lightroom to Capture One. It is a great piece of software, specially for Fujifilm files.
"Subtlety is the key" The biggest value I get from your tutorials is not where to find the settings and use them, but how you think about and see the results. I did a Command-F with the TH-cam transcript open - 19 results for "little bit" (35 for "little" itself) . hehe
thanks so much for this video! i've been looking for old film presets and LUTs. now i can make my own!
really enjoyed this, started watching just out of curiosity and half way through loaded up some images to play around with.
Learning how to use curve's each channel to get the tone I want and that film-ish look took my post processing skills to another level. And it looks like the level adjustment tool in capture one is easier to use than lightroom's curve tool. Great video.
Thank you. I loved this. I am always trying to get a ‘look’ to my photos and I like the idea of researching the film looks and then taking and editing an image with that as the end goal. Suddenly my photography has become even more interesting. Thanks.
One tool to rule them all! thx for this great video!
I thought I understood levels, but it was great to see how to work the RGB part of it. Very helpful
Good call staying in for this one because Texas is like living in a toaster oven right now! Keep up the good content! 📷✌
Thanks for the great tutorial. I think this is my favorite video of yours so far, next to the artist series. Levels adjustment would be awesome to see as well.
Nice work! I didn’t realize it was simple and doesn’t require years of practice.
Oh thank you so much. Have been baffled by this histogram stuff for a long time.
You are my best photogrophy teacher! Thank you :))
Great tutorial! I've used Adobe products exclusively as a photographer and filmmaker, so naturally haven't used levels much. Now I actually understand how to use this tool much better, and I can also see how this will apply to curves in terms of getting more specific color results with curves! Looking forward to a video on the curves tool too!
very cool ted! nice breakdown of getting those film stock feels
what a great tutorial!
thanks for sharing this with us!
film just has the best look ever!
Very useful video even for regular users. It might be worth mentioning Capture one's EXP. Warning feature, which helps you in preventing clipping in real time.
This is one great video! Can hardly wait for the next one. Thanks...
Thansk Ted, that was the sort fo video I was looking for. I am a CapOne user and have been expeirmenting with the Levels tool. This was eductaional.
Really useful thank you Ted actually I will watch it again
Thank you so much for the Capture One tutorial using the levels adjustments. This helped so much. On another note, I just bought a ciro flex at an estate sale auction and came across your "old" video for it. :-) Great Stuff!
Thanks for this! I've not been digging into the channels to tweak my colours with levels. Definitely will play with it more now!
Are you going to continue with this tutorial series?? Enjoyed the first few!!
Loved it... I have been learning a lot from you. Thanks a ton.
I'm pretty sure that the handles you call contrast is really the gamma adjustment. Basically it adjusts the 50 percent grey portion.
Contrast on the other hand would move the values away from each other. Gamma doesn't do that per se.
Cool! 😍 Good to know! I don’t have Capture One but I will try this in Photoshop.
Very interesting video. Thank you for making it. I am a lightroom user and look forward to your curves adjustment video. In the meantime I will start playing around with it. I read an article on dictionary's and words. Essentially a word exists the moment it is thought of, written or said. It may not be in an dictionary, but it exists the moment you ascribe a meaning to it.
This helped me so much!!! Finally I can get the look i want. I made a chart of the colors hehe so its easy me to refernce instead of keep going back and forth. Thank you so much!!!
Thanks for the tutorial. Great explanations for starters, and also detailed knowledge for intermediate. Still picked up a couple of tips, even though this could be the 10th+ video on using levels. Loved how you talk about intentions, that helped. Subscribing!
Great Channel. I’m fairly new to photography. One thing that has confused me is there are so many options in how the picture can look, I wonder what you’re supposed to go for. I’ve been playing around with levels adjustment a lot recently. I love the control. I guess as you were getting at, it’s down to the photographer to go for what they want. I suppose in turn this also means using the tools that they want in post processing, as that is another thing that has confused me: So many controls that seem to do similar things. So now I will go for the look that I want (unique to me) and use the tools that I feel get me there in the way I want. Thanks for helping me focus.
You should do more tutorials like this one, and about film looks
Great video, Ted. Using more than one channel also seems to make the warming up or cooling down effect look more 'natural', for want of a better expression.
I used colour balance for this for a while. I usually push the highlights toward yellow a touch, shadows toward blue a touch, and mids towards green and red to take the magenta out of skin and replace it with nice red tones.
Great tutorial... I'm a darktable user and there is a similar tool, I'm going to give it a go! Thanks.
🙌🏽👏🏽 🎤drop. I’m going to have to watch this on loop to take all this in. Thanks!
Wow, I found this to be a very interesting video. I listened in awe how you shaped the colours to get a specific film look. I have been learning similar ways in lightroom with the curves adjustments. But I have still so much to learn.
I would appreciate if you could do a similar video for us Adobe Photoshop owners. Not have Capture One and I do not want to go down the path to purchase another program as I have Adobe and Luminar. There is enough for me to learn to us these properly. Thanks again.
Excellent tutorial, shows the power of the simple Levels tool, but you should perhaps have pointed out that you can use Levels as a local adjustment.
I’ve been trying to find ways to make my portraits have a “painterly” look, a nice example of something close is the work of Alex Stoddard. I know it has a lot to do with studio lights, but tips for editing in that style would be really cool too.
Great. More on using C1 creatively and things beyond basic editing please. There are few tutorials on all the possibilities of curves and levels. Thanks.
Thanks Ted. Great video. I’ve been getting into DxO Photolab Elite with Filmpack 5 but this looks great too. Best wishes
THanks for this video, I always use levels in C1, but never use the color tabs, just for the contrast.Normally for the color use the color balance tool, wich is also very powerful.
I sometimes use the levels tool for its simplicity to add color grading, but the curves tool provides even more options. You can tone the shadows and highlights by moving the corners of the individual channels vertically or horizontally, but that tool offers even more flexibility with mid-tones, because instead of one control point in the middle, you can add as many as you like.
Yup. This is a poor man's curve
Amazingly useful. Many thanks for that!
ah thanks Ted! I've been trying out this level tool in CO, so it is very helpful.
Hi Ted, would be cool if you make a studio tour to show us your place and gears :)
Yes Lightroom please. Only editor I seem to use these days. Great vid!
Great tutorial. Would you mind explaining the difference between using levels over curves to adjust colors? Thanks!
Hi Ted,
Thanks for this great video. I use a plug in to simulate the film look of a variety of film types. I also have a bit of a project going where I scan my film images to compare and contrast with the digital work so I have a benchmark for some comparison. I still respect and anjoy the the techniques used in the photography of the past as I feel this makes me a better photographer.
Thank you, this was very practical and informative. Please more videos like this on Ps and Capture One.
Thanks
Thanks for the info, but I couldn't help myself when you said removing blue would give yellow!! I had to dig up and I quote from CaptureOne Document: Each slider modifies the shadows, mid-tones and highlights, respectively, by adding or removing color. For example, moving the shadow slider in the Blue channel to the left adds blue to the shadows. Moving it to the right removes blue, revealing a green tint.
Thank you. Honestly, I never thought to use the levels tool to make these types of adjustments.
Very informative tutorial. Thank you
Hi Ted, are you going to take a look at the Canon M50? I know you normally don't do camera reviews but I would like to hear your opinion on this camera. Btw big fan of your channel.
Greetings from Austria
Hi Ted - I love your videos. I am curious as to what camera you were using to film this tutorial. Also, because you like point and shoot cameras, could you please put a point and shoot section on your web site. That would be great. Thank you, Dave
Was there ever that mentioned "other video about working with curves"? Couldn't find it yet
Nice video. I have been using Phase One 11 for about one year with my 7Rii. Using Levels adjustment option looks easy and very satisfying. However I believe the RGB selection is an option with the Pro version!
Hi Ted,
This is a very very interesting and amazing video. I learned a lot! Thank you 👌😊
Lot’s of greetings,
Dennis
very interesting and helpful video ... thank you!
I would like to see a video on using the color editor making it go past the Hue slider limit to be able to change the color to others in other ranges. Like turn a blur into a red or turn green grass into a more hay looking color and so on. Thanks
Great video, as usual. I use Lightroom, but the idea is the same. If you understand colours, the tool won't be a problem
I was surfing through your videos and stumbled upon this one on levels adjusting. I find it very inspiring. I had no idea I had so many options to adjust. I am looking for info on how to make B&W macro photos more appealing to viewers at art shows. Do you have any videos that may come close to explaining this idea in the B&W world? Many thanks. - LuAnn Thatcher Photography.
Thank you for this content. It was really helpful. I want to know, how to get the polished look as in Lightroom, along with Vibrance in Capture One. and What are LUTS that Adobe people keep talking of.
Nice tutorial!
Greetings from Siberia.
Thank you very much. Very useful.
This is a great tutorial, Ted. I've tried, with other processing software, to attempt exactly this and was not very successful. Thanks so much. By the way, are photo assignments still in a holding pattern?
Awesome Video!!!! Thanks!!!
Photoshop with many layers of Curves is where it's at. You can change Curves on any RGB channel, as well as the RGB channels together, but then choose blending modes as well as use layer masks to choose where these color corrections happen on your image.
Great video. I'd like to develop my own look and feel for my photographs and this video inspired me to use the levels adjustments to do that. Maybe you could also cover similar techniques for B&W photos?
Thanks for the great information in this video. A succinct description of what you can do with the colour levels (and why you'd want to). You give a few examples of the highlight/shadow colour biases of a few films. I was mostly a b/w film user in my time so my experience with these biases is minimal (though I do remember Kodachrome 25 and Velvia fondly).
I was wondering if you could expand a bit more on the subject of the colour bias or "inherent look" of a wider variety of colour films? (my favourite search engine wasn't much help here...)
Amazing video Ted. Going to check out this app ASAP!
Thanks! You'll love Capture One…
Good stuff, pretty cool and I feel added a feather to my cap; like some more of this. With that in mind I'll also want something if there's any, a software for retouching and using blade-like scalpels and colour pigments we used to make some photographs kind of surreal look to an somewhat uninteresting and ordinary picture. Now a days the kind isn't seen or discussed much about and I'd like you to light upon this technique achieved by any software.
descent explanation, man!
Hi Ted, with the demise of Kodachrome 64 * it would be nice to see your take on how digital can ‘emulate the classic film stock’ which are no longer available today. * the processing requirements of ‘64 were horrendous (I’m a chemist) and required a dedicated machine. Steve McCurrey shot the last roll...it was one of my favourites and I’d like to get the ‘look’ back into my photographs.
Hi! I found your video very informative. I particularly liked when you referred to colour slides and the if theory of reusing more up to date chemicals - I must say I never had that mental approach before and it is quite interesting.
I must say I am quite new to Capture One, and when I say new I just downloaded the trial version coming from Lightroom. The reason I did is because I wanted to ry something different to open my Fuji XH1 raw files.
At this point I am still evaluating how big of a change moving to Capture One would be in terms of changing the workflow that I am used to. Also how it would affect the images that I took in the past and wanted to revisit.
so far I have two questions that I was not able to find an answer maybe you could help.
1 - Does Capture One reads Fuji colour profile (Fujichrome Velvia etc. I know Lightroom does)?
2 - when I apply a few keywords to an image, Adobe Bridge can't read them?
Looking forward to more content on the topic. Thank you
Ted, great tutorial. I agree about not going for "presets" and pursuing your own vision in photography. I did a search for Capture One and couldn't find much about the software. I'm using Adobe CS5/PS and have a levels feature but nothing like what I saw in your video using Capture One. Can you point me to a couple of URLS? Thanks Jan