Capture One Pro Tips - Dehaze & Contrast Improvements with Levels + Curves
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 พ.ค. 2020
- Learn how to "dehaze" any low-contrast image with two simple Capture One tools that can deliver a much cleaner result than a simple slider, allowing for fine-tuning of the final result.
In this video, you'll discover how to use the Curves and Levels panels to adjust your image's histogram (and therefore contrast) and remove haze/fog/pollution or other causes of low-clarity raw images.
Presented by Phase One and Capture One Pro Ambassador - Commercial, Landscape & Cityscape Photographer Paul Reiffer. All video content © www.paulreiffer.com/ and may not be reproduced without permission.
Recorded using Capture One Pro v20.1 on an Apple Mac Pro 16-core Xeon with 192GB memory, 2x Radeon Pro Vega II Graphics cards and 4TB SSD.
And don't forget, the discussion continues on our Behind The Scenes Facebook group: / paulreifferlive - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
Very useful lesson - I can‘t Imagine any reason to dislike this... thank you very much, Paul
Excellent concise description of how to de-haze.
this is one of the best I have ever seen, not only you show people how too do it but what exactly you trying to get and why you are doing it this way. VERY GOOD quick tutorial, THANKS for Sharing.
Wow, now I finally understand the Curve tool. Thanks!
By far, the best explanation and demonstration of the intent and use of the curves tool I have ever seen. And I've looked at a lot of them.
Thanks Bob - they're not as scary as people think!
Paul, I just wanted to say that this video has been the best (for me to understand) these tools. Your explanations were the proverbial lightbulb turning on. Thanks!
Great to hear Brian, and glad it helped! Sometimes knowing the background to why a tool behaves a certain way helps more than the tool itself!
Paul's voice makes any tutorial easier to follow!
Just brilliant! You are one of Capture One's biggest assets, IMO!
Glad it helped Jane! :-)
Another wonderful tutorial very well presented Paul, thanks a lot!
Simple & powerful, as C1: many thanks. Plus tailored order for personalized workflow: Histogram, Levels, Curve, HDR, Clarity.
You de-hazed two important tools while de-hazing the images, good job.
Ah - I see what you did there...! ;-)
Finally I fully understand how the curves work in a simple way. Thanks 🙏
Excellent tutorial as all the others, very clear, useful and to the point 👍🔝
Thanks for that video! Finally I’m able to understand levels.
Glad it helped!
Wooow what a shoot with bunny :D
Nice one. Thanks Paul!
Pure, gold-level content. You're a natural educator Paul!
When is Capture One going to hire you? These are the best C1 tutorials I've come across. Not just topics, but the pace, vocals, and production value are top-notch. Look forward to seeing more Paul!
Ha ha! - Well, I like taking pictures too much, so an office job doesn't really work for me ;-)
I am a novice photographer and completely green to the world of Raw editing. This was so easy to follow. Well done sir!
Glad it was helpful Marc!
Seriously one of the best explanations of levels and curves. This is awesome.
Just moving from LR to Capture One and your explanation was to the point, made perfect sense, and was easy to follow. Thank you so much.
By far the clearest explanation that I have seen on levels and curves. Perfectly structured and to the point. I also appreciate your approach to dehaze with better control of the outcome. I save this video for future reference. Thank you for your work.
Love it! Your explanation of what the "sliders" are actually doing is much appreciated. Best training I've seen on this! Thanks a bunch...
Glad it was helpful :-)
👍👍👍 I've probably watched all of David Grover‘s tutorials, and he's a luminary. this channel here is the best possible addition. Thank you!
Thanks for putting this together! This is the best explanation on the subject I have seen so far.
A great explanation of these tools Paul I’d go so far to say it’s a deep dive so thorough and giving meaningful clear dialogue that’s really helped immensely and hence I’m a new sub!
very nice and concise, thank you
Superb tutorial. You really should tutor the others that give tutorials!
Thank you for finally shedding light in my darkness regarding levels. I had an Ahaa moment with the input and output
Quality Tutorial. Thank you.
Nice tutorial. I enjoyed it.
Thank you so much. You have clarified a section of Capture One for me that I had struggled to understand. I'm now subscribed. Keep up the great content!
Thanks Ron - Most of Capture One isn't actually that scary, just needs some experimentation :-)
This is great - the best explanation of the Levels slider I've seen. Previously, I've just heard folks describing it as "remapping" input levels to output levels but lacked the clear description of what's actually happening as Paul just provided. Thanks Paul!
Glad it was helpful!
This is truly an excellent tutorial that gets right to the point.
Thank you for a succinct and valuable video. You've also explained in general the use of those features.
Thank you thank you!! Not having dehaze was one of the most frustrating things I note about C1. This tutorial was so much clearer to understand than many other C1 tutorials out there. Great Job! I subscribed to your channel. Looking forward to more of your videos!
You're very welcome! :-)
Thank you for the great explanation of the curves tool, Paul. I appreciate it. You are very good at explaining how the software operates.
You're very welcome!
Your explanations are always spot on, thank you very much, I really appreciate your C1 contents.
As Bob Lab below me said, the best tutor I have ever had. Complements David Grover nicely 🤩😝 Glad he name dropped you yesterday. Liked and subbed. Cheers.
Again, I have learned more in depth.... I had used the levels and curves before, but not to this extent and only to make my picture a little bit better than what it was. I didn't really know WHY the changes were coming about. Now I know the theory behind the tools I can use them more effectively going forward. Thank you, Paul!!
Great to hear Bob - and good luck with the editing in future! :-)
Fantastic session - many thanks!
Perhaps the best explanation of how to use the Levels and Curves I've seen to date! Thank you so much. Subscribing right now!
You're welcome Judy! And welcome to the madness as we start to play with other subjects...!
Great tutorial, Paul. Thank you so much!
This was very well explained.
I learnt quite a lot in this video.
Thank you
very clearly explained for levels! love it
Thank you, Mr. Reiffer.
Hi Paul, Your video is the best I’ve seen so far on how to fix dehaze in a controlled way in Capture One. Very well done 👏👍. Lot’s of greetings, Dennis 🇳🇱
Glad it helped Dennis :-)
Paul Reiffer - Photographer Hi Paul, After watching your great tutorial again, I have a question. In the curves tool you use the RGB tab and not the Luma tab. Is this what you advise to use when dealing with ‘dehazing’?
Well done, C1 is a powerful tool but there's definitely a learning curve to using it.
Paul, thanks so much for this clinical tutorial
Very clearly explained. Thanks!
Another excellent video, great presentation
Thank you! Really big thanks for making this 👏🏼
Finally !!! thank you
Wow! Thanks a lot. Very useful tips !
Wow!! That really helped me in finally understanding what Curves actually do... Now I need to see and get it to work in my workflow, but finally.... I have much better understanding of what the tool actually does. Thank you so much! Subscribed to your channel.., eager to learn more of Capture one and editing in general :)
thanks for this! and, the more I use capture one 20, the more I like it. great tool and excellent video!
Love the new update
Thanks for an amazing tutorial.
You're very welcome! Glad it helped :-)
Absolutely fantastic tutorials! Been using C1 for years and learing new stuff with each of your videos! There should have been a link on the C1 web site to your stuff years ago.
Thanks! - Glad they're useful :-)
thanks for the tips it really help alot
Paul watched this video and 🤯helped my milkyway shot. Thanks.
Yeah - another great use for levels and curves - keep playing! :-)
Very good 👌
Very helpful
Muchas gracias
Great!
Thanks!
No problem Victor - thanks!
I just binged watched the videos from May 18th & 19th - again, you are very good at explaining both "How & Why" to make Capture One adjustments. Are you making a full Capture One tutorial for sale?
Probably not - but there will be quite a few more of these being uploaded soon!
this tutorial series is just awesome, I was able to take an incredible amount of input with me, thank you very much.
I've had a question for a long time. in levels tooll you always work with the lower input points. so far so good. But what are the output points above for? I would be interested to know that I have heard so far of always leaving them unchanged.
thank you very much
Klaus
Hi Klaus,
So - imagine you have a high contrast image, but you now want to limit the to be lower contrast. Say, the brightest parts of the image, wash them out into midtones - same with the shadows.
It can be quite a popular, contemporary, look for fashion - faded, limited contrast - and you can use levels or curves to achieve it.
Hope that makes sense!
Boy, do I wish I had discovered your channel earlier! As an educator, I found your explanation to be a model of clarity - no pun intended. Now subscribed - thank you! One addition to suggest might be the judicious application of a linear grad mask via a layer to the adjustments since in many cases the degree of dehazing desired is proportional to the distance into the image. (This can also rapidly look unnatural, of course, hence 'judicious'.)
Question: Does it make any difference (or is there any utility) in shifting the 'hump' of a low-contrast image to the middle of the histogram by upping exposure *before* adjusting via levels and curves?
Thanks Martin :-)
To your question, as long as the data isn't too far in the shadows, bringing it up in the first instance won't have any negative effect, BUT, I don't believe it will make any positive impact either. The data is either usable or not - so if I spread it from the middle, or stretch it from the left, shouldn't make too much of a difference.
The risk with doing that, however, is instead of stretching the upper part of the data towards the highlights, you could shift the lower shadows into more of the visible range, with more visible noise (although, again, as you stretch it back down again that should go away again too).
Very very good video, thanks. Switching from Lightroom to Capture One at the Moment, since Lightroom is nearly impossible to use for me without lags and freezes, eventhough I tried to tweak it with all the tipps and hints which are out there.
No lags in Capture One at all.
Do you know, if it's possible to create some HDR and Panorama pictures with C1 like in Lightroom? This is the only feature I'm missing so far at the moment.
Glad it was helpful Mex!
At this point, there's no native stitching in Capture One - the focus is on being the best raw processor, rather than pixel editor (of which there are many, many, options out there!) :-)
hi Paul, just question.. how does all that extreme pulling information affect the noise of the image? would that be the next step? stunning work of yours !! greetings from San Francisco, Jose
Absolutely - too much pulling from the shadows can bring up noise, so it's one to be careful of. Ideally we don't want to be pulling more than +20-30 in a levels basis - more than that would suggest there's something wrong with the initial exposure.
Thank you. That was really helpful. However, I think the Dehaze slider in Lightroom does more than tonal corrections. It definitely affects the colors, too. For example, it darkens the blues in the image. This what makes it a great tool for black & white conversions of landscape images in Lightroom. But it does more things to the colors that I don't truly understand. Do you know anything about it and is there a way to mimic the effects the Dehaze slider in terms of color changes in Capture One?
I think that's my point Christian - the dehaze slider does indeed affect certain colours differently - and for that reason I don't like it.
I don't like "mysteries" - I prefer certainty in my images. If anything is going to change the amount of blue in an image, it needs to be me - to a specific amount, and for that I'll use the colour editor or blue channel in levels and curves.
Haze / lost contrast in an image can come in a million different forms, and each image will need its' own recipe as a result. It would certainly be possible to replicate a specific look of dehaze from a specific photo that was processed in Lightroom - but I'd be very nervous about applying that same recipe/style/preset to another (different) image...
What if you wanted to add haze. One of my presets in lightroom had it where i had dehaze at -20 and contrast +20. This added a somewhat glow in lightroom, but C1 process differently so I am not sure how to approach that
Pretty much the reverse of these steps - a negative S curve, negative clarity and negative structure will deliver most of what you’re looking for 😎
🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Here the question arises in which order does CO calculate the adjustments? Say you do two adjustments:
Levels: x>=230 -> 255.
Cuves: 230->200
Is the end result mathematically the same no matter in which order you do it? That would mean (I guess) that levels is only shifting the starting point and the end point of the curve, right? So it would look "cut off" so a flat curve would be the result of levels but starting at (say) x= 30 instead of x=0 . I just want to really understand the levels and cuves -tool since it seams that this is way more interesting, powerful and sophisticated than the normal sliders (which are not bad by any means).
Hi Friedrich,
If I'm understanding the question correctly, I think you'll find the answer is cumulative.
So, if I picked the exact same point (say, 160) and shifted that up by 30 in curves, PLUS shifted it by 30 in a levels adjustment, the total change to that point on the histogram would be 60 - so a shift to 220. (Of course, it would also affect the surrounding areas).
The same, if I put +20 in Curves at the point of 200, but -40 in Levels, the result would be 180 (-20 in total).
If you put the point at 220, and did +30 in Levels AND +20 in Curves, you'd overexpose that point by shifting it to 270 out of 255.
If I could give 10 thumps up I would do it
Is there a way to add haze to a photo to replicate the haze slider in lightroom?
Hi Ylo - yes, there is, effectively you just reduce contrast. You can do that through the contrast slider, with negative clarity values and/or by shifting the upper sliders in the Levels tool too. :-)
I could've sworn Capture One had a dehaze tool. I haven't used it in a few years maybe they removed it?
Nope - I’ve been using is since 6 or 7 I think, and it’s never had one - sorry! 🤔
It's embarrassing how many dots have been connected
just hit auto Levels and you are done..😁🤓😎
Kind of yes, but very much no...
Auto-Levels is a very blunt tool, and needs to be configured properly to get the best out of it. You need to set your Target Levels, along with Clipping Thresholds for shadows and highlights in the Preferences > Exposure tab before relying on that method, and even then, you're going to get a generic result instead of the right result for your specific image :-)
Paul is right! Also, be careful if you decide to copy your adjustments that includes an Auto setting over to other images. The Auto adjustments are not automatically adjusted to fit the new image you’re applying it to. You still need to Auto adjusted each individually, is what I’m trying to say I guess!
Paul Reiffer - Photographer I have the shadows set to 0.00 and highlights to 0.01 and Channel set to Red,Green and blue channels and that sems to work the best ig you use auto levels.. 😎🤓
Yeah - for a lot of images that will work, but be REALLY, really, really careful with cityscapes on that setup. Separating out the RGB channels for auto is great in a naturally-lit scene, but for studio work or with artificial light in the cities, you'll find the image goes a bit whacky every now and then with wild shifts to green or blue as each channel is stretched independently.
As I say, auto-levels is a blunt tool that's designed for "most" images - but knowing how to do it manually is really important for the times when that doesn't deliver the results you want ;-)