In celebration of the Labor Day holiday, Capture One is offering some huge savings!
From now through Monday, September 7, 2020, you can save 30% off. Capture One Pro is eligible for savings — both perpetual and subscription versions — as are Capture One versions for Fujifilm, Sony and Nikon.
Click here to get your copy of Capture One; be sure to use the coupon code LABORDAY30 during checkout.
Once you install Capture One, check out some of our content below to help get you started:
Switching to Capture One: Choosing an organization strategy - When I first switched to Capture One as my primary photo management and editing tool, I knew I wanted to come up with a workflow that suited how I photograph. But I also knew that I needed a quick and easy way to find the photos I needed, whether it be in a week, month or year from now. I did a lot of research on Capture One’s organization tools when you use a catalog system. If you use a session, you’ll obviously treat your photos differently, and we’ll have more on that in a future article. But what’s the best method to organizational madness in Capture One? Understanding Capture One’s organizational tools A lot of people say that Capture One’s weakness lies in its organizational tools. I couldn’t disagree more — I find that Capture One has put together a toolset that can make it easier to keep track of your photos, as well as offer some automation that isn’t present in Lightroom. In the User Collections area, you’ll be reminded of Lightroom Classic in that you can make projects (like collection sets) and albums (like collections). But you can take it much further, too. There are four different options in Capture One’s User Collections that can help sort your images: Group: This can’t hold images, but it can hold projects and albums, and display the photos that are present inside of the albums. Groups can be nested within each other. Project: If you’re used to Lightroom, think of a Project like a Collection Set. These again can’t hold any individual photos. You can nest groups, albums and smart albums inside of projects. Album: This is exactly what you’d think it is — this holds your photos. Smart album: Smart albums can display photos based on a specific criteria, and can be nested inside of groups and projects. If they’re inside a group, they search from your entire catalog. But if they’re inside of a project, they only work with images that are a part of that particular project. Common organization strategies As a corporate event photographer, I’ve found that it’s often most convenient to organize my catalog based on client name. When I open the Library tool in Capture One, I see three groups, one smart album and one album. The smart album holds any images I’ve given a 5-star rating to, which gives me easy access to photographs that I might want to post on social media for promotional purposes. The BTS album holds any of my behind-the-scenes photographs I’ve taken. Client-driven strategy If I drill down into my Clients group, you’ll see that it has sub-groups for each individual client. This makes it easy to quickly and easily find a client, which I sort alphabetically. If I expand one of those sub-groups for a client, you’ll see an individual project. In this example, I photographed several people for a local magazine for an upcoming July issue. So the project is the July 2020 issue, and underneath that are nested albums. Group and album strategy What happens if you don’t have a specific project you’re working on? Well, simply put, that’s when you would take projects out of the mix. In this example, I have a main Photofocus group and a sub-group called Gear Reviews. Inside of that I have individual albums for each product I have reviewed. In this case, projects aren’t necessary because it’s not an ongoing thing I’m working on. And it’s not a specific use case to a client. Utilizing smart albums I’ve learned to really love smart albums in Capture One. As I said earlier, these can be nested, so I can have them only pick up the photographs in the parent group and project. In this instance, I have a project under a sub-group called Coronavirus. This is where I put all of my Coronavirus-related photographs that I’ve taken for various clients. Inside of that are two albums. “All” holds all the photographs, while “Selects” is a smart album that only pulls images from the project’s photos that have color labels of yellow, green and blue. You can obviously edit this to show photos based on ratings or other data, too. What’s the right organization for you? Only you can answer that question. But Capture One gives a lot of organizational options to help you keep track of and manage your photos. With the latest update to Capture One, there’s never a better time to switch. Do you have a method to your organizational madness? Let me know in the comments below! Ready to try out Capture One? Click here to get a 30-day trial.
Resetting the import counter in Capture One - When I first moved over to Capture One, I setup my import settings to rename my files as Job Name – 3 Digit Counter. But what I realized is that the counter wasn’t resetting, meaning that with each job I imported, it would continue from where it left off. There’s an easy way to fix this. Click the three-dot menu next to Naming, and click Reset Import Counter. You can see in the screenshots below that my counter went from 082 back to 001. It doesn’t seem like there’s a way to automate this process (and my research hasn’t found anything, either), but this is a simple step to make sure your counters are always reset. You can do the same thing when you’re batch renaming. Here, the three-dot menu selection is Reset Rename Counter.
Should I use the Contrast slider or Curves tool in Capture One Pro? - Recently in a number of my one-on-one training with clients, they asked me about adding contrast to a photograph and the differences between adding it using the Contrast slider and Curves tool in Capture One Pro 20 (CO20). I thought the answers might be helpful for some of our readers, so in this article, I’ll share some of what I shared with them. The first thing to talk about is contrast and why we add it to a photograph. Basically adding contrast adds life and impact to a photograph. And while it is changing the relationship between the dark and light areas of a photograph, it’s also changing the underlying texture, sharpness, and saturation as well. Next since both the Contrast slider and Curves tool give me the ability to change the contrast in a photograph, what are the differences? Contrast slider Speed: Fast and simple to use and can be very effective if you have a large number of photographs to edit. Clarity slider: You will want to use the Clarity slider as well as the Contrast slider to address the mid-tones in the image. Quality: It does a good job of adding a fixed amount of contrast to the image. Flexibility, accuracy, and control: Not very flexible when compared to the Curves tool, also limited accuracy as it adds or subtracts a fixed amount of contrast. Saturation/texture/sharpness: As the Contrast slider setting is increased or decreased it adds or subtracts a small amount of saturation in the affected colors. It also affects the texture and sharpness in those areas as well. Learning curve: Fast and easy to learn. Curves tool (RGB tab and Luma tab) Speed: It takes more time than the Contrast slider, though as you learn it, you’ll get faster. Clarity slider: I often find that I’m able to create a similar look using the middle area of the Curves tool, but there are times when I use both. Quality: Typically this will give you superior results over the Contrast slider. Flexibility, accuracy, and control: It gives the most flexibility, accuracy, and control over the image through the use of multiple points along with the entire range of the curve from darkest to the lightest area of the photograph and you’re able to move each point on the curve independently. Saturation/texture/sharpness RGB tab: Changing the curve using the RGB tab will add or subtract saturation and change the texture and sharpness of the affected areas. Saturation/texture/sharpness Luma tab: Changing the curve using the Luma tab doesn’t change the saturation of the affected areas just the luminance and it will change the texture and sharpness of the affected areas. Learning curve: Longer than the Contrast slider. It takes practice and understanding to master the Curves tool. In the sections below, I’ve included examples of the original image and versions using the Contrast slider and Curves tool, so you can see the differences. Original image So now let’s take a look at these two with a photograph. Here’s the original image without contrast or curves applied. Contrast slider Here’s the same image using the Contrast slider only. This was the most contrast I could apply to the image without making things too dark and it still doesn’t look the way I want. So for me, this image isn’t a good choice for the Contrast slider. Curves tool using RGB tab Here’s the same image using the RGB tab of the Curves tool with the Contrast slider set to zero, compared to Contrast slider only. Notice how I can add multiple points to fine-tune the contrast both up and down through the range of the histogram. Also notice that I raised the level in the left or dark side of the curve and lowered the level in the middle part of the curve. This ability to add the points and then slide them up and down is what gives the real power to the Curves tool. I almost always use the Curves tool on landscapes and cityscapes because I want this kind of control over the final image. Curves tool using Luma tab Here’s the same image but using the Luma tab of the Curves tool only and the Contrast slider set to zero. The power of the Luma tab in the Curves tool is that it is changing the contrast, but doesn’t change the saturation level in the affected colors. With this, we are just changing the light or luminance values. There are times where I only use the Luma tab and not the RGB tab or use a combination of both to achieve the look I want. Curves tool – Luma compared to RGB Now here’s the Curves RGB compared to the Curves Luma. Notice the changes in saturation in the RGB version compared to the Luma version. Final thoughts When I use these tools in my editing, I have an idea of what I want from the final image. I also look at my time frame, the number of photographs that I need to edit and then I choose the tools that can help me accomplish that. What I found with this image — the lead photo at the top of the article — was that using both the RGB and Luma Curves instead of the Contrast slider, gave me the best result. More generally though I find that if I want complete control over the look and feel of my image, I’d use the Curves tool, and often both RGB and Luma tabs. Is it worth taking the time to learn the Curves tool? I’d say absolutely. Do I use the Curves tool for everything? No. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out this new version. You’ll find a 30-day free trial to Capture One Pro 20 here.
Arranging tools your way in Capture One - As you work with Capture One Pro 20 (CO20), you’ll find that certain tools become your favorites and you may want to create one or more custom tool tabs and arrange these tools your way. In this article, I’ll walk you through how to create your own custom tool tab in CO20. For this example, I’ll create my own custom Exposure Tool tab and add my favorite tools to it. The first thing we need to do is add a custom tool tab. We do that by right-clicking on the tool tab area, selecting the Custom Tool Tab and naming it. You’ll also be able to choose an icon to easily identify your custom tool tab. Your new custom tool tab will look like this. You can move it to where you want it by holding down the Command key on Mac, or Alt key on Windows, and clicking and dragging it. Next, you can add the tools you want to the custom tool tab by right-clicking in the tool area of the custom tool tab, choosing Add Tool and selecting the tool from the list. Here are my favorite tools for My Exposure tab. If you add a tool you didn’t mean to or just want to remove one, click on the 3-dot menu at the upper right of the tool and select Remove Tool. Or you can right-click in the Tool area and select Remove Tool and choose it from the menu. With this information, you can now create your own tool tabs and add and remove tools from them. Note that you can also add or remove tools from the built-in tool tabs the same way. In addition, you can move tools around inside a tool tab by clicking on the top of the tool and dragging it to the new position. Be sure to check out this new version. You’ll find a 30-day free trial to Capture One Pro 20 here.
Exporting photos in Capture One Pro 20 - In this article, we’ll take a quick look at how to export photos in Capture One Pro 20 (CO20). Exporting photographs in different formats like JPEG and TIFF is a little different than in some other applications. CO20 uses Process Recipes for this. I’m going go through creating a Process Recipe that will export a photograph in JPEG format at a resolution of 72dpi with additional sharpening for the web. Let’s get started. First, select the Process Recipes tab. Now add a new Process Recipe by clicking on the + sign at the bottom of the Process Recipes section. This creates a new untitled process recipe with the name highlighted. To change the name just type it in. Let’s call this one “My jpg for web.” With the new process recipe created, we’ll now tell CO20 what we want it to do when outputting a photograph. There are five sections: Basic, File, Adjustments, Metadata and Watermark. In the Basic section, we’ll set the following: Format: JPEG Quality: 100 ICC profile: sRGB Color Space Profile Resolution: 72 px/in Scale: Fixed and 100% In the File section, we’ll use the default for the Root Folder Output Location. We’ll set this Output Location when we get to the Output Location section. You can also add additional naming options and a subfolder. In the Adjustments section, we’ll respect the crop and select Output Sharpening for Screen since this is going to the web. You can fine-tune sharpening settings. In the Metadata section, we’ll uncheck everything but Copyright. And in Watermark, we’ll leave it set to None. We could add either a text or image watermark if we wanted. Now in the Output Location section, we’ll choose a folder to output to. In this case, I’ve created a folder on my Desktop called Ready to Review. Any photographs we process with this recipe will be placed in the Ready to Review folder. The next section is Output Naming. You have a lot of flexibility here and not only can you type in text in the Format box, but you can also add what are called tokens. Tokens contain information that CO20 already knows about the photograph, camera or GPS information as well as ways to set up specific counters to allow you to number your photographs as you process them. To access the tokens, click on the three dots at the far right of Format and a dialog box will open. Once it’s open you can choose from a large number of tokens that can be used in the name. To add a token to the name select one from the Tokens list and double click it. This will add it to the name. To remove a token from the name, select the token in the Format section and press delete or backspace. And finally, the Process Summary section shows you the filename, size, scale, ICC profile, format and file size. As you make changes to the sections we just covered, those changes will show up here. Here’s the entire Process Recipe Section so you can see all the section in context. So there you go. That’s an example of how to create a process recipe for outputting photos to the web. Be sure to check out this new version. You’ll find a 30-day free trial to Capture One Pro 20 here.
