hi i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft last week i was out in the peak district
to photograph the heather at sunset i did manage a couple of shots that i
liked before the light faded and the sun hit this big thick bank of
cloud this has thrown out the colour balance
on a lot of the images shot around that time
so they're appearing a bit too pink and blue so today i'm going to walk you
through my color correction for this landscape
photo in capture one but before we jump into the color
correction i need to make some other adjustments that are important to the
overall result i'm going to start by selecting a new
tone curve for the image currently this is set to auto which is
picking up the camera setting i was using at the time
to shoot the raw file now i shot this using the fuji xt3 which was set to use
the fuji provia film simulation i find the previous
simulation on the fuji has a slight pink and purple tint to it and this could be
exaggerating my colour balance problems instead i'm going to change the tone
curve to the film standard setting i find this opens the
shadows a little bit and reduces the purple tint slightly
now i can begin to balance the exposure in the image
before i correct the colours that's because changing the tones in an image
can often have an impact on how we see the image colours
to help balance the exposure i'm just using the high dynamic range sliders
because i'm most concerned about the shadows and the highlights in this image
if i push the shadow slider right it opens the shadows
i can then use the highlight slider to reduce the brightness in the sky by
moving it left
after this i just use the levels adjustment to control the black and
white points in the image
and then to open up the mid tones using the mid tone level by pushing it left
i'm still not entirely happy with the highlights in the sky so i'm going to
make some localized adjustments using a gradient
mask
now i'll use the highlights dynamic range slider to darken that area
now that the exposure on the image is looking more balanced and less contrasty
i'm ready to adjust the overall white balance
i'll do this using the background layer in this image
i have a nice grey rock that i can use as a white balance target
if i didn't have that i'd need to adjust the kelvin and tint sliders manually to
achieve the white balance i wanted when i click on the eyedropper tool in
the white balance section it activates the white balance sample
tool i can then click on the rock that i want to be a neutral gray
color sometimes it's useful to click around a few points on the rock
just to find what works best when i find a color balance that i like
it gives me a starting point to refine with other color tools
the areas that i want to improve further for this image are the sky
which i feel still looks a bit too red also the foreground heather which i'd
like to make more obvious and more colorful i'll
start with the sky because i already have a selection for that
now there's lots of ways i could adjust the color in the sky
one way is to use the white balance controls again
but rather than that i'll demonstrate using the color editor
i'll start in the basic mode but might switch to the advanced mode if the basic
doesn't give me enough control as with the white balance i'll select
the picker tool and use it to sample the sky
the area i want to adjust is near to the brightest part of the image because it
looks a little bit too red there after
sampling this area i can see the editor has selected the
orange colour swatch now i can use the hue slider to move the
orange tones in the sky towards yellow also adding a little
saturation and lightness helps to keep the image
adjustment looking natural this has improved the sky but i can
improve it further by tweaking the white balance of the layer
reducing the tint slightly removes more of the redness
whilst reducing the kelvin slider then reintroduces blue to the thicker clouds
now i can create a new layer with the gradient filter to select the foreground
i'm going to use this to adjust the heather by first increasing the tint
slider to introduce more pink into that area
then i'm ready to make a targeted adjustment of the heather using the
colour editor this time rather than sampling the
colour and then using the sliders i'm going to click and drag with my
mouse when i drag left and right i adjust the hue for the
sample color if i drag up and down i'm affecting the
saturation
and if i hold down my alt key or my option key on a mac
whilst i'm dragging left and right i can control the lightness
what i want to achieve is a strong pink colour for the heather as well as making
it lighter and more obvious in the scene
when i have the color roughly as i want it i'm going to darken the overall image
so that it doesn't look like it's now the middle of the day
rather than using the exposure or brightness sliders for this
i'm going to use the tone curve what i like about the tone curve is that it
gives me precise control over different tonal ranges
by adding a midpoint to the curve and dragging it down
i can darken the entire image without affecting the black or white points
because i'm using an rgb curve rather than the luma curve
this adjustment intensifies the colors just a little bit further
the downside to what i'm doing though is that it's closing up the shadow areas
and it's making them a little bit too dark so you can't see the detail in
there if i add a point to the curve on the
shadow tones and then move it up i open up the shadows giving the image
this softer feel
after this i can go back to the adjustment layer for the foreground to
refine the colour balance and tonal
adjustments
the image is looking a lot better so let's compare it with the starting image
this looks about right so at this point i'd take the image into photoshop to
apply the next level of refinement and adjustment
now there are a few important points that i want to highlight about what i've
done in this video first i haven't separated adjusting
colors and tones by this i mean i recognize the two need
to work together to achieve a finished result
you can't just edit the colors and ignore the image tones
second i've made temporary adjustments to the tones to allow me to work on the
colours better i also haven't tried to do everything
with just a quick adjustment or done it on a single layer i've built
up the effect gradually thirdly i've divided the image into
different areas that need different treatments that allows me to work on
each one independently this gives me a greater control over the
finished result and it keeps things looking natural for
example i couldn't correct the colour in the sky
without negatively affecting the foreground and heather
i also couldn't adjust the heather without affecting the sky
finally i'm not trying to achieve a finished image in a single tool
capture one is my raw converter it's extremely powerful
and it can achieve a lot but i want to use other tools that i think might
better suit the finished image the conversion i've created
is only my starting point for the finished image
now i hope you found today's video helpful if you have please take a moment
to share it and don't forget to subscribe i'm robin
whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you next week
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