Capture One 21 Livestream: Quick Live | Curves for Color Grading

good afternoon everybody sorry for the slightly uh delayed start um youtube wasn't particularly uh playing ball today so sorry about that but we have managed to get a youtube stream going and we are live uh on facebook as well so that's good so thanks for joining now today um we have a very special guest which is good because i'm losing my voice today so we're gonna let zoe take the wheel today so let's uh go and find zoe hey zoe how's it going hey david i'm good thank you good good thanks for joining us today and what we're going to talk about today is essentially color grading with curves which was definitely a well-requested subject from the community one which uh i'll be completely honest i'm not a complete expert on so that's why we bring in the experts when necessary which is zoe um so let's go ahead and find your capture on screen there we go and uh and i'll let you take it away arlem keep an eye on the questions so if you do have any questions on uh what zoe is doing uh please feel free to put them in the comments and then we'll get to them as we go as well so zoey i might pop up and interrupt you a few times as well um but first of all if no one knows who you are you are the voice on some of our tutorial videos i should explain hopefully you can help me out again uh in the future as well because i'm going to need it i think yeah i love doing that and then you're based out in berlin correct that's right yes so um and what kind of work are you doing as well yeah i am a beauty and still life photographer so lots of glitter if if possible that's my that's my dream shoot anything involving glitter um and cosmetic cosmetic photography mainly in the still life area fabulous all right well i shall let you take this away so tell us about the shot and what you're gonna do yeah so i'm really excited about this tutorial because i really love the curves tool and i know for a lot of people it can be quite daunting and it was daunting to me when i first encountered it as well so i'm kind of really excited to hopefully simplify simplify a bit um because you really get full creative control when you use the curves um so this is a shot it's a fashion shoot that i did it's on location um and it's it's giving me this kind of 70s feeling and with this location especially in berlin this is a really kind of retro um feeling so i i think i can do a lot with the color grading um so i thought this is going to be a good image to use um so before i do any color grading i will just make sure that the image is correctly exposed check for highlights being blown out so i'm going to come over to my exposure area and i'm just going to i can see already up here we have some some blown out highlights so i'm going to just go down to the high dynamic range tool and using my highlight slider just recover those so really quickly um and i can also use my exposure warning button up here just to check so if i want to recover all of that i can take it down um so i always make sure no blown out details make sure my shadows are lifted i have all of the detail and that's the great thing um you know shooting raw i can get all of that detail um and then exposure wise i'm happy with that i can just maybe increase the contrast a little but i know with my curves tool i can do a lot of the contrast work as well as the color work and that's what i do love about the curves tool and so i'm not going to go crazy with the contrast slider just a little bit on that um and then i'm just going to leave that i'm going to go straight to the curves and see what i can do with this tool um so if anyone you know is unsure about what the curves tool is all about it's basically a representation a tonal representation of the image so if you're using an rgb image um so in capture one it's an rgb image so we have this histogram on here which looks kind of similar to this histogram up here so um down the bottom left of the curve this is representing the darker areas of my image and up at the top it's representing the brighter areas of my image and in the middle the mid-tones so we can see using this kind of graph on here there's actually a lot going on in the the left side so there's a lot of darker areas in my image which makes sense when i look at the image i have these lights that are really really dark almost black probably um and then there's not much really really bright areas yeah there's the the light and her face but actually it's not super super bright it's just a little bit down here um i can add a control point i can actually before i do that let me just run through the different tabs so we've got rgb luma and then we have the colors split out into red green and blue so if i go into the rgb with this curve i'm going to be able to affect the brightness of my image so i can either add a control point and lift it and we can see how that brightens the image or i can pull this down and i'm darkening the image and i'm putting this control point in the mid tone so i'm brightening my mid tones and i'm darkening my mid tones um so that this is how i would look at if i wanted to add more light or remove more light i can also add more contrast or remove contrast by adding a couple of other control points so if i remove this control point by just dragging it off and add one at the top and then one here we can create what's called an s curve so that would be to lift up the brighter areas in my image and darken the darker bits of my image and basically what that's doing is just adding more contrast because contrast really is how light and dark areas are seen so when you increase those values and get much brighter and much darker it looks more contrasty so we can do the opposite we can remove contrast if i pull up the darker areas of my image and pull down the brighter areas of my image we start to flatten the image so now i'm reducing the contrast so the rgb i love to go into that first i have to be careful it's going to affect both the contrast and the color so i'm going to be affecting i'm going to be having color shifts with this rgb curve and it's naturally when you increase contrast you also increase saturation so our eyes are used to seeing that when we see an image with more contrast um we want to see more saturation as well because it's just what our eyes are used to but i have to be aware of that when i'm playing with the rgb curve i am affecting the color as well if i don't want to affect the color i have if i pull off these control points i have right next to it something called a luma curve so this is pretty much exactly like the rgb curve but i don't affect the color so if i start to lift this i'm brightening it but i'm not changing the hues the saturation i'm not changing any colors and i can also darken it and again not affecting any colors so this is also a great way to add contrast so if i increase the brighter areas and if i darken my darker areas you can see no color shifts really happened i've added more contrast but i've changed no colors um so i love those two curves there's no right or wrong here just what works for the image so if you don't want to get any color shifts use the luma curve um so yeah so that's what i'm i'm looking at for uh the beginning of my color grade do i want to add any contrast or not so for this image i kind of want to feel like it's more analog like it's more 70s so i think i'm actually just going to uh i'm gonna i'm going to increase the brighter areas i want this to still feel like it's got some pop to it but i'm going to make it feel a little bit more analog so i'm going to remove this control point as well and i'm going to flatten it a little bit so i'm going to just darken the mid-tones so it's not so bright and so we can see that if i pull this end control point it's affecting the really really bright areas so here was more of the the brighter areas but this point here is the very very brightest so if i pull this along you see here with where the really really bright areas um they're now increased to almost well they they probably are now they're pure white so if i put that exposure warning on it's pure white now there is no detail in that but for an analog type photo i'm actually okay with that i don't need to be so careful about recovering details and getting all of that in because actually for this kind of vibe i want i want it to feel a little bit more um yeah blown out and brighter so i'm gonna maybe put that around there and somewhere around that so now let's go on to the color grading so we have these three different curves red green and blue so it's a similar kind of um technique with the rgb in the luma i'll add a control point and now when i pull this control point i am affecting the red channel in my image so if i pull up the control point i'm adding more red into the image if i pull down the control point i'm actually removing red and the image is turning more cyan so this is where kind of um we have to get feel a little bit more technical which i know can freak people out but at the beginning what i would urge everyone to do if you're not sure about what happens when i move this up or down just have a post it next to your computer and write down red on one side cyan on the other side and when you when you do this again and again it starts to lock into your brain and you won't need to have any post-its at some point but you know just so you remember if i lift up i'm going to add red into the image if i lift down if i pull down i'm going to add cyan to the image so right now i'm so zoey sorry to interrupt how many post-its do you have on your computer currently then so right now i've got no post-its because i do this every day again and again and again um at the beginning post it's all over the place you know and um you know this is for a lot of people this is very um it's just not something that's intuitive color grading is the most difficult aspect of retouching um and it's something that some people can just have you know this innate skill and others need to really you know practice every day even the best color graders out there it took them many many years to to get to that point so you've got to use the little cheat tricks to help you you know remember this stuff um so that's that's the red channel so i'm going to pull that control point off and if i go into the green channel what is going to happen i'm going to lift add more green in there and the opposite is magenta so again green opposite side magenta um and i'm only affecting the midtones with the curves i have the ability to add a control point anywhere on this line so if i wanted to add more in more greens in the shadows i'll come down to my lower left side of the curves and i have the option of going to the really really the darkest areas the blacks and i could just lift this up and now i just have this really cool green effect only affecting you know the shadows it's coming because i'm lifting this all the way up you can see obviously it's going to be affecting a bit of the mid tones almost you know up here to the highlights so if i didn't want to affect the mid tones i would add another control point there and i would just pull this down so now this is pretty much now straight along that line so nothing is affecting this area the green channel on my image i'm only affecting the shadows and lifting green adding green into the shadows um so that's how that works and it can work with the highlights as well if i pull this down i know that green is on one side and magenta is on the other side so when i pull down this curve i'm adding magenta into my brighter areas into the highlights and again i could just not have that affect my mid-tones or my shadows and just have it affect the top area the brighter areas of the image so you can see that here in the the really bright areas of her skin and her hat we have more magenta going on in there i'm just going to press the little reset button just to get get those control points all the way back and then i'm going to go into the blue channel and what we have is blue and then i pull this down and we have yellow so i'm gonna let's see for this one i could also i'll leave a control point in the middle there and let's try let's try adding more yellow into the shadows so if i pull this down so you can see how it's this is more subtle here um so let's get rid of the control point let's just see so now the yellow is re it's really in the mid tones area here and it's it's almost coming up to the bright areas so you can see how much control you have with color grading with this curves tool and that's why i really love it um you know as well as affecting the color i'm able to also affect the contrast so it's it gives me full control which i know can freak people out but i promise you if you do small adjustments um and do a little every day you will really start to it will feel more intuitive um so that's i think i've explained how the tool works are there any questions there david just before i go and do some color grading um a couple of comments um who uber said a color wheel helps you know alongside your post-it notes which is good i used to have a couple of i need to print them out again actually before i redid the office a couple of color wheels printed up like complementary colors uh what's actually going on on the color wheel was actually uh really super helpful as well so that's uh that's a good tip absolutely yeah no no go for it yeah the color wheels i mean the good thing about color is it's all been done before so there is color theory there are color palettes um you don't have to reinvent the wheel you know if you're if you're struggling to work out what your images should look like you know you can go i could see okay this image is more in the 70s retro feeling then i could go into google and i could just google fashion editorial 70s retro and there will be hundreds of photos that give me what you know what other people have spent hard hours work trying to work out and i'll be able to see there's a there's a vibe there's a feeling and probably it's really warm colors and more reds in the shadows and so i'll have a guide there and i do this often if i've got an editorial i will have a mood board which will have color references so i have a guide to go from so i'm not just going and you can absolutely do this and i do still do this where i just go like okay i'm just going to go in the red and i'm just going to have a play and i'm going to pull this up and see what works you can do that and you know many of my photos do have that because i love playing with color but i absolutely urge anyone who's not as sure about what they're they're trying to achieve get references for you so you can make your life easier and speed up the process as well um there was a little tip from one of our ambassadors match uh matic milotch um when he's color grading he uses the overlay tool in capture one he makes a little color palette like you mentioned inspiration and then turns on the overlay tool to have it kind of floating just um you know resize it puts it in the corner of the image and then it's uh you know on top of the the shot at all times for reference so that's that's quite nice that's a really cool idea yeah that's awesome yeah i'd forgotten about that until uh just now um there was a question from philip which is a perfectly uh um obvious question why not use the colour balance tool which of course you can but it's just different tools similar similar end result but i guess with the curve you have a bit more choice about where you're placing your tints like the shadows midtones and highlights you see here they are they are pre-defined um areas um which which you know we've set which we feel work pretty well but with the curves tool if you want to put a tint into you know a tiny part the shadows or a broader part of the shadows i guess you could with the curves curves tool more accurately i think absolutely i mean yeah here i can obviously i can add color really you know easily which is what i do love about the color balance having these wheels is very intuitive you know i can just pull and and quite quickly and you know the color grading you don't generally you can get away with doing small changes and create a really you know beautiful effect so you don't have to go wild with color grading and that's why the color balance can make it much kind of quicker and easier to create an overall wash of color or what i sometimes is if i just want to create maybe a few different looks to show a client then i can go okay i'm going to give i'm going to go into my color bands and i will do some quick you know some quick maneuvering with the tool with the control points and just see what works what doesn't okay there's one color grade and then i can do another one so it's super quick it's not as controlled which you know like you said it depends on what what is the purpose and that's where you decide which tool fits the purpose best exactly um for for the curves because i can go one i can add control points all the way up here you know if i want to just affect the highlights on her face and skin so here you know i can if i make this you know follow just here i mean i can go very very finessed i can just affect this area here um instead of adding you know a whole color wash over the image um so it really is just you know if you can see that a bit more extreme um you can really get you know finessed and and because i can i can also affect the contrast which yes on the color balance you have you know the highlight so i can affect the height the brightness values of the image um but it's just not going to be as controlled as the curves so got it i'm always wanting to get as much control i get why this tool can feel overwhelming for many so i'm going to give you a tip for how to make it feel less overwhelming or to to make some you know to make a more subtle color grade um i always work with layers for color grades i mean i love to work with layers for most for most of the retouch because it just gives me again that control so you know i will add a new layer and let i mean i could even add a new layer for the color grade and another layer for the contrast if i wanted to break it out to simple terms maybe we do that so maybe this one will be just for the color so that means i would just affect the red the green and the blue and then i will come and do another one which i'll call contrast so that is going to be only deciding on whether i want to use the rgb or the luma so for this image let me zoom back out i think um another tip as well using the layers if you're not 100 sure you know whether you want a really intense or with the curves because i can create such um intense looks with very small tweaks oh let me i haven't filled these so i'm gonna fill the mask deliberate mistake so it you could have just gone here new filled adjustment layer but i i didn't do that so instead because like these are empty layers i'm now going to just right click right click and just fill this mask so if i press m i know that these are filled now so because with the curves doing small adjustments small movements creates big changes that can that can also be quite overwhelming for someone um so a way to make it a bit easier you can lower your opacity down so you know i can lower this down to 40 50 percent and that way if i you know actually like even let's even go lower let's go like to 20. so now whatever i do it's actually a lot more subtle so i'm not so um so i can still you know make bigger movements but it's not going to be too uh too intense so that can really help you when you're still trying to you know work out how to use this curve tool and um be sore finessed with these small tiny control points which can be uh quite a lot as a beginner um so i'm going to pull that off i'm going to start with the contrast i'm just going to um go into my luma i don't want to affect the color because i want to keep this contrast layer as purely affecting contrast and no color shifts no color changes so that's why i'm going to be in that luma curve so i'm going to just darken the mid tones and just kind of brighten my highlights a little bit as well and that's it that's all i'm going to do on that um i'm going to go to the color grid and i know that i can switch between both at the end so let's just see what i can do with the color now so i want this to feel a bit more um retro so let's see i think i want this to add to have a bit more warmth to it i want the whole thing to feel warmer more 70s so i'm gonna i'm basically adding magenta when i'm in this green curve it's green or magenta so i'm going to warm up the image by pulling down the mid tones just to warm everything up and i want to affect the really bright areas as well so i'm going to bring that down with this one so you can see how now it's just giving a more of a red tint so let me increase this so you can see what it's doing a bit clearer because the good thing with the layers i can change this opacity so if this is um too strong i can go back down and reduce it so i'm going to keep this higher so you can all see what i'm doing a bit more clearly and then at the end i can reduce the opacity to make it more subtle so let's do that for now so let me do that with the contrast as well the contrast is up to 100 so that's good so so then let's see we so we can i can either add more green into the shadows but i actually want more red and i want more magenta into the shape into the shadow so that's why i'm playing with a really um left control point and it's you can see that it's just starting to add more red into those shadow areas so i'm gonna i'm gonna try that for now then in the blue channel i'm going to i want this to be warmer again so i don't want to be pulling this up because that's going to be adding blue i want to warm this up so i'm going to pull everything down again so i'm going to pull the mid tones down and i'm going to pull down the highlights as well so you can see there i'm just adding more yellow into all of the highlights um and again i want to bring more warmth into the shadow so i'm going to be pulling this away and not increasing it i'm going to be pulling it more across so it's just adding more yellow into all of these darker areas so let's see we can we can really go and what i love about shots like this is you can go quite crazy with the color grade you know you don't need to be so subtle because if this is more of an analog feeling um then you can be a bit more um heavy-handed uh so yeah so somewhere like this looks looks good to me so i can always uh turn off the color grade layer so let's see so that's before and after and with the contrast so let's see we pull down so from this point i could decide do i want to change the contrast that i that i tweaked at the beginning um i could make this a little bit flatter i could make this not as contrasty so i could lift up the shadows here so we're just flattening out that tonal range um and let's just experiment so i could keep it poppy by bringing the mid tones up or i can really kind of like dull everything down flatten everything out but i think like somewhere in the middle i think is good just a little bit darker is good um so something like that that looks good for me and i can turn that off so that's without the contrast so it's subtle but you get this the vibe of it and then with the color grade and then obviously we've got the before and after tool which i love so there's before and there's after and because this is an analog photo i would definitely be adding some noise so i'm going to go down to my film grain tool and we can add i'll zoom into 100 as well so i can see this grain more clearly and i'll go to the let's try the tabula so not too intense so let's see somewhere somewhere around there and a little a little tip that um i i know it's like with the d the new dehaze tool you can also if you bring bring this down a little bit it can also kind of give it a softer feeling which can feel a bit more analog as well um not so digital and perfect uh so i if i want this analog feel sometimes i also play with the d haze and just pull that down as well that's a nice uh tip haven't heard that one before yeah it's really it's a quick easy little hack i found so um but i really like it cool nice one um got a question from where was it uh andrea uh guliami if i said that right probably not sorry andre how do you approach color grading on beauty cosmetic close-ups that's a little bit different i guess it is and this is where the difference between color grading and color correction um it's really important to understand the two for beauty i am much more focused on color correction and you know color correction would be things like making sure the skin tone is all the same color and there's not you know redness around the nose um color grading for beauty photos it would be very very subtle because ultimately i want the skin tone to be real i want it to feel real and i want the makeup to be um true a true representation if it was say for a client who was you know as a lipstick we're using has to be the same color but yeah color grading can be you know maybe maybe i have three different colors on a beauty photo i have a um an eyeshadow a lipstick and a blush and color grading in that instance could be how can we make these three colors um more harmonious so that would be looking at how you know how can we use color theory to make those three colors a harmonious color palette um so it's not necessarily adding say lots of colors to shadows or highlights or mid-tones it's more about balancing balancing the colors that are in the photo to give a harmonious palette excellent and a question from eric which is basically saying uh um there's lots of resources on color grading theory so it says i've searched it but you know every tutorial has a different version so i guess color theory is subjective in some ways and what are what are some of your resources that that you've looked to so i love um i guess i'm gonna have to remember it's uh it used to be called palaton let me just check if it's still okay uh on this website um or is it color color adobe is another one so there's uh let me just bring it over actually from my other screen um so there's there's this which um gives you the ability to to look at these different color palettes yeah this is super cool yeah there's another one i wish i yeah i'll have to think there is one more which looks similar um but this one works great as well but basically yeah i can choose okay this is the triad color palette and i can you know move the the control points so you know if i if i knew that i had say a um a lipstick that was it had to be red i knew that the color of the lipstick had to be red and i had two other colors in the image then what i would be doing is i'd be looking at probably a triad and color theory and then i would be trying to balance the other two colors to fit now it's not it's not a perfect science when you're working with an image which has skin tone and you know maybe hair color it's a lot of color theory is um subjective in in how you apply it in how you but you can definitely use color color palettes color harmonies as a guide and you know often i will do this if i know that um maybe that i want to have an analogous color theory uh color palette sorry and um i just want to use you know these three colors so then i'll come into a tool like this and go okay you know i i want it to be around these top these tones so then i can go okay this is one this is another and this is another and then i can screenshot this into my photoshop um i'm trying to think there's another this this tool visualizes this a little bit differently so where i'm trying to work out where customers i need to see there's many different well this this helps me more this helps more so then what i would do is i would screenshot this right put it into my photoshop file and then i can use that as more of a guide um you know maybe maybe it's the shadows would be this color but maybe the highlights would be more of this pink color and maybe um the mid tones would have a slight purple tint to them so there is so many different ways you can apply the color but at least if you are able to use a tool like this or have a bit of a guide on you know color palettes yeah what's harmonious yeah because that really color grading um really or retouching is you know how can you get your photo to feel balanced and whether you do it in camera which obviously is preferable for photographers if you can choose the colors up front and you know okay the model's going to wear this they're going to wear you know this makeup color and i know this is a triad color scheme so it's going to have these three colors and that works and then the color grading or the color correcting is so much easier in the retouching because you're just okay i'm just going to finesse these three colors if you don't have that luxury and especially as a researcher sometimes you know you'll get images that have completely different color colors in them um so you have to be able to you know manipulate those colors to to be a harmonious color palette so this definitely is one of my favorites and the other way would be just searching for you know references um so like i would you know i would look at this there's some really um big big shoots like this is a this is a big uh gucci retouch which you know everyone asks a lot about this and and having you know these images up if i if i do a shoot in this kind of style then i can go okay shadows it's more sorry blues and that's okay more blues more magenta and skin tone really warm and using that as a guide and having that up using an eyedropper tool to select these different areas on the image go okay in here we have cooler tones in here we have warmer tones and then i'll just be able to apply that to my image which may look very different but at least if it has a similar feeling or it feels very like luxury high-end and and maybe this is what the client has wanted actually here's an image just looking at this someone has already tried to do a bit of hacking like what are the clips in this image um so you know there's there's definitely um you can get a lot by just having references up and using those as your guide and your eyedropper tool and just seeing what is you know what what someone else has done and then you know trying to apply that to your photos is absolutely fine excellent what a great answer um eric says thanks great tool palaton i've actually wrote that down on uh a notepad whilst you were checking oh um everyone's testing me with names today sengazan hopefully that's right sangazan looks similar to adobe cooler i think that's um the other one isn't it yep and uh andreas says yeah having a color palette when planning the shoot is a good thing for me definitely so there we go nice so there's all kinds of nerdy color tools to uh to get going on so oh god yeah i mean it's it never ends you know um and and i i can't i'm not sure which and i swear they had something called cooler but yeah um there is yeah there is a lot of kind of um feelings of overwhelm when it comes to color grading for lots of beginners and and everyone who starts out retouching and editing photos can feel like that and the curves tool absolutely can be overwhelming at the beginning but uh i think just those little tips of you know reducing down layers to really lower lower those intensities that can really help so here now i have something really really subtle if i do the before and after you know it's it's really subtle um and you know just with a couple of different quicks of the of the control points i can add a tiny little hint of a of a feeling that will complement and and really for color grading i want to complement what's you know generally what's already there this is a photo has that analog retro feeling so i i want my color grade to feel like it matches and enhances that um i wouldn't ever go now i'm going to cool down this image and make it feel completely different you know you want to kind of always be looking to enhance what's what's there really yeah exactly cool well sadly we are out of time zoe um but um thank you for joining us today hang on let's just put your handle up again so zoe noble photo um and then also uh you have an education site as well don't you zoey i do i do yeah it's um zoenoble.education.com so yeah hang on i'm just typing it in zoenoble.education.com no it's dot education oh just so we know education oh there we go that's uh yeah that's easy to remember then zoe noble.education no need to type that in as such then perfect and then you're um adding to that as the weeks uh go by is that correct yeah so this right now i'm in the midst of um getting out a photography and a retouching course so right now the the website it has um you can sign up for my newsletter which gives you lots of free tutorials and guidance already on either photography or on you know color grading or researching and then you know by the end of this year there'll be a photography a product and cosmetic photography and retouching course that will also go out there so if you sign up for the newsletter then you'll be first to know when that goes out um yeah fantastic great zoe noble.education simple great well thanks for joining us today sorry for the um shaky start on youtube youtubers but i'm glad you found us in the end so apologies for that always with technology sometimes doesn't go your way so there we go but thanks again zoe and enjoy the rest of your day yeah thanks so much david thanks everyone take care bye you

Channel: Capture One Pro

Views: 7,341

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Id: s14xMe4PQGw

Length: 40min 24sec (2424 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021