Capture One local adjustments include many powerful tools for creating high quality masks. During this quick edit walk through, I will create a couple of different masks, some simple, at least one complex.
Planning Your Edit
Before you set out to edit a photo, it’s a good idea to plan your actions and form a vision of the final results you want. For this image, I thought I would have 3 regions: half dome (blue), the sky (red) and the lower left (green). Each region needed something slightly different. I want to “pop” half dome and the light hitting it. The sky needed to be more dramatic. And finally, the trees in the lower left were very dark and I wanted to lighten them up.
In the end, I needed 4 layers. The lower left required 2 separate layers sine the trees and the low bramble needed different amounts of lightening. Rather than use a more complex solution, I simply created a forth layer that overlapped with the lower left layer and made the adjustments.
Available Capture One Local Adjustments
Capture One 12 local adjustments make almost all tool panels available on adjustment layers. The exception are adjustments that don’t make sense on a local adjustment like cropping or keystone correction. What would that even do on just one local adjustment layer? You can tell which tool panels work on a local adjustment layer by looking for the brush icon next to the panel name when you have a layer other than “Background” selected.
For this edit, my local adjustments were mostly confined to the exposure tool panel and very basic levels and curves. I could have (and might still) play with the color editor or other tool panels before the image is “finished” for real.
Andrew is a photography instructor teaching students of all skill levels in Austin, TX through Precision Camera and independently in San Diego, CA. He runs workshops around the United States.
He is a self taught experiential learner who is addicted to the possibilities that new (to him) gear open up. He loves to share the things he has worked out. Andrew started with a passion for landscape and night photography and quickly branched out to work in just about every form of photography. He is an ex-software developer with extensive experience in the IT realm.
Andrew is a full time wedding and commercial photographer in both Austin and San Diego. Andrew is a club founder and multi-time past president of North Austin Pfotographic Society.
