los angeles men's fashion and beauty photographer ronald n. tan

How do we turn an ordinary backyard photo into a “WOW!” image?

Exposed so that highlight isn't lost. -1EV from the in-camera reading on Chit-Chit's dark fur. I've manually measured the white balance using a grey card. Processed in CaptureONE PRO 5.1.

I used BW Panchromatic as a start and additionally tweaked the whites and darks in the image all using CaptureOne PRO 5.1.

Since I am going through a “monochromatic” phase, when I set Chit-Chit up, I was imagining the final outcome of the image. Playing with dodging and burning, I’ve created drama, depth, and character to the plain ordinary backyard-lit photograph!

Try pre-visualizing the final photograph before pressing that shutter!

It has been a year since that I’ve been experiencing a “Black and White” phase. Searching on Google, there are many BW tutorials using Lightroom/ACR. Hopefully this post will teach CaptureOne users how to make great BW images using ICC profiles and the features we have in CaptureOne PRO. CaptureOne 4/5 has the following Monochromatic ICC profiles that’s located under the “Base Characteristics”:

High Contrast

Medium Contrast

Low Contrast

Panchromatic

Yellow Filter

Once I fix White Balance (WB) and Lens Correction (LC), sharpening, and noise reduction, I cycle through the monochromatic ICC profiles until I see something I like and work my way to the BW image I like. Emporio Armani images are high in contrast with some blacks clipped. Their male models are normally posed in classical masculine stance with subtle facial expression. We’ll start with this image of Kyler Willett now represented by Wilhelmina Models LA. When this image was taken, he was with the now defunct VUE Model Management.

June 18, 2008. Naturally lit. ISO 100 1/125 s f/9 28mm.

Starting with the above image, I increased the clarity to 100. The clarity tool (in both ACR and CaptureOne) is a variant of the local contrast enhancement (LCE) tool. It uses a combination of high radius low amount (Hiraloam) sharpening and deconvolution and/or USM sharpening. Don’t quote me on this. I am positive the Hiraloam is part of clarity!

Clarity @ 100. LCE. As a consequence, Kyler's chest pixels' are above 250 (not going to print well). We have to do additional edits to work around this.

Exposure -1 and assigning "Film Extra Shadow" to the curve dialog under "Base Characteristics."

Assigned "B&W" Panchromatic. For this particular naturally lit scene, Panchromatic appealed to me.

At this point, some might stop here, but I’d like to do additional tweaks and interesting things about CaptureOne PRO’s functions.

Saturation Slider

Saturation -100 lightens areas of skin or "reds."

Saturation +100. Opposite of -100. Darkens areas of skin.

Color Balance

Default position. Click anywhere on the wheel and look at your picture. When I click on the green at the edge, it darkens the image while clicking the edge (circumference) of the magentas brightens the image.

Color Editor

Result of edits in the Color Editor.

Levels and Curve

In CaptureOne 5, the individual R, G, and B can be tweaked. Here. I went into the B-curve and adjusted the midpoint to -0.45 to darken the background wall to create spatial distance adding depth. Remember that light things are closer to you and darker things are away.

Used the eye dropped tool on the lower right to define points on the image to be edited. I worked on the RGB composite. One can go into individual R, G, and B components and tweaked further.

Finished!

THIS POST HAS BEEN RE-EDITED 25TH OCTOBER 2009.

Here is a pseudo-tone mapping tutorial. My 8-Bit layered TIFF file zipped. You’ll see my original corrected image, tone-mapped image, and the final image as I intended.

1) Grab my file located here:

2) Buy or download for trial Photomatix PRO: http://www.hdrsoft.com/

3) Enjoy!

In this tutorial, you’ll go from this image: (Starting image–provided). I attached this image to show how the starting image looks like. A lot of folks would stop here, but if you want to take your images to another level of dramatics, read on!

Chit-Chit. CaptureOne PRO 4.8.3. "+0 EV"

Tone-Mapped via Photomatix PRO:

Here are the Photomatix PRO settings: Detail Enhancer only.

Pseudo HDR / Tone-Mapping Part

1. Download the 0EV, -1EV, +1EV file of Chit-Chit here: Chit-Chit_0EV_-1EV_+1EV.zip

2. Make an HDR image and apply the Detail Enhancer settings from the above screen capture. You should now have an image that looks like mine (Chit-Chit Tone-mapped).

3. Correct the lens distortion via the Distort –> Lens Correction Filter in Photoshop.

4. From this, you can in any direction you wish. If you get good results, send a web-sized version to me via the contact page. I am curious what goodies you cook up!

5. Here is my version: Chit-Chit-102209-009_3_4_5HDRI_tonemapped_Tutorial.zip

Here is a thought or photography tip to some starting out.

It is always good to set the proper or “near-right” white balance at RAW capture. This is accomplished via using a Gretag McBeth Color Checker card or those “Grey Cards” you can purchase at photography retailers.

When you don’t have them, try to find something “grey” or neutral in the same lighting situation and/or distance as your subject.

When I was shooting Chit-Chit, I did not want to go back and get my color checker card. So, I looked for something neutral in the vicinity and similar lighting as Chit-Chit. I found these rubber mats for the dog house.

Here is screen shot of the original RAW capture and the white balance corrected. I also corrected and enhanced the contrast to give that initial, “Oomph!”

If you’re using any RAW converter software, call up your “white balance tool” and try to find RGB areas that are near equal in value on the grey/”neutral” reference image. For my reference image, I got 7750K with Tint = 7. I applied those settings over and you can see the before and after. It made a HUGE difference in image perception and mood.

IMPORTANT!

Leo Lam: May I add a suggestion? “The monitor must be calibrated for this method to work, otherwise, make sure you use a grey card (like the Gretag Macbeth or WhiBal) for white balance”. Without calibration, any “fine tuning” at the end is futile…

If there isn’t any “grey” or neutral objects in the scene, Chit-Chit has some grey patches of fur that could be used as starting guide and later fine-tune in photoshop. The purpose of white balancing is showing to people that what’s naturally “white” appears as white. If you look in the uncorrected image, Chit-Chit’s white stripe on her chest appeared grey.

You can play with the white balance setting to your heart’s content in RAW, but I like to be technical and scientific. Every shoot I do has some sort of neutral grey or reference image.

HAPPY WHITE-BALANCING!