June 20, 2022

The topic of Lightroom VS Capture one comes up a lot.

I am a little bit of an expert since everyone one of my Lightroom Develop Presets Packs also comes, and a Styles Pack for Capture One Pro and I’ve been using both for many years.

I’ve compared various things about Lightroom and Capture One and I have the main video for 2022 that compares Lightroom VS Capture One in a wide sense so you can decide which one is best for you.

YOu can even try the edit yourself with the RAW file below and the free lightroom preset and free capture one style I’ll link below. You can also share your results on the Shadow Hunters group post for this.

Try it – Download the RAW file for today’s test here.

So today is about a simple portrait edit. BUt not really an easy one because of the tricky light. This is a perfect test to see how we use Lightroom and Capture One in the real world for a great portrait edit and which one offers the best features.

Both edits are clean and have gentle differences from Lightroom to Capture OnePro

Download the Portra 160 Preset/Style I use in the video for FREE in the FIlmist Mini Pack.

Watch the video and see side-by-side edits and some tips for editing great portraits in both.

Lightroom is a little more initiative and has better Ai tools. Capture One is more nuance and control. They are close!

In the end, both are good and both have their advantages. But watch the video and I’ll show you some ups and downs. Whether you use Lightroom Classic, CC, or Capture One Pro 22, you can get great results and we’ll see them in today’s video.

Let me know which one you like best and why, or if there’s another app you favor for your RAwe editing, I’d like to hear about it in the comments.

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June 15, 2022

There’s a story here. But the real gold nugget is how to use GOLD tones with color photos. Here’s what I’ve learned…

My grandpa was always buying and selling antiques and taught me when I was young how to separate the value from the junk. At least he tried to teach me.

I remember him talking about the Curtis gold-tone prints long before digital was a thing. Little did I know that 3o years later I would still be obsessed with gold tones in the back of my mind as I developed my recipes. Maybe because they are so hard to get just right.

But today we’re in color, not re-creating early-era gold tones.
Enter the Gold-Chrome.

As far as I know, there was never a Gold-Chrome film. But maybe there should have been. Now even if you’re wanting to create other tones and mixes, the tips I’m going to share today will work.

Once we know the settings we create, but sometimes we use the slider in a very basic way. Decades later I still find myself discovering formulas. The sliders are a lot like chemicals. While it may be less messy and costly, those curves and up and downs are not any less subtle.

Mount Rainier by Asahel Curtis – Gold Orotype

Since the early days of photography, it seems people noticed the magic in a gold image. From the Platinum pallidum to the Curtis gold tones that were actually processed with real gold. The Orotone!

Maybe it’s the romance that early black and white created with its impure and often tinted results. Maybe it’s just because we love warm tones. It’s a color emotion thing. It’s why in cinema styles there are a lot of looks with orange and blue hues. Being opposite each other on a color wheel, they pair well.

So I recreated the early era darkroom and platinum looks in my Emulsions actions. They take that toning and make it easy to manage in layers. The platinum has a warm tone, not always Gold, but sometimes it actually feels gold.. In the future, I might add an authentic Orotone recipe into Emulsion actions as they can do more complex things than we create with presets and styles.

Here’s our goal…

  • Create dynamic gold tones that are not monochrome.
  • Try to maintain a gold that feels natural with other colors.
  • Make the gold tones versatile across many image types.

The perfect COLOR-Gold formula is NOT Selective color.

Rather than tinted black and white, these are created by how color is mixed and by the natural light in a scene. So if you have a backlit sunset, gold warmth comes more naturally and feels more at home. Don’t confuse this with ugly 90’s selective color.

You may have used the popular Classic Negative if you use Fuji X cameras. This is based on Superia 200 film, but it’s actually a very low saturation looks, while still retaining colors. I have a preset of Classic Negative that also you can download for free here. that I made to use on any field, like this Fuji XE3 street photo, since this model did not include that profile in the camera.

Street workers in a Mexico square, Fuji classic negative preset from Filmist
Not gold – Street workers, Filmist Classic Negative look on a Fuji XE3 RAW file.

You’ve seen this approach used in golden warm sunset photos but may not have even known it. These are not selective colors or black and white. They are shot and developed to focus on the golden warmth, but the color still remains.

I have tinkered with getting this look for over a decade in Lightroom, going all the way back to the first version of Power Workflow. More recently I had a great portrait-focused gold effect in the Muse preset pack called Gold Dust!

UPDATE – Get my Gold recipes as presets for Lightroom and Capture One with my finished Gold-Chrome pack.

Level 1 Gold toning
Warm like a sunset but maintains rich color.

Gold Dust – tone from the Muse presets pack. Sony FIle.

We want that look you see in iconic street photos or magazines. It always starts with light in the camera, but if you develop well, that gold can even be added to less warm images and still feel perfect.

Level 1 is gentle. It could almost be mistaken for White Balance but it’s much richer. Complicating matters more, each camera is different. Fuji tones lean redder, Sony more green etc.

We live in a world of internet marketers selling tools that leave people unhappy. I deal with the fallout of that, which is why I always guarantee my products. I am passionate and often obsessed with this kind of recipe. It cannot just work on one photo, it has to work on most of them.

In the Filmist pack I might spend an entire week focused on a single recipe to get it just right. Today I’ll show you progressively more intense gold recipes I’ve developed.

Don’t do this with White Balance!

Yes, it’s fine to warm or cool a photo a little with WB. It’s one of the secrets of making any6 color formula work for YOUR camera. But you can’t get a proper golden tone with a WB cast adjustment. White balance is often used for this, but incorrectly. Toning needs to come from the more subtle color channel and wheels.

Why? First, no WB setting will work in a Lightroom preset or styles for Capture One. They vary on a per-image basis. Second, you want more depth. When you use the color wheel and even more curves, you have dynamic toning that moves with the shadows and highlights.

Take all the colors away, then start from zero.

TIP: If you’re trying to make a color tone, go to the HSL colors and desaturate every channel.

This working in reverse will really well to help you find the goal. Pull them all down… Now start moving color back in a little at a time.

Next, you mix those with color wheels in mids, shadows, and highlights, then tones. As you progress you will see your effect come to life.

I kept thinking about how to explain more simply how to use advanced color features in Lightroom and Capture One. I’ll be making a channel a video and I’ll post it here in the future when I have

Elote Girl – Cine Soft Brown mi.

On the lighter gold side, we’re talking about a warm overtone that has hints of gold. Another level 1 like we see right here with the elotes girl happy over her corn. Yes, they love their Elotes in Mexico and they are always buying them on the street covered in mayonnaise and chili.

This gets more complex as we go to curves. You can do amazing things with the individual color channels in curves. But you can make a mess very fast. The adjustment in the color cruces, whether in Lightroom, Capture One, or Photoshop, is very finite but very powerful.

Level 2 Gold Toning
Softer color and more expansive warm tones.

But let’s go to level 2 gold. This is not about a vintage look. It’s about feeling good. I did these with what I call my El Dorado process. This pushes other colors down a bit more and focuses on the gold tones and color wheels. But it’s still a full-color photo.

El dorado process

A Gold-Chrome has colors from every channel.

We’re trying to empathize with a tone and feel of a scene that complements the real-world light. Even at level 2, we have a full-color spectrum, but golden warmth is all over the frame here. Level 2 done right, is actually very versatile.

This works great in atmospheric street scenes. But also fashion portraits and beyond. What we’re doing is using color to extend the existing emotions but in a way that doe snot feel like a fake color. If all color is equal, the image looks rather boring.

The parking garage, San Juan Del Rio Mexico -El Dorado tone

Now it’s starting to go GOLD!

By separating color and focusing on a specific range, we control the hues of a scene. In the case of Gold, it tends to give a warm sunset romantic vibe

IN going further we’re going to take a queue from the Curtis Gold tone. Because gold was part of the chemical process, it results in highlights being ultra gold. We’re still working in color, but let’s curve down those highlights and go further.

El Doroado gold chrome process. Level 2 still retains color well.

Going to level 3 – Ultra gold chrome color

What we’ve done is push curves and colors and how they respond more and more without selectively reducing any one color. The sensation of color is soft, leaving you with gold and warm rays. But the influence of the color is still there.

The boy on the dock. Ultra Gold tone. The color is there but the gold is more intense. In some photos, it feels perfectly natural.

In this photo on the lakeshore where it;’s clear sunset, it feels almost natural, but looking at the original file, you see just how much gold we added. I think with any process this should be the goal. Adding your recipe, while maintaining a feel that does not distract and feels right.

Original RAW file from a Fuji X100V

And yet we’ve all seen an image like this. Radiant golden rays that are intense, but feel natural. Like they convey an emotion that we might have felt in the real place. That’s the goal of photography. We have to convey that shadow, the sensation and to me, that’s what a great color formula is about.

A good Gold process is such that you don’t think about it being processed, yOU think about the feel and the story of this boy standing at the end of a dock waiting for his ship to come in. Or maybe something else.

Yes, Use RAW files and presets!

With any of the deep edits, you want RAw whenever possible. It’s especially popular amount street shooters to shoot JPEGs. The Fuji camera for example has great in-camera profiles. But you throw so much away in JPEG and if you want to deep deep recipes like this, you will be glad you have a RAW file to start from. Take a look at my video… Raw vs JPEG 2022.

It’s also important to have these as presets. We talking about adjustments that take hours. Especially when you refine them. So whether you buy presets like mine or make your own. Save at each step so you can use and compare easily later.

Ultra Gold color in a night street scene. Highlights are deeply affected giving this scene a vintage vibe.

Don’t be afraid to level up and do more.

By being progressively bolder, we’ve created a look that can be intense and still feel right. This post was about creating color gold tones. But it’s also about pushing developing settings.

I admit usually start with a presets or action to help kick me in the right direction.

If I see ten variants of a photo, it’s like adding visualizations to my brain and those adapt to create new ideas that I otherwise would have not discovered.

The level 3 process tends to look natural in photos where there is already a natural gold glow on the boy on the dock. Note the extremes in the highlights where level 3 pulls the upper curve down and fills it with warmth. This can work in other scenes like the night shot above, but it tends to bring a vintage vibe that is clearly a color effect. That’s not good to bad, just be aware.

My Gold Chrome Conclusion.

I like this look, which is why I have chased it for so long. How to edit and tone an image is a very personal choice and often there are many approaches that will look good. But if we become less timid, will draw out shadows and tones in new ways.

This has perhaps been an overly intensive look at gold chrome toning. But I’ve been chasing these tones for over a decade, and really ever since my grandpa talked with reverence about early ere Curtis Gold-Tone prints.

As these formulas are refined enough to work in most scenes, you may see them come out in my presets packs. The first level 1 Gold Dust tone is also part of my Muse Collection so if you have them play around and make your own variants.

20 years later I feel like I am starting to understand what needs to be done to make gold work. I have failed many times to get it right. A really good process is one you will come back to. If I am not there yet, I am on the way and I wanted to share with you and I hope you will share what you have found in the comments below.

Gavin Seim

L3 Gold Chrome church in the square. This takes extreme measures on highlights to give a very darkroom-like gold flavor.
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June 10, 2022

I’m sure you’ve noticed there are 3 versions of Lightroom.

To top it off there’s also Photoshop and camera RAW. Where do they fit in? I’ll show you that at the end.

Maybe you’ve even felt confused or even betrayed by all this mess.

OK maybe not quite betrayed. But it’s kind of crazy right?

In making the new Moby mobile presets, I was working on all 3 versions and realized I should make a video to clarify what’s happening.

So here’s why there are 3 versions of Lightroom and some tips so you can decide which one is best for you. You can also watch this on my channel.

The quality in all 3 will be exactly the same. But in short, you should probably just use Lightroom Classic and Lightroom Mobile. There’s really no need for Lightroom (cloud desktop) to have ever existed and it can’t really give you anything that Lightroom (classic) cannot.

It’s worth noting that Lightroom cloud can also be used online directly without even installing an app. This is neat, though if anything in makes the Lightroom Cloud desktop version even less needed.

Let me know what Lightroom you prefer and why in the comments.

Gavin Seim

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June 8, 2022

I finally made the perfect pack of Lightroom presets on mobile…

Which is to say, they are made for mobile, action cams, and small sensor cameras. Not that they won’t work on a desktop. In fact, they even include a Capture One styles pack for mobile photos and a LUT pack to edit mobile videos. Lightroom presets on mobile are easy and they transform the photos I take on small mobile cameras.

It’s called Moby and it’s sweet. I’ve been planning this pack for while. Any of my presets work in the Lightroom Mobile app. But the low-quality nature, pre-processed look, and high compression of mobile photos means that many preset we normally use for Raw like Filmist or Natural HDR we’re just too much on mobile photos. That means I just used a few favorites.

mobile lightroom presets Moby

So I built a Lightroom mobile presets pack, Capture One style Pack, and LUT pack designed to manage the color, contrast, and details that Mobile gives you, and create the best possible result.

Moby is not an expensive pack, in fact, you can get these mobile presets for free as a bonus when you buy any other pack on the site. And as always, these are guaranteed because they are well made and I know you will like them.

Get Moby here

Here’s a video I made about using Moby Mobile Presets

The cool thing is that by making a presets and styles pack design around mobile style files is that if you’re using a Phone, an actions cam, or editing photos from an old point and shoot. Even shooting Raw on a mobile. The recipes on mobile are going to make that look better, less plastic, and more refined. I’ll show you what I mean.

These may seem unimportant. But I am loving these styles.

I know this mobile presets collection won’t be my best seller. Most of you come here for my pro presets and actions.

But I’ve been feeling a lack. We all have a ton of mobile content and we usually do mediocre edits because it’s just not that easy or constant to do it right.

My making a pack of presets and LUTS dedicated to the kind of files mobile and compact camera JPEG type photos pro-grade edits on mobile photography get so much easier. I can edit a photo taken on mobile with that same filmic, great color look I do I pro-RAW files from my Sony or Fuji camera.

We can even shoot RAW of mobiles now, and this pack also yields great results on the tiny sensor RAW files they are giving us.

To top it all off, I can edit videos I take on my mobile with the Moby LUTS and get the same rich looks in resolve or even mobile video editors that support LUTS like VN video editor.

I’ve never been able to make mobile phone edits look so close to the results I’m getting from my bigger cameras. The goal for me is not to replace those. It’s just to keep improving on every front.

 

Enjoy these – Gavin Seim

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June 4, 2022

Zones for digital are the easiest way to understand shadow.

It’s because Zones let you see tone like nothing else and when you see tone for real it will blow you away. Today I will simply the darkest zones!

I’ve taught using the Zone system for years and many of you have learned Zones from my Exposed Workshop. But today’s video marks a new series in Zones. They are so easy to use and powerful, so we’re going to look at each area of Zones and use them to help us understand shadow and find the light.

You can also watch this on my channel and please subscribe.

Free Mobile screen and Desktop Zone scale…

As promised in the video, I also made you these to help you see and edit Zones as I do, check out Lumist 2 luminosity Zone actions.

DOWNLOAD both Zone helper gudies

 

If you’re still feeling confused leave a comment on the video or here on the blog and I’ll try to take it up in our next Zone study chapter. Remember, Zone 0 and 1 are your allies, not your enemies. Put them to work and they will make your photography better. Hunt shadows, find the light.

This mobile zone guide is made to fit on a mobile screen

You can quickly reference it all the Zones and how they relate to the histogram. You can save this one, but the download I linked above has a higher quality file and also includes my desktop Zone scale that you can easily drag on top of your photo in Photoshop or Affinity and review the Zones with more detail.

Oh and don’t forget to join our Shadow Hunters group on Facebook.  Have fun. Gavin Seim

 

Oh and don’t forget to join our Shadow Hunters group on Facebook.

 

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