Capture One Livestream: Understanding exposure and contrast

Adjusting exposure and contrast can be challenging, especially if you need help understanding how to start and finish your editing process.
There are numerous ways to adjust the Exposure, High Dynamic Range, Levels, and Curves tools. In this Livestream, we’ll dive into these tools together by showing you how they differ and what the best practice is for each.
[00:00] - Intro
[02:18] - Exposure vs Brightness
[09:25] - Exposure Warnings
[11:25] - Highlights vs Whites
[13:58] - Shadows vs Blacks
[15:14] - More HDR examples
[18:50] - Contrast vs Curves
[28:46] - Levels
[38:30] - Clarity
[41:18] - Saturation vs Vibrancy
[46:14] - Dehaze
[48:00] - FInal Q&A
[53:54] - Changes to our Learning Hub

[@CaptureOne]

Chapters have been added to this livestream. Hover over the play bar to skip ahead. [00:00] - Intro [02:18] - Exposure vs Brightness [09:25] - Exposure Warnings [11:25] - Highlights vs Whites [13:58] - Shadows vs Blacks [15:14] - More HDR examples [18:50] - Contrast vs Curves [28:46] - Levels [38:30] - Clarity [41:18] - Saturation vs Vibrancy [46:14] - Dehaze [48:00] - FInal Q&A [53:54] - Changes to our Learning Hub

[@ankh-lyfe]

This is a GREAT informative video. Learning each option and what they do is extremely helpful. Thanks for all the video as I get to learn the right way the first time not to create bad habits like over using exposure vs using brightness. Thanks

[@jeremywenrich]

Such valuable instruction. I cannot thank you enough!

[@paulwilliams4295]

Thanks for reminding me about the exposure warning threshold. I've always left it at it's default 250 but was frustrated only this week I was struggling with some frosty tree pictures - the whites were dull or red.. Having watching this video, I raised it to 254, brightened the images and got some much nicer results.

[@btownjpl]

Thanks for another very informative video. I’ve been using Capture One for a long time, but I have to confess I was not clear on the function of Brightness as opposed to Exposure. Now I know! Also, thanks for the heads up about the migration of the learning hub. I just went over to the Capture One support page and “Followed” all the various learning options.

[@deejaybeephoto]

Thank you David once again for another very helpful presentation.

[@GaryBlessington]

Good, clear explanation of the different tools. Thanks!

[@TomAdelstein]

Outstanding live stream. Thank you! Pleased with the product! Long-time Adobe user.

[@CaptureOne]

Our pleasure!

[@bioliv1]

As a supplement to this lecture I'll highly recommend the video "Dodge and Burn in Capture One - Make Your Landscape Photos Look 3D" by Andrea Livieri!

[@almostgreen9498]

When would you use the middle slider in the Levels Tool rather than the brightness slider?

[@barryj7478]

If the saturation slider is actually vibrancy then why not call it that and avoid all the confusion!! It's been called saturation for years, for as long as I remember. This was one of your better videos but I do think when you ask for questions that the ones you mention and answer on screen should have a little more time invested in the answer. ie. The question, "How about a sharpening mask?". Your answer was, "Yes you can do that with a luminosity mask", and move on. Well sharpening is actually adding contrast so the question is a valid one since the video is titled, "Exposure and contrast". I would have liked to see you open a luminosity mask and do a quick demo on how to do it since the question was on topic for the video. If you are not willing to do that then an answer such as, "That's a good question since sharpening is actually adding contrast but I don't have time to go into detail on this video but that would be a good subject for a future video." I would have been a little put off if I'd asked that question and a little less willing to get involved in future videos. I bring this up only in the context of constructive criticism.

[@CaptureOne]

Why not call it Vibrancy? Capture One came out before Lightroom and I guess the term "Vibrancy" didn't exist then. It was simply a better way of handling saturation from the get go. As arguably, you would not want the saturation slider to behave in any other way than it does. Secondly, if I said "Luminosity" that was an error. What I thought I said was just to locally apply you can do that with a mask. But in the interest of keeping on topic and not going down rabbit holes we can't always go off on different tangents. Additionally, Victor was online in the chat helping out with off topic questions. I feel this is the best compromise. /David

[@mortenthorpe]

You can’t ask (as somone did during the video session) for the specific recipe covering a typical shot, because photography (the end result) is an artistic choice - Not a clinically correct one.

[@maxbashyrov5785]

Exposure, by definition, has nothing to do with ISO, and, therefore, with ISO invariance (and use of this term in post-processing software is also technically not correct, but it got stuck historically, I guess).