This question comes in three parts. First, is your camera really as bad at high ISOs as you think? Second, is noise REALLY that intolerable? And is your attitude to noise stopping you from taking shots you might actually like?
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When LUTs can be a lifeline
LUT stands for LookUp Table. It’s a digital file that shifts colors and tones in hue, saturation, luminance – usually all three. LUTs are used widely in video editing and cinematography, but are becoming increasingly popular in regular stills photography. They are like ‘pre-processing’ for images. They give you a whole new look without involving any of the editing tools – unlike presets.
Capture One to favor subscriptions in 2023, perpetual licenses downgraded
You can read the full details in Capture One’s official bulletin, though this offers so many alternative scenarios for existing users that they do become a little hard to follow – but perpetual licenses will no longer offer feature updates or even traditional upgrade discounts.
Reviews
Capture One 23 review
Verdict: 4.8 stars Capture One 23 is a professional Lightroom rival that offers a step up in both image quality and editing tools, and supports a greater variety of professional workflows. The RAW processing is excellent, the editing tools are powerful and the new Cull view, layered Styles and improved Variant handling alone make the upgrade look worth it. Capture One is not cheap, but it’s designed for professional, quality-orientated workflows.
ON1 Photo RAW 2023 review
Verdict: 4.5 stars ON1 Photo RAW 2023 is probably the closest thing there is to a photo editor that does absolutely everything. This version adds AI subject recognition and masking features. ON1 Photo RAW’s scope and ambitions are impressive, though the AI doesn’t always work perfectly and ON1 Photo RAW 2023 can sometimes feel sluggish.
How to articles
When to use a high key look and how to create it with curves
A high key image is one which consists almost entirely of bright tones. This works really well for subjects with white or near-white tones and gives a very bright, airy look. Not every image needs a full range of tones from solid black to brilliant white, and not every image needs the ‘perfect’ histogram. Histograms are there to tell you what’s happening, not what to do.
Color editing is the secret sauce of photo enhancement
All image-editors offer color controls that let you target a specific color or color range and then change its hue, saturation or lightness. In this example, I’m using the Color Editor in Capture One, but any photo editor with HSL color controls will let you do the same.
Preset picks: Silver Efex Pro Hollywood Glamour
What’s in a name? Preset effects typically have names to give you an idea of the kind of subjects they might work with, but in reality you should just choose a preset that gives you the ‘look’ you want. For this dramatic seascape I turned to the Hollywood Glamour preset in Silver Efex Pro, one of the key plug-ins in the DxO Nik Collection.
Capture One 23 Cull tool: how does this new feature work and how useful is it?
Capture One 23 comes with a whole series of new features, and one of these is the Cull window, a workspace for filtering out your best shots and ditching the rest.
Don’t just accept Lightroom’s default Adobe Color profile
It’s easily done. You view a RAW image in Lightroom, it applies the default Adobe Color profile and you don’t even bother to question it. You can see what you don’t like, you do some editing – sometimes it takes a while – and you fix it. But often you’re fixing an issue introduced by the default Lightroom profile, and not something that actually needs fixing!