Capture One lets you save adjustments for re-use in the future, but it can be confusing because it offers user ‘presets’ and user ‘styles’ without being terribly clear about the difference. In other programs, ‘presets’ usually refer to sets of adjustments applied all at once, but Capture One presets are subtly different.
So to make the difference clear, and to demonstrate a few of the adjustment tools in Capture One at the same time, I’m going to see if I can give this shot of an Aston Martin convertible (above) a little extra ‘kick’.
01 Make an adjustment
I’m going to combine contrast, dynamic range and clarity adjustments for this effect, and I’ll start off by increasing the contrast slider t +10.
02 The Presets menu
Most of the adjustment panels in Capture One have a row of tiny icons in the top right corner, and towards the far right of these is the Presets button, which I’ve circled in this screenshot. If I click this button, the Presets menu opens and I can select the ‘Save User Preset’ option.
03 Save Preset options
This pops up a Save Preset panel where you confirm the adjustments you want to save. You can see that for this one there are checkboxes for each of the four sliders in the Exposure panel, but only the Contrast box is checked because that’s the only slider I’ve adjusted. So let’s click the ‘Save’ button…
