Capture One 20 HDR Tool | Understanding the new options and how they’re different from other tools
When Capture One 20 Was Released at the start of December 2019, one of the key new features was the revised HDR tool. Since the release, there has been a lot of commentary around this that indicates that there is a degree of confusion about the changes, and in particular how they relate to other software, or other tools within Capture One. In order to try and explain the differences, I wanted to take a deeper look at the revised HDR tool in Capture One 20.
The two big Misconceptions about the HDR tool in Capture One 20
The two recurring complaints that I have seen about the changes to the HR tool are as follows:
- The new HDR tool makes Capture One just like Lightroom so there’s no need to switch to Capture One.
- The new black and white sliders are just the same as using the levels, so why bother?
Is it the same as Lightroom now?
TL;DR: No.
When I wrote my review of the software, I noted that they were making several tools behave a little more like Lightroom, possibly in order to make it easier for switchers. I should perhaps have clarified, that when I said “more like” I meant that the controls behave in a similar fashion, in that you move the sliders in the same direction, as thats what a lot of people were used to. But the results are still different, and the capabilities are different.
On my video on YouTube, and on several other sites, and discussion groups I saw variations of the same comment repeated over and over, that: “They’ve made Capture One so similar to Lightroom, that there’s no need to switch”.
This is of course nonsense, and I’m guessing most of that line of commentary was just trolling. If the only reason you were considering using Capture One was that the HDR tool (and Colour Editor) worked differently than the Lightroom version, then maybe you using Capture One is something you might want to think about a bit more. But I suspect those people weren’t ever going to be using Capture One anyway.
As I said, they changed the way you interact to make it a little easier for Lightroom switchers (and because lots of people asked for it), but the actual results are still quite different.
In the case of the HDR tool, the new version now starts centered, and you drag up or down from zero. They also added a black and white slider. While this now may look similar to Lightroom’s shadows and highlights, and black and white slider on the surface, the results are still quite different, and the way it works internally are different.
Shadow and Highlight Recovery
Firstly, while the highlights and shadow sliders now operate in a way that makes more sense to anyone who is used to other software, in other words you drag the sliders in the same direction as you would in Lightroom. However, the sliders themselves actually have more of an effect. For example, the highlights slider recovers more highlight data than the equivalent slider in Lightroom. Here is an example:
In this case, the sun was behind the building, and the highlight slider has recovered the limit of the dynamic range information in the file, and you can see where the cutoff occurs. You can get to this out of range information in Lightroom, but only by decreasing the overall exposure.
Lightroom vs Capture One Highlight recovery
Important disclaimer: This is just one example which I’m using purely for technical reasons, and I’m only showing it to demonstrate the amount of data that can be recovered. It’s purely a technical example. This is not about the aesthetic quality of the image, or how to accurately capture such a situation. I am using a deliberately blown highlight to show the difference in dynamic rage recovery. Nor is it a judgement on the aesthetic quality of the result, or a complaint about Lightroom. It is merely a technical observation.
When I posted this on social media earlier, some people got hung up on the look of the image, and that they preferred the Lightroom version. This is missing the point. You can get a similar result to the Lightroom version easily, by using less on the amount (and I didn't want to use another test chart.) It’s not exactly the same because of differences in the colour rendition, and vignette recovery, but it’s similar. The point of this is to show that the algorithms are different, and range of options possible are different.
Recovery -40 in Capture One
The operational limits are more with the CaptureOne versions, and in most cases you would never drag them to these limits, but it gives you a bit more options.
Black and White Sliders & Levels
The black and white sliders however operate completely differently though. In Lightroom the black and white sliders operate similarly (but not exactly the same) as they would in a Levels tool. In Lightroom, they are more accurately a black point and white point adjustment. In Capture One, they are not. They adjust the blacks and whites portion of the image, NOT the black point or white point.
To understand the difference, here is an imaginary histogram showing how black and white point adjustment works in Lightroom.
In Lightroom, or in a normal levels tool, when you adjust the black point or the white point, you effectively compress the entire histogram, and you are affecting all brightness levels in the image.
Lightroom Black and White Point Adjustment
For example, say you had an image that was underexposed. You could take the white point slider in Lightroom and drag it to the right to increase the white point. This would have the effect of effectively expanding the histogram out until the exposure fills the histogram. In other words, imagine the histogram is a sheet of rubber, and you take both ends and pull one end either to the left or the right. That’s what the black and white point slider does in Lightroom. It’s also what you would achieve with the Levels tool in Capture One.
The Black and white slider in Capture One however is completely different. When you adjust the black slider in capture one, it performs an exposure adjustment on the lowest quarter of the histogram. The white slider does the same but to the upper quarter.
Capture One HDR Tool Black and White Slider, Shadow and Highlight Slider Ranges
Now, this is just my way of simplifying the explanation. In reality, it’s more complicated, and it’s basically weighted to the top and bottom with a falloff. By comparison, the shadow and highlights sliders are weighted to the bottom half and top half of the histogram respectively.
In other words, adjusting the black slider only affects the darkest tones on the image, and adjusting the whites slider only affects the brightest parts of the image. This is on contrast to the level tool, or the equivalent sliders in Lightroom, which affect the whole image.
Please note that these diagrams are simplified explanations and are not representing exactly what is going on. They are purely for illustrative purposes.
Here are some examples in actual images:
First comparing shadow and black sliders.
Disclaimer: I have used values of 100 in these examples to show the full range and how it affects the image. This is purely for demonstration purposes. I am not suggesting that these values are appropriate for the image, or judging on the aesthetic value of the results. It’s purely for informative value. The same applies to the examples below.
And now, comparing Highlights and White sliders.
Again, this is a single example, and the actual results will vary from image to image.
It’s also important to note that using these sliders won’t result in raising the black point to the point where the blacks become grey, or lowering the white point to the point where whites become grey. This is in contrast to the levels tool. Another important difference to the black and white sliders in Capture One to the Levels tool in capture one, is that the Levels tool works on the RGB data after it is converted to RAW, and so will be clipped, whereas the black and white slider work from the raw data, and will work outside the visible range to recover clipped data.
Conclusion
While this has been a fairly technical article, I hope that has explained the differences, and addressed the most common criticism that I’ve heard about the tool. While I do suspect that a lot of that criticism was trolling from some Lightroom users, there was some misunderstandings about it, and personally, I didn’t do a great job of explaining it in my earlier review and video on the software.
As always the best option to better understand something is to try it yourself and observe the differences. In particular pay attention to the histogram as you adjust the results. And also, try on a range of images. These are just a few examples I have shown here, and it’s always best to try a technique on your own images.
Capture One 20 is available now, and you can find out more on the company’s website.
You can buy or upgrade to the new version direct from the Capture One store, and this includes the Fuji and Sony versions. You can also try it out with a 30 day trial version.
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