Experiment: Haze in Capture One - A First Attempt
Ever since I posted my tutorial for achieving dehaze in capture One on YouTube, I’ve been getting lots of requests for a way to do the opposite. Adding haze to an image is a lot tricker than dehaze if you want to make it look realistic. To add fog or atmosphere in an image, you really need to have a depth mask to do it properly. If I were doing this for visual effects, I’d first have to create some kind of depth map for the scene. However, if you’re happy with just an approximation, then you should be able to achieve something reasonable in Capture One.
Having played around a bit, and trying to come up with a solution, this is my first attempt. It is quite scene dependent, so you may have to tweak this from image to image, but, as with my Dehaze option, by doing this on a layer, you will get an overall slider that you can tweak the amount with.
The first step is to create a new filled layer. You can adjust the mask later but to start with creating a filled adjustment layer.
Next, you want to set the Luma Range on this layer. Use the screenshot below to get the settings I used. You can tweak these later to suit your own image, but this is my suggestion for now.
Next, you want to set some parameters on the layer. Below are the settings I used in this case. I have also included these as a style that you can apply to the layer (Right-click on the layer, and choose: “Apply Adjustments From” - and select the style). For the Clarity, make sure to set the method to Neutral, as this gives a more “bloomy” effect. For the curve, make sure to use the Luma curve rather than the RGB curve. You also want to make sure you use a bit of negative saturation, as otherwise, the colours will go quite luminous.
Once you have all this setup, you can then control the amount with the overall layer opacity slider. For most images, you will probably need to set the opacity slider very low, especially if they are low contrast to begin with. For higher contrast images, you can use a higher value. You may get funky highlights if it’s too much for the specific scene, and in that case, just use a lower amount.
As I said at the start, this is just my first attempt, and a bit of an experiment, so I haven’t fleshed this out too much yet, or done extensive testing. I welcome feedback as to how this can be improved, but if you’re looking for a way to do this, this should be a good starting place.
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