Capture One Tutorial.
Dramatising the sky.

Often, a sky appears too milky and uniform, with the result that clouds are indistinct and barely visible. In such cases, simply reducing the brightness of the sky is often enough to bring about a marked improvement. This usually results in a more balanced rendering and makes cloud details more visible. However, the difficulty lies in making this correction without altering the exposure of the rest of the photograph.

The method of manually creating a mask over the sky can be a laborious and time-consuming task. It requires a great deal of attention to detail to ensure that the mask encompasses precisely the area of sky without encroaching on other parts of the image. If the composition includes elements such as tree leaves touching the sky, the process becomes even more complex and difficult to achieve with precision.

An alternative to creating masks manually is to use advanced retouching software. Some of these programs offer intelligent selection or automated masking tools, which can make the process of correcting the sky much easier without altering the rest of the photo.

This tutorial describes a solution that uses Capture One's colour editor. It takes just ten seconds or so and doesn't require any meticulous cropping.

Working image.

This photo shows part of the sculptu Albert Louis Chanut, which can be seen on the Place du Bicentenaire in Saint-Étienne (France).

For this image, the aim is to create a darker, more menacing atmosphere, with a heavy sky and a stormy mood. Although the underexposure option may seem adequate to achieve this desired effect, the real difficulty lies in the ability to make these changes exclusively to the sky, without altering the other elements of the photo.

There is, of course, the solution of creating a local adjustment layer, but the mask will have to be carefully drawn to cover the sky without touching the sculpture. This will take quite a long time and may even prove difficult because of the tortured shape of the sculpture, although Capture One has a tool to make it easier to follow the contours while drawing the mask (Auto Mask).

For this tutorial, we're going to focus on a colour-based selection approach. However, this photo presents an additional complexity to take into account: the sky is reflected on the surface of the sculpture, which means that the selection will have to be carried out with great precision.

The method.

You can use this tutorial on your own RAW files or download the image used in our example:

• RAW file: AP0_6045.NEF - Nikon D300 - 14Mo.

1

Click on the Color tool tab

3

Click on . This picker lets you select a colour by clicking in the image.

7

Click on this newly created layer. You can rename it if you wish, but this is not essential. However, it may be useful to check that the mask corresponds to what you want: press the M key to display the mask. If areas other than the sky are covered by the mask, use the tool to erase the mask in these areas.

That's all there is to it!
As you can see, it's very quick. The colour editor is a really practical tool and the fact that you can create a layer mask from the colour selection (possible since Capture One version 9) makes things even simpler.

The result.

Original photo, before sky treatment

Photo after sky treatment