post processing – Page 2 – Capture One2Three

About Nikon’s SOOC colors

This is just a short pondering of the SOOC Nikon colors. There are six different main color profiles, Picture Controls, in Nikon Z cameras. Of course there are also many filter-kind of profiles, but as they are more like special filters, I do not count them to the main profiles.

The main profiles are (in no particular order) Standard, Neutral, Vivid, Portrait, Landscape and Flat. Coming from Fujifilm ecosystem having used and tweaked a lot of different film simulations, I am used to the idea of having different color profiles for different purposes.

P400 II Gold Dust Capture One -style

In the beginning this style was just an experiment. An experiment of using Dehaze -tool in opposite direction than it kind of is meant to be used. Usually the Dehaze-tool would remove, well, haze, in your photos. And it seems to be very effective in this, though I have only couple of times tried it for it’s intended purpose.

The Dehaze-tool, when used in the opposite direction, giving minus values, does give the photo a hazy look, a bit like with a haze filter in front of your lens. I tried this couple of time, but other tools in Capture One have given what I have looked for and the hazy look just wasn’t for me. But when I saw that the Dehaze-tool also allows using a “tone”, picked with a color picker, I used enormous amount of time finding some nice tone that would enhance the images with this tool. What I thought this could bring to the table was the effect I have seen in some Portra film-photos: a golden glow that I haven’t otherwise been able to reproduce.

I didn’t manage to get the look I wanted and forgot this tool. Some week ago I accidentally found the tone I was looking for. It just happened to be there to be picked. And I did it to my P400 II Capture One -style. And I immediatelly knew this needed to be exploited.

Basics Portrait Capture One -style

During the time I used a Fujifilm camera I used a lot of energy deciding which of the film simulations work for me best. Surprisingly the one film simulation that I rejected in the beginning started to please me more and more. And that was the film simulation Astia. I liked Pro Neg High for people photos and some others for colorful landscapes for example, but again and again I found so many faces for the Astia film simulation that it just kept coming back and in the end it was the film simulation I used on daily basis.

The main purpose mentioned for that film simulation is portrait because of it’s colors and tone curves, but it worked well for landscapes and with some tweaking I found it worked with everyday subjects best of all the film simulations (subjective, I know).

I wanted to have a similar style to be used with my recent camera’s raw-files and baked a style for Capture One. This style is quite similar to the Astia. The basis I made this style on was my Natural Luma -style. And the colors are matched as well as possible, though these never are exact copies. Especially one can find differences in certain blue hues and the skin gets a bit redder here than with the Astia film simulation. I didn’t name the style after the Astia, but naming it “Portrait”, or more precisely “Basics Portrait”, according to the idea of the style’s origin’s purpose to be aimed for portrait photography.

A street photograph with the Basics Portrait Capture One -style

As always I share my styles and hopefully you find it useful as is or tweaked to your taste. The download link is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IEvKZTzv_7lZAnmjlVLRtAYxNRKw_qIu/view?usp=sharing

Collection of Capture One -styles

I transferred here many but not all styles from my old blog. The old blog was updated up to July 2021. This list is updated with new styles.

My styles should be compatible with Capture One Express, that is offered freely for many camera brands (Fuji, Nikon, Sony, if I am correct). There are possibly some exceptions to the compatibility, as I have not tested these with the free version and some settings might be limited outside the paid version.

If you use a fully paid version of Capture One, the styles are, or course, compatible with raw-files from any brand’s camera, but you have to change the camera profile to your camera’s generic profile (and save the style with this change to save you time next time) as there are noticeable differences between cameras.