Capture One Express 6: Introduction

Welcome to Capture One Express 6
My name is Peter Eastway I am the editor of Better Photography Magazine
If you have installed and activated Capture One Express, we'd love you to update your user profile
With details of the cameras you use
Because this information will help the Capture One’s R&D team develop even better applications in the future
Capture One is a single user license…
But this allows you to install the application on two computers, such as your home desktop
Or a portable laptop
And one of the new features that's challenging to show a tutorial like this…
Is the increased processing speed and improved image quality but you only have to use capture One Express 6 for a short while…
To appreciate what the software engineers have achieved!
Let's take a quick look at the latest developments in Capture One Express 6
The user interface is similar to Capture One 5
The Tools tab is on the left, and this is where you'll find all of capture One’s powerful adjustment tools
Such as, exposure, white balance and sharpening
In the middle up the top…
The Cursor toolbar provides direct access to all the cursor tools found in the tooltab
And on the right we have some useful icons…
For copying, outputting and adjusting the application
In the center of the screen you’ll find the viewer…
Where you view, enlarge and even compare your images. It's really easy to work on more than one photo at a time
Below the viewer sits the browser
And this allows us to quickly scroll through our images to find the ones we want to work with
So how do we get our photos into Capture One Express?
One way is to use the Library tooltab:
Dropdown to the system folders…
And simply navigate your way to the folders on your computer…
That holds the Raw files
If you're photos are on a memory card
You can use the “Import images” feature -
To copy the files onto your hard disk
The idea behind Capture One Express 6…
Is to produce the best quality photographs possible
One really cool feature is the Auto Adjust tool!
Click it, and Capture One makes all the necessary adjustments automatically
This is a really good starting point for your own image adjustments, and it might be all you need to do
However - let's look at the amazing control you have with some of the other adjustment tools…
In the quick tool tab
Up the top we have a histogram, which shows visually the tonal range in the image
Its usual to begin adjusting your file by setting the white balance, or color balance
I try the automatic A button first
But you can also use the dropdown presets
Or you could manually adjust the Kelvin and tint sliders
Or even use the white balance picker to select a neutral tone in the photograph
Next is exposure – and again, let's start with the Auto Adjust “A” button
This adjusts the exposure
And in this dialog, you can also manually adjust the contrast,
The brightness
And the color saturation
Below are the high dynamic range sliders for the control of highlight and shadow detail
Often, this is all we need to do…
And your next step can be to process the file to turn the image…
Into a JPEG or TIFF file with all your adjustments in place
In addition to the Quick tab, are more detailed adjustments including the Color tab…
Which includes a color editor.
The exposure tab…
Which includes levels and curves adjustments for more advanced editing
You'll also find here the clarity slider which gives more image detail
And a vignetting tool which can produce a really cool darkening around the edges effect
Other tooltabs include composition…
For cropping and rotating,
The detail tooltab had sharpening and noise reduction
And the output tooltab
However…
Instead of outputting your files, you can now print straight from Capture One
Just press the print icon, to open the printing dialog
One really cool way to show all your adjusted photos is to make a web gallery page
Which you can output and in upload to your website
Or you might like to try the new slideshow feature
As you'll see it starts immediately and there are controls to adjust to transitions and timing
There is a lot in Capture One Express 6
And I hope this short introduction
Will help you work your way through the application
You'll also find more video tutorials at Phaseone.com or on Youtube