Unwanted tone creeping into my BW files
I work almost exclusively in black and white, although my RAW files are color, so I have to enable BW, which I do, and I use the color sliders to optimize etc. Here's the thing: I've noticed that subtle tones are creeping in. I think it has to do with the Dehaze tool, but I'm not sure. In any event, is there a way to restore my austere, pristine blacks and whites? I don't want ANY tones to impinge! BTW I'm a very recent convert to Capture One (from Luminar Neo, which I liked a lot. But C-1? I'm loving it!)
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I can't see any tint being produced by using the Dehaze tool.
Are you sure it isn't the Colour Balance tool? Most of the tools that adjust colours (white balance, curves on separate R, G, and B channels, etc) don't introduce a tint into the B & W image. So for instance you can make the greens come out a darker or lighter shade of grey using the Green channel in the curves tool. Or you can affect how the colours translate to greyscale by adjusting the kelvin slider.
However, the Colour Balance tool is the exception to this. By design, if you use the shadow, mid-tone, and highlight wheels in the Colour Balance tool, it will introduce a tint into the shadows, mid-tones or highlights in the B & W image. One of the things you can use this for is three-way split toning.
Ian
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Hi Ian—thanks for your speedy response. I've checked the color balance tool, and everything seems to be centered. I actually threw everything off so that I could see tangible color shifts, and then recentered them. So I don't think it's that. I'll keep twiddling the knobs—like I said, C-1 is new to me, so there might be something obvious that I'm missing. Really appreciate the feedback!
J-M
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Black & White pane - Split Tones tab
Saturation can introduce a colour in Highlights and ShadowsColor Balance - all tabs
Anything apart from completely at the bottom of the left graphic slider will introduce colour — and yes, this is the correct spelling of the word colour ;-) but the interface spell is differently!Curve - Red Green Blue tabs
Any adjustment will introduce colour. The RGB and Luma tabs don’t.Levels - Red Green Blue tabs
Any adjustment will introduce colour. The RGB doesn’t.Any exporting to an external editor such as the Nik Collection or Topaz and reimporting can introduce colour casts because they work with sRGB etc, so the Enable Black & White needs to be checked again on the imported file.
Any exporting to JPEG incorporating sRBG may also introduce colour information which can become apparent on a screen.
Choosing any of the Gray Output options should not have any colour info. Personally, I use the Phase One Gray G22, possibly for no other reason than it makes me think I know what I’m doing. I’m sure the others are OK too!———-
Things nothing to do with but can affect Capture One:Monitor
Any monitor will be calibrated or set to a particular White or ‘paper’ tone which can introduce colour cast when viewing. Usually a yellow, but again, monitors can also have different temperatures which change throughout the day to reduce blue etc. These maybe part of a default setting as part of the system software (not Capture One’s) which may also override any custom calibration profile after updating system software.It is important to check what profile the monitor is using in System Setting etc.
Monitors take about 30 minutes to properly settle after turning on and can also change over time, so re-calibrating visually or using a profiler and spectrophotometer is something which needs to be done every so often.
Ambient light, daytime, nighttime, lack of sleep, not enough or too much caffeine (whichever your drug of choice) can also affect visual perception.
Hope this provides some help.
Demetri1 -
Use the color readout picker or the RGB values on top of the viewer to see if you really have a color cast in the image itself.
Demetri, ask U.S. and then British citizens how to spell colour/color, you might be surprised.
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Quantum spelling, or appeasing the lowest common denominator.
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I'm not convinced that your list of tools that introduce a colour cast is correct.
If the black and white tool itself is enabled (which the OP said it was), as far as I can see
- only the shadow, mid-tone and highlight wheels on the colour balance tool do so. (And of course the split tone tab of the black and white tool - which is what it is intended for.)
- the master wheel on the colour balance tool, and the levels and curves tools don't.
Of course it is a different matter if you produce your black and white effect just by dragging the saturation slider down to zero - in that case what you say would be correct.
Ian
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Yes, this is so, and thank you for that clarification. However, there are situations where the Enable Black & White check box may not checked, or may no longer be checked after something else has been done.
If the image has been edited using an external editor such as Silver Efex, Topaz DeNoise, or if the image was produced using a ‘Monochrom’ camera, or if it was a scanned BW film, then the it may display as black and white but not have, or may no longer have, the restrictions afforded by checking the Enable Black & White even though it originally had been.
Yes, this was not the case with the OP but these threads are searched and read by many others and I was mindful to include other methods which may produce perceived colour shifts, including monitors etc. The title of the Post only is ‘Unwanted tone creeping into my BW files’.
@BeO helpfully mentioned using the Color Picker to reveal the actual colour composition of an image which would not be affected by monitor calibration, and so provides definitive and accurate colour information.
The OP also mentioned using RAW files, but again, if someone reading this had used a setting in camera to emulate black and white image then again, this would most likely be a JPEG, look black and white but not have the Enable B&W checked.
And yes, if the blunt instrument of just De-Saturating the whole image to create a black and white effect then anything could still happen!
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Thanks to all of you for these detailed responses. I'm working through the possibilities—still haven't found a solution! Since I'm seeing the shift in my prints (yes, I still print things), there may be a printer issue, but I'm seeing the shift on screen as well. The printer issue is super-perplexing as I'm printing in greyscale. So the colo(u)r inks aren't supposed to be involved at all!
BTW regarding the spelling topic: having grown up in a society that was famously (and sadly) obsessed with colour (South Africa) and then emigrated to a country that's no less obsessed (just as sadly) with color (the U.S.) I know better than to weigh in on such matters!
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Ha ha, I don’t think there is any ‘May be a printer issue’ about it regardless of the grey scale setting. There are so many software and profile interferences in between and that’s before we start to look at the quality and constituents of the black ink itself which can look different in different lighting conditions (metamerism), or even the paper!!!
Then as another responder (SFA) mentioned, age and length of time looking at a screen can affect colour perception. Perception is the correct word, because it is what a viewer perceives rather than the reality of an image. My understanding is that our eyes see a combination of red green and blue coupled with intensity. We don’t actually ‘see’ black, just a lack of colour. Printers use CMYK and many modern ink jets use a number of other inks to give more accurate representations of colour including more than one version of so-called black. To add to the fun, RGB is described as being ‘constructive’ and CMYK as ‘destructive’ which means that 100% of each constituent creates white in RGB and black in CMYK. Oh joy!
I think the best way to isolate where any issue may exist is by first checking the image using BeO’s suggestion to look at the RGB values. Eyes, monitors and printers exist to deceive!
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Demetri—I know what you mean about the eyes. I was recently considering a 5k monitor, but realized that my 61 year old eyes aren't capable of more than 4k!
And SFA—thanks for the Flemming tip. I'll check it out.
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