Luma Range Overview

With the Luma Range, you can specify that only the deep shadows, a mid-tone range, or the upper highlights should be included in your selected layer adjustments.

Let’s take a look at the example. You have created a new filled Layer and increased Clarity and Saturation a lot to boost the image presence. However, you might find that the effect is too strong in the shadows and highlights. With the Luma Range feature, you can tell Capture One to exclude the shadows and highlights from the adjustment and only include the mid-tones.

This article contains the following sections:

Using Luma Range

You control the luminosity range with the black and white Range points at the top of the Luma Range graph. The gray area in the graph presents which luminosity values are included in the adjustment, while the black area presents those that are excluded.

The two Falloff points at the bottom of the Luma Range graph control the transition from full effect to no effect. It is important to have some Falloff to prevent an abrupt transition from the included to the excluded luminosity areas as you can get artifacts.

See the illustration to get a visual summary over how you should set up the Luma Range to include only the deep shadows, a mid-tone range, or the upper highlights respectively.

The possibilities are vast since the Luma Range feature works on all Adjustment Layers. The only thing to remember is that you need to have some kind of mask created on a layer before you will see any effect of the Luma Range feature. It works on all types of masks like the non-destructive Linear Gradient Mask and Radial Gradient Mask as well as masks created with the Draw Mask cursor or a mask covering the entire image created with the Fill Mask or New Filled Layer commands.

It is important to point out that the Luma Range works on top of a normal mask, so only the masked areas will be considered when applying the luminosity range. It is meant as a further refinement and this is what makes the feature so powerful: You have two ways to control what should be affected in the image: the mask itself and the luminosity range. You can also think of the Luma Range as a way to clip or clamp certain luminosity values.

Another powerful part of the Luma Range feature is the fact that it is non-destructive, so you can always go back and readjust it later. You can even copy the Luma Range mask to other images and readjust the luminosity range after the fact on those, setting up a very efficient workflow.

It is also worth to point out that if you readjust how a Linear Gradient Mask or Radial Gradient Mask covers the image, the Luma Range feature will automatically update its influence on the resulting mask. Since these new making features are all non-destructive, you can copy those to other images and readjust the masking later.

Additional Information

Luma Range in Styles

In Capture One Pro (16.3.4), any Luma Range applied to a Layer saved in a Style will be recalculated for the specific image to which the Style is applied.