If you're like me with Aperture, you relied on NIK and PTLens to get through a post session. It goes without saying that most RAW converters can eliminate the need for PTLens with built in lens correction... but I always thought I would need NIK to get the most dynamic range from my shots.
It's no secret that Aperture's shadow and highlight sliders are lacking. In fact, I would describe them as largely unusable. The shadow slider tends to drag not only the shadows but the blackest blacks into the mid tones which results in horrible contrast. The highlight slider's effect on extracting data from what looks like blown highlights (but actually contain a lot of data) is very limited.
So I relied on NIK. NIK Viveza in particular. I could drop a few control points on the sky to darken and saturate it, while dropping a few more on buildings or the foreground to increase structure and add contrast. It was a dream.
While it's probably a bit too early to say goodbye to NIK completely, I'm definitely coming to the conclusion that I may not need it any more with Capture One Pro. Something I thought I would never say.
Here's an example of an image I shot in Paris recently (the facade of the Pantheon). It's got extensive dynamic range with what looks like blown highlights in the clouds and dark shadows in both the foreground and in the details of the facade. If all you had to work with, was Aperture, you'd probably bin this photo, because the adjustments you've got to work with aren't going to provide you with a satisfying result.
Now here's the image as it came out of NIK Viveza. As I mentioned, I dropped a couple of control points in the sky to control the highlights and saturate the blue, and added a few more on the facade of the building to brighten it up, add a bit of warmth and add some much needed structure. It's much better, but I may have actually overdone it a bit on the structure (the bas relief in the apex looks over-processed).
Now, here's the same image, I just edited this evening in Capture One Pro. It looks pretty much the same, but without a round-trip edit. I'm sure one could spend time making them look identical in both tools, but that's pointless... the fact is you could get the same result from either tool... and not having to do a round-trip, create a TIFF, and end up with destructive edits to that TIFF you can't tweak without starting over, is huge!
Here's what it took in C1 to get this result...
First off, I could almost call it a day after simply adjusting the shadows, highlights, and clarity sliders. They are amazing compared to what I'm use to with Aperture. The shadow slider leaves the darkest blacks alone and only shifts the shadows so as not to kill overall contrast. The highlight slider recovered an amazing amount of highlights and I could have gone further.
When I was done with highlights and shadows (and dialing in some clarity and structure), the building looked good - it was done.
All I wanted to do next was increase the saturation of the sky. Now, I could have used the color control to saturate all blue tones, and I tried that, but as you would expect, that boosted the blue jeans on the people in the foreground making them look unnatural, so instead, I painted in the sky using my new Wacom tablet/stylus which only took a few seconds with the smart edge detection of the brush. I could then use the color control on just that area or the global saturation which would apply to just that area. It was just liking having a NIK control point covering the sky but with even more flexibility.
The only thing left was the people at the bottom... lifting the shadows to reveal details in the facade had made them a bit too washed-out for my liking so I just painted on a crude slight opacity mask to the lower portion of the image and adjusted contrast and exposure to taste.
I then got carried away and painted a mask on the copper thing on the pedestal to adjust that to suit. Overall, it took me longer than playing with NIK, largely because I'm new to C1 and this Wacom tablet, but it's a rocking way to do local adjustments.
I may be done with NIK. That's huge!
ps. I forgot to mention the keystone correction. In the original shot, the building facade is leaning back due to perspective and it doesn't look like I corrected my final output in Aperture with PTLens. The sad thing is, you can't tell if you've round-tripped to PTLens or not. However, I did correct the perspective with the keystone tool in C1 which is as simple as applying a couple of vertical lines to what should be vertical lines in the photo and letting it do the correction. Much better than PTLens (and I'm sure equivalent to every other modern RAW editor out there).
The more I use Capture One, the more I feel like a fool for clinging on to Aperture. It's not a very good tool.
. Besides, I'm rarely looking at the controls and usually focused on the image.
