“We’re not sure exactly what we want. We were thinking maybe black & white or super saturated colour. Can we see a few different examples?”.
Have you ever heard these words from a client on (or after) a shoot? I have, more times then I can remember. I usually reply with a very relaxed ‘sure’ we can supply low res images in a variety of colour treatments.
How can we be so relaxed when the client is asking for what appears to be much more work? (They don’t like to pay for this stuff usually).
The answer lies in ‘VARIANTS’. This is Captures Ones magic sauce that makes multiple looks on the same image easier then cooking pot noodles. Just being able to see 2-3 examples of the same image side by side with different treatments is a very powerful production tool.
Check out this little tutorial below to see how you too can easily master Variants.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVX1UPpUMoA&w=590&h=443
Thank you,
Adrian
Adrian Weinbrecht
Adrian Weinbrecht is one Europe’s best established commercial advertising photographers and shoots for a diverse range of top-tier international clients like Sony, UBS, BBC, Jaguar Land Rover, Adidas.
Nice clear edit. Thanx!
I appreciate that Roy.
Thanks
Adrian
Great tutorial keep making them. Thanks
Thanks Colin
Will do.
Best
Adrian
Please feel free to make suggestions if there’s any part of the workflow you’d like to know more about.
Warmest wishes
Adrian Weinbrecht
Hello Adrian,
thanks for sharing. I didn’t know you could make variants on cropping…
How did you Clone Variant in four fold, in one click ? Approx. 6:33 in the video…
Cheers,
Tim.
Hi Tim
My editor just cut out the repetition of the cloning to speed things up, so as far as I know you can only create 1x clone Variant at a time. Good idea though.
Best
Adrian
Owkay, that explains a lot 🙂
Hi Adrian
Nice to read that, thank You!
Is there also some kind of a workflow, if You develop a raw according to that variant, make some changes in a new variant, which You develop again and so on. It would be nice to know than, which developed raw belongs to which variant.
Do You know something in that direction?
best regards
David
Hi David
The obvious answer here is that the processed file should look like the variant it’s come from.
You could create a folder when you process (I cover this in the next video) and call it Variant ‘1’ for example.
If all the variants are selected and processed together into the same output folder. Then I’m pretty sure they will have a number added to the ended of the file name. Eg Adrian-0047 would become Adrian-0047-1, Adrian-0047-2, and so on for each variant.
We tend to simply name the destination folder relative to the variant recipe, eg Saturated, Black and White, and so on.
Hope that helps
Best
Adrian
Thanks for Your answer, Adrian.
Well – in my way of working out, how to process a raw, it is often not that obvious 🙂
Images from my digital back I develop with Phocus, where relations between developed files and how it was developed are somehow foolproof.
In Captureone I miss something similar. For instance: If You have let’s say 4 variants, and You delete No. 2, than variant 3 and 4 will be renamed!
Anyhow I am looking forward to Your next tutorial!
best regards
David
Thanks David
Adrian
Hello Adrian,
I like using variants and cannot picture working without it. But I have come across a roadblock in terms of workflow.
I am trying to achieve the following:
eg. I have 500 images which I have edited a certain way and I would like to do a BW version of them by applying the BW filter and I want them colour tagged to differentiate them from the original edits.
Is there a way to clone all 500 variants and colour tag those variants as a batch and then from there add my BW filter to them or whichever process I wish to them?
Currently I have to select each individual image and clone it, then apply the BW filter and then apply the colour tag of choice.
This I find to be time consuming and it would be great if I could put on a filter to view only variants 2 or variant 3 or maybe view all variants.
Thanks
Mark
Hi Mark,
Yes, it is very simple to do what you need.
1. Select all the images you wish to make a new variant of.
2. Choose Image>New Variant (or clone Variant – your preference)
3. The new variants will be selected and the originals automatically deselected
4. Use a shortcut key to change the colour tag to a colour of your liking. i.e. The ‘+’ key will tag them all to green. If you want to use a different colour, asign your own shortcut key by editing the keyboard shortcuts.
5. Use the filters tool (if you like) to only show the newly color tagged images.
6. Apply the style to all the images simply by selecting your chosen style.
I hope that helps!
It can all by done on the keyboard pretty much. Cmd-A, F2, +, Choose Style!
David
Thanks David.