fbpx
Software

These Capture One Nordic Style Packs Are One-Click Editing Wonders

Hillary Grigonis
No Comments
05/05/2021
4 Mins read
Hillary Grigonis The Phoblographer Capture One Copenhagen I Review 1164

These 12 Capture One presets include both a light, soft light look and exaggerated shadows for drama.

Presets tend to be either one-click editing wonders or catastrophes. And then, there are the preset packs where you’ll spend hours sorting through styles to find the ones you actually like. Capture One’s newest preset packs take on a minimalist approach, each with just three variations of two styles for a total of six presets in each pack. The Capture One Nordic Editorial and Nordic Lifestyle preset packs are inspired, as the name suggests, by Nordic art and light.

Named after capital cities in Nordic countries, Capture One’s new style packs cost $29 each for the six presets, or $58 if you want all 12. I tested out the Capture One Nordic Editorial and Nordic Lifestyle style packs. Are the presets are worth the cash — or did Capture One go too minimal?

Gear Used

I tried these Capture One presets on my 2015 MacBook Pro with the BenQ SW271C running Capture One 21 Pro. I tested photos shot with the Canon EOS R6, Sony A7R IV, Fujifilm XT4, and Nikon D850 using RAW files and with the Fujifilm XE4 with JPEG files.

Features

Original Photo

Capture One says the presets are inspired by Nordic style. The editorial pack is crafted after, of course, editorial images in magazines. The Lifestyle pack favors soft light and natural beauty. I preferred the Lifestyle pack for outdoor photos, while I would use the Editorial on both indoor and outdoor. Like with any preset, the look you get depends on the light that exists in the photo. The style packs can be applied to the entire image or with a brush.

Nordic Editorial

Copenhagen

Copenhagen I
Copenhagen II
Copenhagen III

This style gives the subject a golden glow and creates dramatic skies. The preset exaggerates oranges in the mid-tones, with a little red in the shadows. Applied to a portrait, Copenhagen gave the image a dramatic, golden glow. It made the subject look tan and brought out the gold in a field of dead grass.

Like the other styles in this collection, Copenhagen has three different variations. Color remains the same between them, but the contrast increases with each. Copenhagen I (my favorite) lowers the whites and exaggerates the shadows just a touch. As a result, blue clouds turned dark and stormy, which created a nice contrast with the golden landscape. Copenhagen II and III each increase the contrast further, using curves.

Oslo

Oslo I
Oslo II
Oslo III

Olso is the cooler sister to Copenhagen. This style adds a little orange to the mid-tones but draws out the blues in the shadows. The result is an almost cinematic coloring. The style also brings out the blacks and shadows.

Oslo I has a smaller but noticeable bump in the shadows. Shadows deepen, and mid-tones widen with each progression through Oslo II and Oslo III.

 

Nordic Lifestyle

Helsinki

Helsinki I
Helsinki II
Helsinki III

Inspired by soft Nordic natural light, the Helsinki style pack is light and bright. This collection shifts the photograph’s curves towards the right, while the Editorial collection shifts towards the shadows. All colors are desaturated a touch. Oranges and reds, in turn, add some saturation back in individually, heavier on the orange. Blues are also added back in just a bit, while the yellows and greens are further desaturated.

The Helsinki variations feel progressively brighter due to more contrast in each variation.

Stockholm

Stockholm I
Stockholm II
Stockholm III

The Stockholm style is both warm and bright. Unlike Helsinki, most colors have increased saturation except for blue and green. Stockholm tends to create a sky and surrounding greenery that doesn’t distract from the subject. Orange is slightly more saturated, which creates a nice subtle warm glow with skin tones.

Stockholm is a nice, bright preset made for bringing out the beauty of natural light. As you move through the variations, the photos gain more contrast, making the photos feel a bit brighter with more punch.

Ease of Use

Editing presets are, by default, simple to use. But, some of them can require lots of further tweaking. Others apply adjustments that really shouldn’t be part of a preset.

That’s not the case with both of these Capture One preset packs. The adjustments don’t include added noise, reduced noise, or sharpening at all. Capture One sticks with what presets should edit — color and contrast. That makes it easy for photographers to further adjust the image. All that depends on settings such as ISO and white balance that it was shot at.

I also appreciate that Capture One includes three different contrast variations. The variations made it faster to find a style that works best with the shot. That meant less tweaking after the preset and more images that were good to go in one click.

Real Life Applications

As the name suggests, these presets are good for lifestyle and editorial images. But, I think they also work well for portraits and some still life as well. I preferred the way these presets worked with natural light, but I did get some good effects when working with indoor photos as well.

Image Samples

Conclusions 

The Capture One Nordic Lifestyle and Nordic Editorial Collections are just 12 presets, but they are a dozen great presets. The packs’ small size means you don’t have hundreds of presets to flip through. That, mixed with the variations, allows the presets to make quick, stylized edits.

If you love soft light and bright photos, try the Nordic Lifestyle collection. It offers a more airy look without overexposing and destroying details like most other presets. If your style is more dramatic, with deeper shadows and exaggerated oranges, try the Nordic Editorial. Both presets are well done, easy to use, and make for quick edits.

You might also like
lightroom-cc-profiles
Features

After 6+ Months with Capture One, I’m Coming Back to Lightroom

3 Mins read
06/30/2018

If you have been reading the internet for the last year or two you would have been hard-pressed not to notice the uptick in photographers that were unhappy with Adobe Lightroom and it’s nearly constant performance issues. Unsurprisingly, this also is when we started to really see a rise in photographers denouncing Lightroom in favor of PhaseOne’s Capture One Pro, a longtime favorite of professional retouchers that hadn’t really caught on with the masses.

Screen Shot 2018-10-12 at 11.16.17 AM
Software

Review: Adobe Lightroom Classic CC 8 (The Software Equivalent of an Abusive Relationship)

6 Mins read
10/15/2018

I’m going to begin this review by stating that during my review period for Adobe Lightroom Classic CC 8, I gave the program every single advantage that it could truly have. But I’m going to stand very strongly by my next statement: I think that any photographer that continues to use Adobe Lightroom Classic CC 8 on the regular is seriously doing themselves a massive injustice and genuinely doesn’t care about the livelihood of their own business–and that goes for whether you’re a professional photographer, influencer, or a blogger/journalist like I am. To that end, if you don’t have a business and you’d just like to spend more time on forums, Facebook groups and your most private Instagram pods complaining about it amongst yourself, then please do. Despite the fact that the Phoblographer partially came up on social media, I’ve never been one to want to willingly engage in toxic discourse and to instead look for solutions. At the same time, realizing that this isn’t going to help you get images out faster and it won’t give you much of what Capture One Pro has been delivering for years now. Capture One has never sponsored the Phoblographer at all; instead I say all of this due to my own experiences, frustrations and for what I’ve implemented as a standard amongst our staffers.

photography software guides
Software

Review: Capture One 12 (Most of the Enhancements We Really Needed and Wanted)

12 Mins read
11/29/2018

I’ve made a conscious effort in the past few years to move away from Adobe Lightroom Classic CC in every way possible; and with today’s release of Capture One 12 I can say with certainty that it does most of what Lightroom does even better. There is a big emphasis on most–but the truth is that for most photographers, Capture One 12 will do everything better than Lightroom does. In that previous sentence there is a HUGE emphasis on everything. With today’s announcement integrating into Capture One 12 the addition of plugins, a variety of masks, and the long awaited Fujifilm Film Simulation additions, there are lots of major reasons why Capture One 12 is the best one yet.