Incorporating CaptureOne into workflow

[Rick McCleary]

Peter,

Apropos our discussion of C1 the last time we were together, I've done some investigating.  Last night, I witnessed a rather stunning display of the superiority of C1 over ACR.  It's an expensive program, but in my mind, well worth it.  I can go into more detail later, but my question revolves around how to incorporate it into the workflow.

My thought is to do everything as normal with the added wrinkle of warehousing the CR2 files on a dedicated 300Gb drive since, at this point C1 does not support DNG.  I would catalog the DNG's in iVIew, but not the CR2's.  When I need to create a derivative file, I would simply search my CR2 volume (perhaps a dedicated 300Gb drive) for that file name, open it in C1 and proceed.  I see this as a stop-gap measure since C1 one is (hopefully) going to support DNG in the near future.  With DNG support around the corner, I don't want to create the DNG's with the RAW info embedded -- too slow.

Any thoughts?

[peterkrogh]

Rick,
I'd love to see the comparison. Can you send me a copy of the RAW file and a TIFF made by C1?

I think the workflow you suggest is probably best.  It would also be good to let C1 know that you really want the DNG support. They are definitely being stretched for resources, so feedback is good.

Peter

[Rick McCleary]

Peter,

Check your email.

Rick

[SeanD]

Last night, I witnessed a rather stunning display of the superiority of C1 over ACR.

Rick...now you got me curious! Are you at liberty to say in what way C1 was superior to ACR?

--Sean

[Rick McCleary]

 Overall, it's like the difference between a flatbed scan and a drum scan.  More depth, a greater sense of dimensionality, more open shadow detail.  Also, a better rendering of the transition from detail to 255.

[peterkrogh]

Sean,
I took a look at what Rick sent, and I did not find the difference to be all that much.  The most obvious issue to me was some sharpening artifacts in costrasty highlights.  Turning sharpening off in Camera Raw seems to have taken care of much of it, although it does make the image require more sharpening in Photoshop.

Beyond stuff like these artifacts that are clearly "wrong", how much you like the "look" of a conversion is a matter of personal taste, to some degree.  Rick is a very knowledgeable fellow with regard to image quality issues, so it's worth checking this out.  At this point I remain unconvinced that the difference makes much difference, at least to me.

Of course, I eagerly await the day that C1 will support DNGs.  that will make everything a bit more open.

Peter

[Rick McCleary]

I'd like to qualify the enthusiasm I've expressed about the quality of C1 conversions.  I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

I'm a bit of a control freak about the look of my images.  Always have been.  It's all about the print.  I used to spend 8 hours in the darkroom when I was in graduate school (a "few" years back) making one print - cutting rubylith masks, selective flashing of the paper, exotic developers, selenium toning, waxing the prints, the whole nine yards.  There is an inverse relationship between the amount of extra time spent making the print and the gain in quality.  If I doubled the time to make the print, I'd get maybe 25% more "quality".  If I quadrupled it, print "quality" would increase only slightly - and so forth.  But that extra investment in time has always been worth it to me.  To me, time doesn't exist, only the print.  If I can increase "quality", it's worth doing, no matter the cost in time or effort.

In evaluating C1 software, I judge the results the same way.  To me, any increase in quality is worth it.  The edge artifacts that Peter refers to are only a part of the story.  With C1, there is an increase in surface texture, depth and dimensionality that I judge to be similar to what you get from a drum scan; it is better than what ACR is capable of giving you.  It's not an earth-shaking difference if your perspective is from afar.  But, for better or worse, I obsess over these things from a very close point of view and the difference is obvious to me.

Don't think that a side-by-side comparison of prints processed in ACR and C1 will give you one blue one and one yellow one.  They'll be extremely similar, possibly indistiguishable unless you get REAL close.  But I DO get real close, and, to me, the difference is worth it.

So save your money (C1 is $500).  Unless and until, of course, it's worth it to you.  A fully functional 30-day demo version of CaptureOne Pro is available at www.phaseone.com.