basho Posted May 21, 2009 Share #1 Posted May 21, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) I'm planning on getting an M8 and I'm wondering what software I'll need for post processing. I understand that it comes with Capture One, but don't know how far that will take me. Will I also need Photoshop (and countless plug-ins)? Or should I be looking at Aperture or Lightroom? This will mostly be for working in black and white. Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted May 21, 2009 Posted May 21, 2009 Hi basho, Take a look here What software will I need for an M8?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
Arif Posted May 21, 2009 Share #2 Posted May 21, 2009 The easiest thing would be to start with what you already have and then as your skills evolve, you can upgrade. If you are a photographer who was very good at film, then maybe you do not need photoshop and can do well with aperture and/or lightroom. All of them have 30 day trials so please spend some time familiarizing yourself. A very good black and white plug-in is Silver Efex pro so please look into that as well. Good luck, Arif Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 21, 2009 Share #3 Posted May 21, 2009 C1 will take you a long way, IMO. Photoshop is, to me, still essential for optimising and colour correcting prints (C1 is all about RAW output). That's it though--those two will get you anywhere you want to go with the M8. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Photon42 Posted May 24, 2009 Share #4 Posted May 24, 2009 For a start C1 is sufficient. Their RAW converter still is very good. If you like a good one-stop-shop software which does cataloging too, go for Lightroom. Make sure you shoot DNG with the M8, though. For color work, I found the Camera specific profile superior to the ACR profile (this can be selected in LR or, Photoshop, for that matter). For BW work, have a look at Silver Efex. It now comes with some sort of LR-Integration. So Lightroom + Silver FX would be the gold standard Cheers Ivo Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wda Posted May 24, 2009 Share #5 Posted May 24, 2009 If you search for 'software' and 'm8' you will find plenty of personal recommendations based on experience. Will the M8 be your first digital camera or do you already have software for current kit? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wda Posted May 24, 2009 Share #6 Posted May 24, 2009 For color work, I found the Camera specific profile superior to the ACR profile (this can be selected in LR or, Photoshop, for that matter). Cheers Ivo Basho, please forgive my sidetracking here, but I often read of M8 specific profiles and would like to ask Ivo if his M8 specific profile is one he produced by calibrating his camera? If not, what was the source of his M8 profile? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
erl Posted May 25, 2009 Share #7 Posted May 25, 2009 Advertisement (gone after registration) C1 comes packaged with the M8. Both are excellent bits of gear. Both will take energy from you to learn, as does any worthwhile bit of kit. Upgrade (free) the C1 to Ver 4 and study, play, fight with it. It has great rewards and does excellent B&W and also has some very useful colour manipulations available in the Pro version. Photoshop is useful, but I now have a workflow that often bypasses it and goes straight from M8 RAW to proofsheet. 90% of my adjustments are facilitated in C1. I can even output prints from RAW files without passing through P.S. (using Qimage). Start with the minimum and assess what you feel is missing, then add what is needed. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 25, 2009 Share #8 Posted May 25, 2009 Basho, please forgive my sidetracking here, but I often read of M8 specific profiles and would like to ask Ivo if his M8 specific profile is one he produced by calibrating his camera? If not, what was the source of his M8 profile? M8-specific profiles are really only available in C1 and RAW Developer on the Mac. As I said before, C1 uses industry-standard ICC profiles for colour, and Lightroom and ACR use their own method. It's true you can tweak it, but the results I've had with "profiling" camera colour from any Leica digital in Lightroom are less than pleasant... @ Ivo--IMO, C1 + Photoshop (and SilverEFx or AlienSkin plugins) + (whatever you want to use for image cataloging, like Expressions Media) is really the gold standard. Lightroom is an all-in-one, but for colour and quality of output it really doesn't touch C1. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wda Posted May 25, 2009 Share #9 Posted May 25, 2009 M8-specific profiles are really only available in C1 and RAW Developer on the Mac. As I said before, C1 uses industry-standard ICC profiles for colour, and Lightroom and ACR use their own method. It's true you can tweak it, but the results I've had with "profiling" camera colour from any Leica digital in Lightroom are less than pleasant... . Jamie, thank you. I use Lightroom on a PC and am generally quite pleased with the total package. However I would like to explore M8 profiles if at all possible. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ammitsboel Posted May 25, 2009 Share #10 Posted May 25, 2009 As I said before, C1 uses industry-standard ICC profiles for colour, and Lightroom and ACR use their own method. It's true you can tweak it, but the results I've had with "profiling" camera colour from any Leica digital in Lightroom are less than pleasant... Is it any different with other cameras? Remember this thread?: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/60076-custom-m8-dng-profiles.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 29, 2009 Share #11 Posted May 29, 2009 Is it any different with other cameras? Remember this thread?: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-m8-forum/60076-custom-m8-dng-profiles.html Henrik--I'm not sure what you're asking. What's different with other cameras? At one point, LR and ACR used "scripts" to align the "color settings" of the program. You could get much better results for any camera by aligning the color with the script, though you were still stuck with the basic color interpretation. In the last versions of ACR and LR, Adobe introduced a new way to "profile" cameras with their own proprietary system. That's what the other thread was talking about, and yes, I remember it. Nothing I saw in that thread changed my mind about LightRoom or ACR To my eyes, and to my way of thinking, it's much improved over the original system, but you're still essentially stuck with the way LR renders. And in difficult light (like tungsten) I find LR mushy in the reds, overly magenta and has a very weird cyan profile... all of which truly limit the M8 and the DMR. By contrast, C1 Pro lets you use standard ICC profiles and edit them. They will work in any version of any program that uses ICC profiles. So, for example, I can output conversions within a camera input space and then work on them seemlessly in Photoshop. However, I can't do the same in LR; on output I'm in aRGB or sRGB or ProPhoto... Further, I can (and did) edit and create M8 profiles, for example, in PM5 and other ICC editors. I could do much more (like isolate magenta only in certain grey tones) in the ICC editors than I could ever do in LR. Of course, with enough work (eg post processing) you may get far enough from the color of the default RAW interpretation that it may not matter--except for the time you put in, and for the simple but important fact that while it's easy to mimic LR's output from C1, it's nearly impossible to recreate C1 colour output from LR As for other cameras, yes, I think ACR and LR are actually best with Canon RAW files. FWIW, I don't like what they do to my Nikon files either (but then it has a different colour balance overall than the Canons). But to be honest I've spent zero time worrying about the Nikon's colour, because C1 does such a good job with it (and it's worth pointing out I prefer Leica's colour in the M8 and DMR to either Canon or Nikon. Must be a CCD vs CMOS thing). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 29, 2009 Share #12 Posted May 29, 2009 Jamie, thank you. I use Lightroom on a PC and am generally quite pleased with the total package. However I would like to explore M8 profiles if at all possible. David, despite my reservations and post above--Henrik is quite right: there are now "profiles" for the M8 with LR and ACR. They're not ICC profiles, but specific to Lightroom. They may work well for you (though I stand by everything I said on C1 vs Lightroom for colour). Maybe someone who works more with LR can point you to some. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted May 29, 2009 Share #13 Posted May 29, 2009 As for Black and White conversion, there are many plug-ins and DIY in Photoshop is quite good as well. But I found, if one does not want to imitate film, and why should we - when you want the film look buy a roll of film- , the B&W settings in C1-4.8 are particularly effective. Especially the "yellow filter" profile gives a very good starting point in PS. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
borowiec Posted May 29, 2009 Share #14 Posted May 29, 2009 Speaking of profiles, can anyone tell me where to find the ICC profiles when using C1 on a Mac? I don't mean how to select them from within the program, that's pretty obvious, but where are they stored, or how do you add a custom profile so that it appears in the drop-down menu in C1. I saw a post that had that information for Windows but it didn't apply to the Mac. Thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
spylaw4 Posted May 29, 2009 Share #15 Posted May 29, 2009 There are countless plug-ins available for LR for the develop, print and web modules. You can also use DNG Profile Editor from Adobe to develop your own M8 specific profile(s) for LR. @borowiec - Try looking in /Library/Color Sync/Profiles - that where they are usually stored but as I don't use C1 I can't be absolutely sure they'll be there. If not they may be lurking in /Application Support or ~/Application Support. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
borowiec Posted May 29, 2009 Share #16 Posted May 29, 2009 Spylaw, I had looked in both the Colorsync folder and in Application support and they aren't there. It's not that I need to find them, it's that I want to add a custom ICC profile so that it appears in the C1 drop-down menu. They aren't in any of the obvious places and searching with Spotlight doesn't help. Anybody out there using C1 with a Mac? Thanks! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 29, 2009 Share #17 Posted May 29, 2009 Spylaw, I had looked in both the Colorsync folder and in Application support and they aren't there. It's not that I need to find them, it's that I want to add a custom ICC profile so that it appears in the C1 drop-down menu. They aren't in any of the obvious places and searching with Spotlight doesn't help. Anybody out there using C1 with a Mac? Thanks! On Windows, anyway, the C1 profiles are deployed in the actual application folder (not in the normal profile spaces). So look in the subfolders of the C1 install to find the C1 profiles. Close C1, and put your custom ICC profiles there. Once they're in the right place, then you need to rename them with the same naming conventions as the Phase profiles. When you restart C1, they should show up in the appropriate area of the profiles (by camera). FWIW, evidently, if C1 finds a profile in the normal profile space with the naming convention it expects, it also loads it into the "other" drop down.... If you want to change the defaults, then just rename them appropriately (but keep a back up). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
borowiec Posted May 29, 2009 Share #18 Posted May 29, 2009 Thanks, Jamie, but I still can't find them anywhere. Oddly, there is no Capture One folder in the Applications folder, just the application itself. I've looked in all the other folders that were installed in many different places (Application Support, Pictures) when I ran the C1 install program but none of them contain any profiles. Evidently it's not the same as in Windows... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted May 29, 2009 Share #19 Posted May 29, 2009 Thanks, Jamie, but I still can't find them anywhere. Oddly, there is no Capture One folder in the Applications folder, just the application itself. I've looked in all the other folders that were installed in many different places (Application Support, Pictures) when I ran the C1 install program but none of them contain any profiles. Evidently it's not the same as in Windows... Ah! Found the answer.... it's here: Capture One 4 beta and camera profiles - Open Photography Forums Hope this helps! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
borowiec Posted May 29, 2009 Share #20 Posted May 29, 2009 Jamie! Thanks so much, things were exactly as described in the link you provided. I would never have found that on my own, right-clicking on an application is not something one usually does on a Mac. Again, many thanks! Andrew Andrew Borowiec Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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