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Oh, Those Capture One Reds!


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Lately, I've been getting away from processing through Aperture and doing more in Photoshop. I decided to see if using Capture One 4 would get me even better colors. First image processed out of Adobe Camera Raw. The second one through Capture One Pro. Cheers!

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OK, I'm looking on a crappy Laptop screen but the first image looks best/most neutral to me.

 

I too prefer the first picture. Not just for the reds, but the Soy sauce and Coca-Cola look much more natural than in the second picture.

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I put a bottle of Coke next to your pictures and the first one is clearly a better match. The Coke reds are more of a fire engine red, and that brightness is better shown in the first image.

 

Doug

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Henrik--You really, really, really need a monitor :) Not that you can tell much from the post here, even on the Eizo...

I have a NEC, but I don't have it with me here in Barcelona.

Eventhough I'm on a crappy monitor I'm sure that the first one is the most neutral and best looking :)

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As I said, you can't tell much from the photo. But I'm curious to know how "you're sure" the top is the most neutral?

 

Heck, without measuring the file (which I just don't have time to do right now) I can't tell much from this.

 

Holding up a bottle of coke to the monitor is pretty funny, I must confess! (where do you get bottles anyway these days? As summer comes on, and I'm stuck only with cans and plastic here in Canada, I want to know where to buy Coke in bottles ;))

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Greetings from NY!

 

Yes, it's always difficult to make judgements on screen, especially with jpegs. My traditional loins prefers side by side prints. But...

 

The first image appears sharper on my calibrated NEC 2690. The colors also seem to have more punch but if this is "un-natural," saturation can be toned down and ACR offers a vibrance control as well. Seems like similar discourse to film and developer combinations of decades past.

 

I welcome these debates as we all learn together and come to choose the combination that works best for our individual photographic vision.

 

Cheers!

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Gordon,

How about the table top? Which is closest to "reality"?

If you have a Macbeth color checker chart take shots of that and see what comes closer in the red and skin tone patches.

Shoot a portrait and see how the skin tones are affected with C1 and ACR and don't forget to try the various camera profiles in the pull down menu in ACR camera profiling. (The "camera standard" profile will give totally different reds and skin tones than the 4.4 one)

Finally don't forget to have the WB the same when comparing results.

With these comments I only want to show how much I have been wrestling with this problem, mostly trying to get skin tones right. Funny that I never worried so much about it when printing Cibachromes from Kodachrome and ektachrome (many versions) for many years.

 

maurice

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where do you get bottles anyway these days? As summer comes on, and I'm stuck only with cans and plastic here in Canada, I want to know where to buy Coke in bottles ;))

 

Amused to see yesterday in big London store Selfridges ranks of Cola bottles: all in chrome yellow (which would hardly match this thread!). Seems they are anniversary issue...

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OK, I had a look on the NEC.

The colors are still better on the LR/ACR file, they are too dim on the C1 file.

But I would be interested if you would give it another try in C1?

 

I could imagine adjusting exposure and black point would make it stand out and have better colors?

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Red does seem to be the 'touchy' color in comparing conversions, but sometimes one converter gives more convincing results & sometimes another.

 

IMO the 'comparison' misses an obvious point. The top image has a slight red cast, the bottom one a slight cyan cast. With either converter you take care of this by picking a spot that you regard as neutral gray & clicking on it with the eyedropper. Do that before comparing the results?

 

Not only does one converter differ a bit from another, but one *profile* in either converter makes an even more important difference. In my version of C1, you have choices under Leica, or DNG Neutral, or you can make your own adaptations. In ACR you can click on any of the profiles for ACR's own standard, the one that's supposed to match the camera's standard, or any profile you chose to make using a Macbeth color checker & the ACR profiling software. IMO there are too many variables, & too many ways of compensating for them, to say one converter is 'better' than the other.

 

My concern for this particular image wouldn't center on the Coke reds; rather on C1's odd rendition of the table. For further PS work I'd start with the ACR version & take out the red cast - either in converting or in PS post-processing.

 

Kirk

 

PS, to spell out the whole issue: You'd really have to profile every *lens* to get something like representational accuracy with any converter. Older Leitz lenses were warmer; newer ones, a tad greenish in comparison. CV lenses tend to tip towards blue.

 

This is why we have Photoshop - there's no 'pure' converter available, & any image is bound to need some color correction, both objective (by the numbers) & subjective (by the image's own tone/mood).

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Doesn't ACR by default add saturations and contrast? Where C1 doesn't.

if that is the case that is not a good comparision, saturation and contrast can be easily added in C1 also :rolleyes:

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Maybe C1 is just as "bad" as ACR, just in a different way?

 

All RAW converters interpret colour.

 

And so perhaps C1 is not as colorimetrically accurate. However, for anyone delivering skin tones, not many people want colorimetrically accurate colour anyway.

 

LR and ACR are absolutely deficient in terms of red / magenta processing with CCD cameras (IMO). Skin tones are often downright abysmal when printed and that's where those converters need to improve IMO. Detail is also demonstrably (that is, in prints) smudgy compared with C1 output.

 

This particular web test shows absolutely nothing at all, actually, since neither photo has an obvious point of interest, a terribly obvious neutral (we're all guessing) and uncontrolled light to boot.Not to mention the vaguaries of the Web itself :)

 

And you can always change stuff in PS. The question is, how much time do you want to spend there? :)

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