C1 image rendering = Best order to use adjustment tools?
Dear Capture One Team.
I am wondering what is the best order to adjust an image.
I do think that the order in which Capture One processes an image internally would be the best order for manual adjustments too.
That is because many tools influences each other, e.g. the curve tool influences the levels tool, white balance influences the color editor tools, sharpening and noise reduction probably influence each other too, etc.
If a user adjusts an image in the exact order which the C1 engine uses to render, he minimizes the risk to bias an adjustment made earlier in his adjustment workflow.
Here and there I found a hint in the online documenation or in the blog, e.g. adjust WB before color edit, but I would prefer to have a complete guide (it can be simply a plain list, or similar), "best practise" if you like.
Could you please refer to such a guide if it already exists, or provide something otherwise?
Thanks and all the best
Marc
I am wondering what is the best order to adjust an image.
I do think that the order in which Capture One processes an image internally would be the best order for manual adjustments too.
That is because many tools influences each other, e.g. the curve tool influences the levels tool, white balance influences the color editor tools, sharpening and noise reduction probably influence each other too, etc.
If a user adjusts an image in the exact order which the C1 engine uses to render, he minimizes the risk to bias an adjustment made earlier in his adjustment workflow.
Here and there I found a hint in the online documenation or in the blog, e.g. adjust WB before color edit, but I would prefer to have a complete guide (it can be simply a plain list, or similar), "best practise" if you like.
Could you please refer to such a guide if it already exists, or provide something otherwise?
Thanks and all the best
Marc
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Color space first, luminance second. Beyond that you can't really get in trouble.
Pretty simple. 😉0 -
Thanks, Drew.
What do you mean by color space, "Base Characteristics" only, or the complete "Color tool tab"?
And Luminance = Exposure tool tab?
To be honest, I was hoping for a bit more information, as I was even getting more information by the before-mentioned sources, yet very distributed.
Capture One is very feature-rich, but not very well documented, although you (and team) are very eager in your blogs and usually in the forum. The online documentation rarely is helpful beyond a certain point.
Capture One has at least 14 adjustment tools, and figuring out the best order by myself is not very efficient, and I still do not have a "global" picture. I am not speaking for others, though I tend to believe many see it similar.
Admitted, every image is different and might require a different adjustment workflow, but I do think there could be some more detailed "best practices guide" which usually work best, derived directly from the development team, not the users, as they have the deepest insight into the designed engine.
Could you please take back my request to the team and discuss if you would be able and willing to provide a more comprehensive guide on this topic, e.g. in the online documentation or blog.
I do think my request is not too demanding, is it?
Thanks for your patience.
Beo0 -
Suggested reading:
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=165610 -
Thanks, Paul.
That shows me, I am not the only one with this question. 😉
But that's only partially satisfying.
Every camera maker / model / format / image needs its own tweaking, fully agree, and everyone is doing it differently, yep.
However, there are (a few) more valuable tips out there (in professor's and ambassadors' blogs) which I really think you should formalize / centralize this information; and enhance it with more dependency information between the tools, if applicable. In an overview style.
For example: The histogram is the input for levels and curve tool.
That's so valuable! Don't you think?
Hence, if you want to adjust exposure and one of these or both, adjust the exposure (tool set) first, then curves then levels. If you re-adjust exposure later in your workflow, don't forget to control curves and levels again.
That generates so much more understanding for the product, don't you think?
What I want to achieve is, give beginners a suggested workflow at hand and the dependency information, thus allow for a steeper learning curve and higher efficiency, thus ultimately more fun 😊
There is a default order in the tool tabs, and it seems to be the right order, where order is relevant. Can you confirm this?
But, as I notice, my wish seems not to be very popular, so I will be quiet now regarding this matter 🙄
Cheers
BeO0 -
BeO wrote:
...
Hence, if you want to adjust exposure and one of these or both, adjust the exposure (tool set) first, then curves then levels. If you re-adjust exposure later in your workflow, don't forget to control curves and levels again.
Exposure and Levels adjustments influence both the histogram of Curve tool. Curve tool does not affect the Levels tool.
More suggested reading:
http://imagealchemist.net/bright-and-br ... th-levels/
And yes, more users have been asking this question.0 -
BeO, the order doesn't matter. As Christian confirms here - viewtopic.php?f=52&t=16561#p78409 - Capture One (like all Raw converters, as far as I know) applies the adjustments in the sequence determined by its own internal processing pipeline, at the point of conversion.
All you need to worry about is that the image looks as you want it to before converting it - the software looks after the process from there on.0 -
Thanks, Paul.
I've read it earlier and enjoyed it very much.0 -
Answering a question assumes a correct understanding of the problem, which again assumes an optimal wording of the problem. Here's my take on the problem at hand.
We interact with COP8 by pushing sliders, in one tool after the other, i.e. in a sequence. The question is, is there an optimal choice of in which sequence we should employ the different tools, to avoid having to re-visit and re-adjust in tools we already employed earlier in the sequence. An example: Should we adress white balance before exposure, or vice versa?
It's our perception that governs our interaction with the software, what we see on the screen. The question then becomes:
How does white balance interfere with our perception of luminosity, and conversely, how does luminance affect our perception of colour?
I'd say that luminosity strongly affect how we perceive colour, while colour has less if any impact on our perception of luminosity, suggesting an exposure first, white balance second workflow, the better to avoid having to re-visit the tool first in the sequence.
We could work our way through all the tools, we must however do so each for ourselves. As quite a few of the intermediate answers will be subjective of nature I believe it won't be possible to come up with one size fitting all.
Cheers,
Mogens0 -
I would say:
First color balance.
Then exposure.
Then shadows and highlight
Then levels0
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