Enhancement suggestions
You might not believe it by this list, but I love the C1 product. Nonetheless I have some suggestions. Clearly a number of these are my personal preference. Please also excuse me if some of this stuff already exists and I just haven't figured it out:
- Add full DNG (Digital Negative) support per your press release.
- Add a user definable setting to automatically jump to a specific tab when changing images. For instance, when I move to the next unprocessed image, I start at \"White Balance\". It would be handy as soon as I click on the image to have \"White Balance\" selected, rather than \"Process\", which is where I usually let off the last image. This is particularly important with LE, where you probably wouldn't start at \"Capture\".
- When a preview is generated, in some cases it appears to turn off the check on checked images.
- Add a shortcut key to \"White Balance\". DSLR users shoot in more random \"white balance\" situations and need easy access..
- Allow users to rearrange the tabs in the order they prefer. For me the current setup (\"White Balance\", \"Exposure\", \"Focus\", and \"Process\") is great, but some people might prefer a different order.
- Allow Fuji S2 (and particularly S3) images to save at 12 megapixels as designed by the manufacturer.
- Speed up Fuji S2 processing. To \"Develop\" a S2 image takes nearly 10 times longer than Adobe Camera Raw and 5 times longer than Fuji EX Converter.
- Move \"DSLR Noise Reduction\" setting to be under the \"Focus\" tab. This is a setting you might want to adjust on a per-image basis.
- Have a \"completely off\" setting for \"DSLR Noise Reduction\". It appears based on looking at output and reading posts to these forums (dating back to 2002) that there is no way to entirely disable the noise reduction.
- Give a way to preview the \"DSLR noise reduction\" in the \"Focus\" window (to check if the setting is what you want).
- Give a way to disable the \"Phase One Media Reader\" at Windows startup.
- Media reader should not pop up as window then minimize on the Systray. Like other well behaved Systray apps, it should start minimized.
- Media reader needs more options for how images are imported. Images may want to be placed under a directory by date etc. For a good example of what a card importer should do, see \"Downloader Pro\" from Breeze Systems.
- The \"Browse Folders\" and \"Add Collection\" start in \"<drive>:\\Phase One\\Capture One LE\\Captures\". Many of us keep our DSLR images somewhere else (I keep mine in \"My Documents\\My Pictures\") and it would be handy if you could set it to always start at your choice point.
- The \"Capture\" tab and \"capture\" mentality doesn't really fit with LE where you cannot do captures from cameras. These tabs, folders, and references probably should be removed from LE\".
- The whole system of getting images in for DSLRs is a bit confusing the C1. While the Capture makes sense for the Phase One backs, usually DSLR owners either already have their images on local disk or are pulled from a card. While the \"Media Reader\" improves this, I think it could be simplified for DSLR users.
- It would be nice if the \"Process\" target folder for \"Develops\" could be set to automatically follow the currently selected capture directory. By default unless you change it, it will stay at the last \"Develops\" directory, which can be confusing (and make it so you \"lose\" your converted images under some place in the directoy tree you didn't expect). Having a setting that makes it follow the current capture directory would solve this. I always put my \"Develops\" under the capture directory, not a single common directory (like \"\\Program Files\\Phase One\\Capture One LE\\Images\").
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Continued... - There should be a tool to back up your \".work\" files (now \".C1w\" files),. Alternatively they should be put in a separate folder from the \".preview\" files (now \".C1p\") so you can easily back them up without having to back up the preview files (which are comparatively easily regenerated).
- Consider using Adobe XMP sidecar files instead of \".work\" (\".C1w\") files.
- Format the \".work\" (\".C1w\") files in ASCII text so they are easier to review and edit (ideally using a \"key\", \"value\" pair, eg: \"exposure=+1\"). Actually if it isn't XMP, XML would probably be the best choice.
- Allow the work files for a capture directory to be saved in that directory (this is where XMP would be great). That way you can maintain (archive, etc.) the images and their transformations together.
- Document how to restore your \".work\" files from a previous version of C1. I figured out that I could just copy them (now I can't tell if I can delete them - have they been automagically converted to a \".C1w\" file by browsing the same directory?).
- Give tools to locate the \".work\" (\".C1w\") files for a given image. Perhaps a small database is in order.
- Save the fact that an image has been processed in some permanent location, so that you can check at a future data if you've ever adjusted and/or \"Developed\" the image.
- It strikes me the rotate buttons should be over by the \"Color Picker\", \"Magnify\", and \"Crop\" buttons, though I see the argument for them being over the Capture images.
- Update the documentation. The help pages are old, missing descriptions of some features, have spelling mistakes, and lack detail.
- Default help window size pops up too small to be useful.
- Fix Help \"Suported Meta Data...\" section name to \"Supported Meta Data...\".
- Explain in help how to use the Exposure \"Set Shadow\" and \"Set Highlight\" buttons.
- Explain in help how \"DSLR noise reduction\" works.
- Explain how \"Selected Capture Settings / Save\" etc. would apply to the LE version.
- Explain how the highest quality \"Quick Proof\" JPEG compares to the quality of a JPEG that has been \"Developed\" through the normal queues - it's much faster to process!
- Reduce the price of the C1 Pro product. Though $450 is better than $499, it still seems a fair bit too high. I'd aim for the $250 range.
- Allow people to buy additional batching quantities. LE is plenty in terms of functionality - I definitely don't need all the Pro features, but I do need to be able to queue more than 20 images. I can't see paying an additional $350 for unlimited images, but I would be willing to pay say $50 to get up to 75 images or something.
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More... - Support formats that are very similar to already supported formats. I also use a Nikon 5700, which I'm pretty sure is very similar to the already supported Nikon RAW formats. If it's trivial to add, it would be nice if Phase One did so, though if it waters down the maintenance and devel of C1, then I'd skip. Of course if DNG is supported, this becomes a non-issue (right?).
- Put back \"Hot Pixel\" support in C1 LE.
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FWIW, COne already does one thing you wish...when you set the develop folder under the process tab, check the box that says \"always process to the associated image folder\". That creates a subfolder \"Develops\" automatically inside the raw ifile folder you're processing from.... 0 -
Thanks! Yep, you're correct.
It also appears that you can save (archive) the white balance, exposure, etc. (the \".work\" or \".C1w\" file) settings off. This is done through the \"Workflow / Selected Capture Settings / Archive Settings\". It's confusing because there is no \"capture\" involved in C1 working with a DSLR, so it isn't an intuative location.
The save defaults to \"My Computer\" and doesn't seem to remember where it left off in your tree between saves. It would be handy if it did.
Improved documentation would really help.0 -
It might be worthwhile to prioritize these items or at least group them in some way (not that I'm volunteering!). I only say this because some features (eg, disable noise reduction) are much easier to implement than others (eg, DNG support). I bet the list of \"easy\" changes wouldn't require a huge investment from developers while delivering a lot of bang.
P.S. I agree with many of your suggestions. Hopefully other users (and Phase One) will agree as well.0 -
Actually just to note, so some extent I did put these in order of their priority to me, however past the first ones it kind of got random. It might be worth some effort (and I would be inclined to if someone from Phase One indicated that they read this and were interested). Thanks for the suggestion though.
To add another enhancement:- Make it so <CTRL-Z> works to backout (undo) the last change. For instance, if you click auto-exposure, <CTRL-Z> should set it back to the previous exposure setting(s). This would make Phase One much more \"Windows\" API compliant. This should apply to any and all transitions.
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Glad to see that you have come up with alot of good suggestions.
I will make sure that it is brought forward.
Maybe we should make a forum just for feature request and make a top 20 on most wanted?0 -
Yes, that would be great! Thanks. 0 -
Another: - If you create a collection with the same name as another, the first collection is replaced in the file browser with the second one. For instance, I always place a subdirectory in my dated storage directories by the name of \"RAW\". In these I place the actual RAW images. If I open one of these as a collection, then try to open another, rather than having two open, the first goes away. It should allow these to be separate collections.
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give my right arm to have Kodak SLRn support so I can have my P25 and kodak at the same time - please god it will happened soon
erik hoffman0 -
The sliders in the exposure tab are too small, and I can't enter settings with number fields as well.
I'd like to be able to scale the pane on the right to make it bigger, though that's just one solution to this problem - I can think of lots more. It's possible to get finger cramp if processing a lot of images that need small adjustments!
Related to this point, it would be good to pay better attention to multi-screen setups by allowing separate windows for each of the panes. The standard application view of everything in its own single window is very inconvenient when you have two monitors with different scales - who can afford a 1600x1200 lcd?! On the other hand, a smaller second monitor for Windows explorer views and tool dialogues is not expensive and very handy, leaving more space on the CRT for image editing.
It would be really nice to have preview check boxes next to each of the exposure tab sliders, as well as the sharpening tool (along with faster repaint when zoomed). The preview checkbox allows the change to be flipped on and off so you can really see what change you're making.
The sharpeneing needs to be controlled by parameters, not just a slider, and also needs a preview checkbox. Right now I like the USM tool of PSE, not so much because it does a great job - it certainly does a good job, but I can control it, and I can see what it does, because it has real parameters not just a slider, and I can flick it on and off with the preview checkbox to see the effect.
I'd also like the crop tool to provide fixed aspect ratios, leave the pixels alone, and the scaling. Ideally, also allow final image size and resolution to be separately specified, if wanted.
Batch resizing to a separate destination folder would then finish it off nicely. I'm sure this could be integrated into the existing workflow really easily.
If this was all provided, I would not need PSE for my processing, and I'd be very happy 😄0
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