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Unlocking "View/Read Only" pictures

cdc

I'm using Capture One Pro and I've been sent many images for retouching, they are all Tiff, most are CMYK/8bit, many are on a transparent background, they were originally created on multiple different cameras, and I don't know much more about their origin than this.

They open fine in Photoshop and Lightroom but in Capture One v12, V20, & v21 they are view only (eye icon) on my Windows PC and read only (pencil crossed out icon) on my Mac. If I open them into Photoshop, convert to RGB and save them they remain view only. If I do Save As and make a new copy in photoshop the copy will work as normal in Capture One, or if I 'Edit in > Ps' and create a new variant the new variant will work but then I'll loose the transparent bg.

As far as I can tell the file/folder preferences all of the same settings that working folders and files have.

Anyone know of a way to unlock these?

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Comments

4 comments

Date Votes
  • ernst.w

    First: You should take a closer Look into:
    https://www.phaseone.com/sitecore/content/Online%20Help%20-%20Capture%20One/CO7/Introduction?sc_lang=de-DE
    This is not to bore you but Capture One is essentially different to Lightroom, Photoshop and more.

    Now in details

    • Capture One does not work with all known formats. Indeed Capture One can work only with a very limited number of different formats: 
    • Capture One pinpoint checks the image format. If there are (only little) differences between your TIFF (or JPEG) and the official format specifications it will refuse editing. Capture One don't like TIFF with transparent layers. Even the compression of a TIFF can matter.
    • Capture One don't like CMYK as a source color space. But it works - in difference to Lightroom - very well with CMYK color spaces during editing, prooving or exporting.
    • ....

    You have found nearly the way to "unlock": Open in Photoshop (Affinity Photo etc.), convert in necessary to an RGB (sRGB, Adobe RGB, Prophoto RGB...) and save as.... If there are transparent layers save as a PSD with which Capture One can work. BUT Capture One will handle it like a one layer image and export it with only a background layer (white where transparent before). But the source PSD will keep it's layers an tranparencies; sometimes this helps. And as transparencies are white after export you could get it trnsparant easily in most of cases.

    Kind regards
    Ernst

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  • cdc

    Thanks for the response, Ernst. 

    I've taken quite a lot of close looks into Capture One over the years and I have used TIFF with transparency layers with out issue as well, as well as a little bit of CMYK work (but admittedly not much). These are more often than not TIFF's generated by Capture One from raw files so maybe that was the difference? 

    I ended up doing the project through lightroom because it was more efficient than making duplicates of everything for it to work with Capture One. 

     

    Thanks again. 

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  • ernst.w

    Hi charlie,

    > These are more often than not TIFF's generated by Capture One from raw files so maybe that was the difference?

    Of course this could be the difference. As I told in my post it needs not much an image file is refused (for editing) by C1. The header may beginn with 000x03 instead of 00x003 (jeust as an example, I have the correct numbers not in mind), as I had in JPEGs out of any camera of some of my customers: enough that I could not edit or even rate the image.

    Phase One knows about the problem. They told me years ago that in the mentioned cases Photoshop or any other program has done the fault. Capture One is the only one flying the flag for original specifications, insisting in every restriction. And therefore they will not change anything.

    Sorry for bad news.

    Best regards Ernst

    P.S.: I did not mean that you are not familiar with editing in C1 but thought it would help to read about image formats as C1 sees them.

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  • ernst.w

    Oh, pure coincidence: https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002478277-JPEG-and-TIFF-file-formats

    "However, JPEGs or TIFFs rendered in CMYK or Grayscale cannot be edited in Capture One."

    Best regards
    Ernst

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