Dear Capture One team,
I own a C1 23 permanent licence. I am absolutely happy with C1 in terms of functionality, performance and ease of use.
It's just one thing: FineArts Prints optimized by softproof.
Saal Digital, a well-known German-French company for FineArts prints, has made the following recommendations in their help section:
Quote:
Can I also use the soft proof in other programmes?
In general, we recommend using Lightroom and Photoshop for soft proofing. In some cases, the settings required for the most accurate colour reproduction cannot be made in other programs.
Capture One Pro:
Our ICC profiles can be selected after installation via View > Proof Display for Profile. However, other important settings such as render priority, depth compensation or paper colour simulation can unfortunately not be made for the respective ICC profile. We therefore advise against using Capture One's soft proofing function for our workflow. Without the necessary settings, colour accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
End Quote
I understand from history that the first C1 customers such as magazines, journals, books had their own resources for highly professional printing in-house because it is their core business. Therefore, implementing things like softproofing as it is available in Lightroom today, was not of top priority.
Now finally my question: Is a softproofing function similar to Lightroom's on your C1 roadmap and do you already have a timeframe for it ? Will it also be included in the permanent licence, or just in the subscription version?
Best,
Peter
-> Translated by Deepl.com
Hi Peter Uhlemann, BeO rephrased the article, its now clear and understandable, if you want to follow this link:
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/14860973084189-Add-Rendering-Intent-Black-Point-Compensation-and-Paper-White-Simulation-to-export-recipes-for-softproofing?page=1#community_comment_14875188501021
Hi Peter Schuster, please post your findings. I am interested as well since I am also using Saal Digital print service.
Thanks
Peter
Hi 9568639748125
Consider rephrasing you request or creating a new one once you are deeper in the subject.
Same to you
BeO
Hi BeO and Walter Rowe
thank you for clearing up the situation.
I apologise for causing such a mess here, I promise to do better.
I'm signing off here and will look deeper into the subject of soft proofing with C1 as it is today.
All the best,
Peter
368108974477
Perfect solution if you ask me.
In the preferences the settings could stay for the case that you are not softproofing (ie. View>Proof profle> No proof profile) so that is still possible.
That could be useful, sometimes. What that also would allow is to first edit your variants for web and print until all are finished and then output them altogether with its respective recipe set in the variant.
It would not be without possibile issues though, i.e. if you change the export recipe definition later (or delete it), the variants would still link to the now updated recipe (or be empty). This might be welcome for some use cases, but not for others. But if you store the recipe settings as-of they had been set when last exporting the variant, this makes things even more complex and also not fit or all use cases.
369260519517
The Color tab of Preferences provides rendering intent. It does not have black point compensation or white paper simulation.
Perhaps adding rendering intent, BPC, and white paper simulation to export recipes might be a way to provide that. You could create an export recipe for each configuration. View > Proof Profile could be set to "Selected Recipe".
Even more thoroughly imagine if Capture One let you assign a recipe to a specific variant so that you always know that variant is being edited according to a specific output target?
Regarding BPC (relevant for the relative rendering intent), it is generally recommended to turn it ON, but it might not be recommended by all.
Maybe C1 turns it on when Relative rendering intent is select but I was not able to find this information in the manual or FAQ or articles. What I found is that BPC is NOT supported by C1:
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002659197
Their reasoning is in the context of precise LAB readouts, which is not a convincing argument for print simulation imo.
If you seldom use relative rendering intent because you find you dark color are crushed, that might be the reason.
The user should have the choice to enable or disable it.
Interesting read. https://www.imatest.com/support/docs/23-1/black-point-compensation/
Hi 368108974477,
The softproofing in C1 is inferior and the request from Peter may not be precisely formulated but is totally valid.
The softproof function is missing black point compensation and simulation of paper white, as is recommended by the printing service Saal-Digital.com for some of their (very popular) papers.
Please, C1, include BPC and paper white simulation in the export recipies because they are commonly used for softproofing.
Export recipies would also be the right place to set the rendering intent (for the case that recipe proofing is enabled) instead of having to go to the preference dialog to change it.
This printing service is explicitly addressing Capture One's inferior soft-proofing capability on there website and is discouraging their customers from using Capture One for soft-proofing.
Here is the link
https://www.saal-digital.com/service/professional-zone/soft-proof-in-lightroom-photoshop-and-other-programs/
Here is one paper (Hahnemuehle Photo RAG) where BPC is recommended:
https://www.saal-digital.com/service/professional-zone/hahnemuehle-fineart-photo-ragr/
Here is one paper (Fujifilm Crystal Archive DP II Professional Matte) where BPC and paper white (paper "color") simulation is recommended:
https://www.saal-digital.com/service/professional-zone/fujifilm-crystal-archive-dp-ii-professional-matte/
This issue concerns me frequently whenever I print my images, as I usually do not use PS or alike and I want to do my color editing in C1 completely.
Workaround
in C1 is to set rendering intent in preferences for every paper I want to softproof (provided it has a different rendering intent), wasting time and my memory of the image proofed with the previous recipe is already gone (no A/B comparison between papers with different intent can be done), and just live without BPC and paper white simulation.
Or I use another application which can do the proof, but then I am already out of of C1 and cannot adjust contrast and colors in C1.
Hi Peter,
If you have a request here in the "Improve Capture One Pro" section then please use the template provided in this post:
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/8745099907997-How-to-make-a-feature-request-or-provide-feedback
(second post from Jack)
This increases the chances that developers will find it and the format gives more structure to them and contain already the questions they have in order to understand your request properly (provided you answer them).
Also, consider being more precise in what you are requesting. "Please do it like another software is doing it" is generally not well-perceived or understood by developers/product managers (partly because it does not point out the specific problem.
Posting quotes from websites is not a good replacement for not filling out the form and be precise in what you are missing.
To somehow proof that last point, Walter Rowe (another user here) did not understand what you want because he thinks C1 can do it already. Which is correct, to a certain extent.
The only reason why I am so critical with you here is because I want a better soft-proof too, and it is good if you understand why the the template exists.
In my next post I try to explain to Walter what the issue is.
The Capture One user guide has an entire section on working with colors.
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/sections/360000690697-Working-with-Colors
Also search the Capture One YT channel. They have so many great videos on many topics.
The Color Editor Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/live/-AxbSQLgybQ?si=PuYAbR7YhkU3QiO5
Appetising vs Colour Correct
https://www.youtube.com/live/DSbi87Uapl0?si=zXz-gvlnFFqMQvYL
Color Grading Your Photos
https://www.youtube.com/live/tq1mx6adi6s?si=YvnDNLtnVl9BbWNZ
There are so many videos out there.
Thanks, Walter for your quick answer. If I got you right, C1 does it in a different way, even a bit better than Adobe, right ?
Two Questions:
- Is Saal Digital's evaluation technically correct ?
- maybe this sounds a bit silly, but could you please direct me to a simple step-by-step reference (could be your favorite YT video) for an easy to follow workflow, where at the beginning I have a picture and an external ICC profile from the printing house, at the end the gained confidence, that the print I get, looks quite similar to the one on my hw-calibrated screen (and does not have the external ICC profile embedded) ?
Cheers,
Peter
Capture One is ALWAYS soft proofing. The View > Proof Profile setting determines which ICC profile you are soft proofing. You also have the benefit of color readouts where you drop readout pins on the image and it tells you the output color values. As you edit you see them change. This lets you get 100% color accurate results that equal or exceed Adobe's toolset.
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002604118-Setting-multiple-readouts
The Normalize Tool also allows you to set a specific color value and have Capture One ensure a point in the image matches that color value.
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002594057-Specifying-color-values-by-number-in-the-Normalize-tool