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Request a new feature, or support for a camera/lens that you would like to use in Capture One.

Status Future consideration
Workspace Feature requests
Categories Capture One Pro
Created by Sebastian Reiprich
Created on Mar 29, 2023

Automatic Lens Corrections on Import

What problem do you see this solving?

Copying and applying lens corrections does not work correctly when you were using a zoom lens on different focal lengths or different lenses.

When I do architectural photography I want my images to be 100% corrected in terms of light falloff and distortion. And when I set the corresponding sliders to 100 my expectation would be that I do this for one image, copy those settings to all my other images and get straight lines and even lighting in all of the images. And indeed the sliders on those images are then set to 100 as well but under the hood C1 doesn’t correct those parameters by 100% but by a fixed value instead. This causes overcorrection or undercorrection on the other images. An image that suffers from pincushion distortion might get a correction for barrel distortion and so the pincushion distortion is getting even worse instead of better.

Best regards

Sebastian Reiprich

When was the last time you were affected by this lack of functionality, or specific tool?

I am affected by this nearly every time I use C1. When I do architectural photography the wrong behavior is easily visible. In portrait work it happens as well but you don't really notice it. So basically this degrades the image quality without the user knowing about it.

Current workaround

Are you using any workarounds or other solutions to achieve your goals in Capture One?

I tried to create a preset for the lens correction tool. This gave me VERY weird results. I created a preset from an image in which I set falloff and distortion to 100. But when I applied the preset all the images (even the one I created the preset from) suddenly had a very bright vignette (nearly white at the borders).

Thanks to AI I could try to write an Apple Script for C1. My plan was to make the script reset all lens corrections on all selected images and then set the sliders for falloff and distortion to 100. It worked until the point where it reset the adjustments. But then C1 gives you an error message that it cannot set those values to 100. It seems that C1 ist expecting something different here.

The only way to fix it at the moment is to reset the lens correction tool on each individual image and then manually set the sliders to 100 again.

So my suggestion: You already have an option for automatic lens corrections on import. So there seems to be a possibility to do that. But at the moment that is just a single option - and you decide when it is done. Wouldn’t it be possible to offer some more choice for this? I would image a menu point like „automatic falloff correction“ and then 3 options to choose from: „always“, „auto“, „never“. And of course the same for distortion and sharpness. This would give me so much peace of mind.

Maybe in the same turn you should introduce an option to exclude the lens corrections when you cooy and apply ALL settings of an image (like you already offer for the crop).

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Jul 24, 2023

    Just a few days ago I opened a support ticket about the bug you describe and added a video that shows it.
    The answer from the support was:

    Thanks for contacting us. This issue you are describing is a known bug that our R&D teams are working to fix.

    Your case will be added to the bug report, and I will place your ticket on-hold while we work on this. I will get back to you in case we need any more information regarding this report.

    We will do our very best to provide a fix for this as soon as possible, but unfortunately I can't guarantee that it will be ready for the next service release.

    I can however promise that I will keep you updated on the progress of the fix. Regarding this and other known issues, kindly check our Bug Tracker as this is where we share the latest known bugs and problems as well as comment on their status.

  • Guest
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    Jul 24, 2023

    Hey all,

    I have a somehow related problem, which was partially mentioned by Sebastian Reiprich.

    Seems like light fall off sometimes is applied twice which results in a very bright almost white vignetting on the edges. Scenarios when I experience it:

    1. If I set up a profile with 100% light fall off correction and use on image import (not sure why it is not a default behaviour by the way, would be perfect!). I see white edges.
    2. When I edit the photo using light fall off tool, them close C1 and open next day I see the same white edges. Seems that C1 applying the correction not to the raw file but to its preview jpg version. They preserve on the export as well. However, when change anyhow the light fall off slider everything goes normal again.

    I hope it can be solved! Otherwise, C1 is a wonderful tool for me. Some specs:

    Currently using  Capture One 16.2.1.13 build on MacOS (M1 chip). Camera raw files from Fujifulm X-Pro3.



    Regards,
    Ivan

     

  • Guest
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    Apr 12, 2023

    Hi Christian, thank you for the helpful comment. I understand your explanation and I'm totally fine with it. I see that when I shoot with the Sony 24/70 i obtain different correction values accordingly to the focal lens. No problem. The problem arises when I copy and paste adjustments. Things can get very wrong.  Now that I'm aware of it I simply deselect the lens correction adjustments from the clipboard. But as far as I know I must do this manually, and double check every single time. It's time consuming. Maybe here there is a simple and quick solution for you to implement and solve the issue. At least in my case this is the problem. But I do just fashion photography so I shoot only people. The other photographers in this discussions may have different takes. Thank you all

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Apr 12, 2023

    Dear Christian,

    first I want to thank you for taking notice of the topic and giving some insight in your thoughts about it. I really appreciate that.

    Regarding your concerns:

    Of course I understand the issue here. You don’t want to compromise speed when shooting tethered for some corrections that might not even be needed on some occasions. Not even even I need distortion correction for all of my images.
    So as you already mentioned it could be a solution to leave the choice to the user whether it should happen automatically or not and maybe you could exclude those corrections when shooting tethered.
    That being said I want to emphasize that I really don’t mind applying those corrections manually. But I don’t want to to it for every single image. You offer the ability to copy and apply the corrections from one image to another. But the way this is currently done is suboptimal and (at least to me) counterintuitive.
    Say I take some architecture photos on a zoom lens (RF 24-70 most of the time). I think it is reasonable to correct distortion on those type of images. And C1 has the capability to do so and offers perfect correction over the whole zoom range.
    BUT: If I take my first image at 24mm and correct falloff and distortion 100% (=setting the sliders to 100) I would expect that all my other images get also corrected by 100%. But instead of getting a 100% correction relative to the actual distortion and falloff on those images they get the absolute correction from the initial image applied. That reduces the image quality and causes a lot of work and head scratches for me.
    And if you took care to manually set all those settings for each an d every image and the copy ALL adjustments from one image to another the wrong lens corrections (even the results from CA analysis) are applied once more causing you additional work.
    That’s were my suggestion with the user selected presets came from because although not perfect I think it would at least get rid of some of the issues.

  • Guest
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    Apr 12, 2023

    Hi all, 

    Thank You for a constructive discussion on this topic. 

    This is something we have also been discussing internally. 

    Currently, Capture One will auto-apply distortion-correction, if the used lens at that focal distance distorts more than ~1.5%. We are considering lowering this threshold. 

    So why not just do it? There are 2 potential gotcha's:

    1) What happens with the tethering speed (trigger-to-sharp in Capture One), when all images need to have computed a geometric change. Especially with far from all images really needing the correction in the first place (i.e. most pictures of people).

    2) How is image quality affected. 

    An answer to the above questions could of course be to let it be a user-preference in the Preferences window, or in the contextual menu of the Lens Correction tool.

    Keep the discussion going, would love to hear Your feedback. 

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 30, 2023

    Here is a quick example I was able to find. The first picture shows the image when lens corrections were copied and applied. You see barrel distortion although the slider is set to 100. After hitting the reset button the slider for distortion remains on 100 and the slider for falloff is set to 0. But the distortion is gone.

     

     

  • Thomas Kyhn
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    Mar 30, 2023

    I used the reset button, then selected the lens again and set Distortion at 100.

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 30, 2023

    Just to clarify: Did you reset the lens correction tool or did you pull the slider to 0 and then to 100 again?
    Just moving the slider doesn’t work for me. I have to use the reset button first. Sometimes it also helped selecting the generic lens correction profile and after that the profile for your lens again.

  • Thomas Kyhn
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    Mar 30, 2023

    I get pincushion distortion also after resetting Lens Correction and readjusting to 100, so perhaps there are issues with some of the profiles too.

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 30, 2023

    If you have analyzed an image for chromatic aberrations those corrections are copied as well and cause even more fringing on your images.

    I sent a bug report on this issue 3 times now and even provided a video where I showcased these bugs. The first time was about 8 month ago, but nothing happened. This time the support suggested to post the issue here in the forum.

  • Guest
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    Mar 30, 2023

    Same issue here on Sony 24-70. Really annoying and time consuming. In brief: some pictures are automatically set ad 0% distortion, some other at 100%. If you copy adjustments and styles from 0% distortion pictures, the camera movements settings of that particular focal length are copied over destination pictures original focal length. This is a huge problem. Can we have a fix on this?

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 30, 2023

    I updated my original post. I hope everything is fine now.

  • Guest
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    Mar 30, 2023

    Your post has been hidden for moderation. Please read the pinned post and use the template provided.

    You can edit your post by clicking the "gear" icon on your post and then selecting "edit".

    I understand that rules and guidelines are annoying, but it has to be this way in order to make the requests and feedback usable by our Product Management team, and to ensure that you get the response you deserve.

    Thank you for your time and for directly contributing towards the development of Capture One. We greatly appreciate it.

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 29, 2023

    That would be great!

  • Thomas Kyhn
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    Mar 29, 2023

    I also thought that the issue was with Capture One's lens correction profiles. I will have to go over these settings again and have a closer look.

  • Sebastian Reiprich
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    Mar 29, 2023

    The thing is that you don’t notice it when you are shooting portrait images because in this case you have no real reference point for the distortion. I assume that the same is true for the falloff correction but this one is also not easily noticeable. However if you really want or need straight lines you see that it is messed up. At first I thought C1 lens correction profiles are bad. But on some images they did a perfect job. So I reset the lens corrections on the images with bad results and pulled the slider to 100 again manually. And suddenly the lines were perfectly straight.

    So if you copied and applied those type of corrections on your images there is a chance that you actually reduced the quality of the images. Because say you are one a zoom lens that has a barrel distortion on the low end and a pincushion distortion on the upper end of the zoom range. When you apply a correction for the barrel distortion and copy it to an image which suffers from pincushion distortion that distortion is getting even worse, reduces the image quality and in case of portrait work you don’t even notice it.

  • Thomas Kyhn
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    Mar 29, 2023

    I've copied the Distortion setting of 100 from one image to multiple others numerous times and noticed barrel and pincushion distortion in some cases, but I wasn't aware that settings other than the neutral 100% setting would be applied. This explains it.

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