Aaargh - C1 colours in ACR/LR

[Ben Rubinstein]

OK, so far so good. I've given up on using ACR for any point of the wedding basic processing as I learn the C1 workflow that will work for me.

So far it is looking like this. Use Bridge to sort images, cull and rename. I know I could do it in C1 but not as well or as easily as in Bridge. Go to C1 and work the files for colour and exposure then save as TIFF. Go back to Bridge and use ACR to crop and rotate (far quicker in ACR on my machine than C1 which stutters a lot), add or subtract vignetting, spot/dust removal and most importantly, dodge and burn where needed. Send files to PS using one of my custom actions for PTLens, custom curve, sharpening and save as jpg or for conversion to B&W using again a custom action that I made.

Only problem with this is I now have 300 TIFF's from each wedding, not just the RAW's. That's going to eat up a lot of HD space. Question, if I'm saving from C1 and intending to do some dodging and burning (all information in the histogram, no spikes at either end), will I have more info saving from C1 with a 8bit TIFF than a highest quality jpg?

A bit longer than my present workflow, the saving to TIFF is an extra step and I'm not as fluid with C1 yet as I was with ACR, nevermind the slower workflow for applying changes to multiple files, but otherwise I don't think it's going to be that much slower given that the majority of my work in ACR has always been the colour but in C1 suddenly my camera's AWB is almost perfect and a quick tap of the WB tool is all that's needed otherwise. Never had that with ACR!

Guys, I owe you a BIG beer. Anytime you're in Jerusalem or Manchester UK, drinks are on me.

P.S. what's the correct tool in C1 for highlight recovery? Does doing a minus of exposure work as recovery like in ACR or is it all in the highlight tool?

 

[Guy Mancuso]

You can also save the files in C1 as a DNG in the output tab. Might want to think about this work them in C1 even sorting with a ranking system for editing . Than select /sort all you 5 star images than make all your adjustments than output to DNG which i believe is a smaller file than bring into than into LR or ACR for dodge and burn stuff. I never use ACR or LR so not sure that process.

On highlights you want the High Dynamic Range tab and use the highlight slider. Great feature in C1 you can also hit the highlight warning and shadow warning by hitting the triangle in the top right corner and than you will know your values as you work the highlight tool. BTW if you want to vignette the corners, I find C1 a nicer tool to use than PS.

For dodging and burning you can also use the color editor which I do a lot and select the color you want to darken or lighten and work it in there. 90 percent of this image which was fairly flat looking was done in color editor like this.

 

[cmb_]

P.S. what's the correct tool in C1 for highlight recovery? Does doing a minus of exposure work as recovery like in ACR or is it all in the highlight tool?

Not sure if a minus of exposure works as recovery like in ARC but it does help but the Highlight Slider in the High Dynamic Range tool does a very good job. Additionally, if you have a difficult situation where you are trying to recover highlights in the Quick Tab > Base Characteristics - normally the default is Film Standard - change this to Linear Response for those difficult images and highlights are not as hot. This image will look very flat so normally I will add a simple S curve to bring back some of the pop.

 

[cmb_]

It's "OFF" by default, you have to use it for it to take effect. All it is is a sophisticated WB tool to keep skintones of a given subject (like a bride ) consistent throughout an entire series of images regardless of lighting changes. Wedding photographers really like it. (Sorry, couldn't resist :ROTFL

RE Skin Tone Tool. On my Windows machine (ok stop laughing) yes, it was off by default (None) but after having selected one of the presets the None disappeared - I can no longer select None, only one of the presets. Is this a know "feature"? Have I been applying the light rose skin tone (or whatever) to all of my images since I fiddled with this months ago?

 

[Jack]

RE Skin Tone Tool. On my Windows machine (ok stop laughing) yes, it was off by default (None) but after having selected one of the presets the None disappeared - I can no longer select None, only one of the presets. Is this a know "feature"? Have I been applying the light rose skin tone (or whatever) to all of my images since I fiddled with this months ago?

Charlie/Ben re skintone:

You have to select the skintone dropper and click it in an image before it has any effect. You can create a custom skintone of 128/128/128 neutral gray and use it like a regular WB dropper if you want, but unless you select it and apply it, it isn't doing anything to the WB of your image. TO use it as it was designed, I would for example get a good shot of a bride and click on her chin or cheek -- some area that is easy to see in all following images -- and create a skintone for her. Now in each subsequent image of her, I can click-apply that tone on the same portion of her skin and presto, her skin is now the exact same color in every image. Note that due to lighting, her gown or flowers may be slightly altered between images, but at least she -- her skin -- has a consistent appearance in every image. If I cannot find a good file for her skintone, I would use one of the presets that generated a pleasing result for he particular coloring based on my recall, then use that to set her skin to that color for a given series of images. Make sense?

 

[Jack]

Ben:

Sorting: You really need to understand that C1 is designed around working sessions and in your case a session could be a particular wedding, or one session for the rehearsal and another for the formal sitting and another for the wedding day itself if you choose. Once here, you now have a dedicated set of folders for each session. Here you can sort and flag to your heart's content and even have an automatically created "Move To" folder where you can send every one and two star image, or blue-flagged one-star images only for processing or other action. Bottom line is it is VERY powerful but way beyond the scope of explaining to you in an online forum. I *HIGHLY* recommend you sign up for one of Doug's webinars -- you will learn more in an hour there than 10 days of forum posts...

Output files and disk space: Each session also creates a dedicated ""Output" folder. This is the default folder for all processed images from that session. After you process, you could easily remove all files from that folder -- permanently erase them. All of your adjustments are still intact and connected to the raw file by the .cos file we discussed earlier, and if you need a processed tiff again, you can simply select the image and processit as a single and it will be identical to the file you trashed a day or year ago as long as you don't change any adjustments. Moreover, you can save different adjustment parameters as "Variants." Each variant is only the set of adjustments so takes up virtually no additional space on your drive. (Personally, I would invest in more hard drives -- I think they're really cheap -- and still save all my processed tiffs in a dedicated folder for that client, but then that's me.)

Highlight recovery: The highlight (and shadow for shadow boost) sliders in C1 are specifically for that purpose and IMO do a *MUCH* better job of actually recovering highlights than LR/ACR.

Cheers,

 

[Guy Mancuso]

I agree the highlight tools and also working with highlight warnings are very easy for you to dial in and it's results are the best I have seen in recovering.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Jack, the point is that I need files output from C1 which I can then apply crop/rotate and local adjustment tool to them before batching to PS and running actions on them to get the finished file I send for printing or burn to disk, etc. That means that I then have to have a) the RAW file b) the output file from C1 that I apply changes to c) the finished file. Now I usually only keep a) as it includes all the changes I've made from start to finish. Any time I need the files I just run the batch action on them. Not so now, I need both a) and b) archived. If b) is TIFF's then that can burn through some HD's very very fast.

If I have a good workflow in a browser as powerful as Bridge CS4 with all the ability of metadata searches I don't see the need to learn that step in C1 which, at least on my machine, is far far slower at doing everything, nevermind the fact that I can have multiple Bridge windows up all doing different tasks. Unless for my specific workflow there is going to be a significant advantage to learning it in a new program I'm wary of the concept of having to switch. For example, I have a set of defaults which are applied to all RAW files as standard when I import the files. When I am viewing the files for culling purposes it's already with a set default of values so that I have a baseline to work from. I've discovered with C1 that I would have to apply the changes to a single file then copy them over to the rest of the files. One step too many especially when C1 crashed completely doing the above to 350 files, I don't need that when I get back from a wedding with 1250 files and want to see which pictures are actually in focus...

Guy I need to check this but I'm almost 100% sure that when you save a DNG in C1 just like in ACR the changes are only visible to the program writing it. You can't save a finished file in C1 and have any of the changes show in ACR. I know for sure it doesn't work the other way round. That leaves me with the option of saving a TIFF or JPG. I know that if I process to leave enough room on either side of the histo then an 8bit TIFF is enough to give me the data needed for dodge and burn. Question is whether a full quality jpg has the same data.

As for the highlight warnings, I'm already working with these processing steps:

1)Apply default style (blackpoint,contrast,saturation, minimal highlights, noise reduction, sharpening all at zero)
2)WB
3)Brightness
4)Recover highlights if needed.
5)Use levels midpoint to normalise the facial brightness after highlights tool
6)touch up blackpoint if needed.

I have my keyboard shortcuts saved to clone the ACR ones (give or take) for less confusion. The clipping warning is set to 'O' and 'Q' takes me straight to the quick processing panel. Works great, I'm toggling the clipping warning on and off as needed.

This file shows my workspace at present: http://www.studio-beni.net/desktop.jpg

 

[thomas]

Wow but applying a set default to 350 images takes a long time, C1 been frozen for 10 mins already.

I've just tried this here.

In a folder with 300 files of a P45 I applied a set of adjustments to all images.
The adjustments included:
- ICC profile
- Exposure
- Noise Reduction (lum + color)
- Sharpening
- Adjustments in the Color Editor (6 colors)

I took C1 15 seconds to apply the adjustments to all 300 (299) images.

The sole thing that takes some time in C1 is the first creation of the previews/thumbnails… but once they are all loaded everything goes very fast.

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

My C1 had a heart attack when I tried it! I'm going to try it again with a different wedding. Other than that I find it pretty sluggish at just about everything compared to ACR but I don't mind that as just doing colour and brightness it's liveable with.

*EDIT* nope, crashed again, this time on 292 5D RAW files. Dual 2.2ghz machine, 8GB RAM, files on a raid 0 disk, never had any problems before. 100 files at a time works OK.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Your right the DNG does not stick with ACR for example. I actually never use that myself

 

[dougpeterson]

Sluggishness is usually caused by either a bad installation of the software, a computer with no available ram (though just 2gb of ram in the machine with nothing else launched is more than enough), or, as Thomas mentions, the background building of thumbnails and previews.

C1 is very very fast. Thomas' time of 15 seconds for five adjustments on 300 files (39 megapixel 16 bit files with extra proprietary data to process), including a Color Editor profile which is pretty math intensive is about what I expect.

Sounds like you have a problem which can be fixed, rather than experience with issues that are inherent to the program.

 

[thomas]

background building of thumbnails and previews.

C1 doesn't adress all computer performance for the preview creation. The processors/cores run at about 50%. If you start to edit on the first image the preview creation is even slowed down a bit more. So there seems to be a kind of "prioritiy" to editing. I.e: though C1 has to bulit the previews you can directly start with editing on the first captures (I'm not sure if that is right in a technical sense but that's how it feels like).

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

OK, I don't remember checking that all the previews had been finished (how would I know?) and no doubt they were not given that I was opening a folder of RAWs and immediately trying to apply profiles. I'll try again on a new folder.

Let's see...

It's possible but I have no indication of when I'm allowed to do stuff, just hung on me again, applied the changes to 300 files, waited a couple of minutes, until all the new thumbnails were refreshed. Moment I click on one, C1 freezes dead.

I know I'm being lazy but before uninstalling and reinstalling, where do I find my keyboard profile and the 'style' I made in XP so I can back them up?

 

[dmcnickle]

We should really talk (or you could take our screen-sharing based online training)

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________

Doug,
Not to hijack this thread, but are you going to have the same workshops in October? I want to take the beginning one that was held today but got into town late last night and couldn't get organized early enough this morning to take it?
Denise

 

[Ben Rubinstein]

Been doing some more playing, no doubt about it, the ACR highlight recovery is a lot better than C1, C1 gives up long before ACR is still recovering perfect good detail and if you need to hit the slider above 50 you start getting clown colours in C1. Blacks seem to go blue very quickly when using the brighness slider.

Still got a long way to go to know how to bully this program into thinking 'me'!

 

[dougpeterson]

Doug,
Not to hijack this thread, but are you going to have the same workshops in October? I want to take the beginning one that was held today but got into town late last night and couldn't get organized early enough this morning to take it?
Denise

Probably not October, but maybe November.

 

[douglasf13]

Argh! I didn't think this thread was going to be about C1 and good color. The magenta-ish skintones with my A900 are the only reason I'm not using C1 (I know others with the same problem.) Doug, any news on a fix coming? It is driving me batty, and I want to buy the program.

 

[thomas]

Argh! I didn't think this thread was going to be about C1 and good color. The magenta-ish skintones with my A900 are the only reason I'm not using C1 (I know others with the same problem.) Doug, any news on a fix coming? It is driving me batty, and I want to buy the program.

magenta-ish reds are quite common with a lot of DSLRs IMO. But this is something that can easily be corrected with a customized camera profile that you can make with the Color Editor in C1 pro.

 

[douglasf13]

magenta-ish reds are quite common with a lot of DSLRs IMO. But this is something that can easily be corrected with a customized camera profile that you can make with the Color Editor in C1 pro.

I'll look into that, thanks. I'm trying out DxO, Raw Therapee, C1, Sony IDC, and Lightroom currently, and while they all certainly render skin tones differently, C1 is WAY off.