Post your Capture One Pro Workspace

[thomas]

Makes sense. You might run a head-to-head of:
C1 set to disable sharpening and Focus-Blade doing all sharpening
C1 set to pre-sharpening and Focus-Blad doing additional sharpening

You might find that more micro detail is shown in extreme enlargements when using pre-sharpening at the raw stage. In any case I'd be interested in your results.

Thanks, Doug!
Good advice! I've already played around a lot (!) with uprezing and sharpening and the order of the steps. My basic workflow is to do a presharpening with Focal Blade but without sharpening the blacks and the highlights. Actually you are right, I could do this in C1 already but on a layer I just have more control especially regarding highlight sharpening. I do the first sharpening on a luminance layer (which is basically similar to sharpening the L chanel in Lab but without converting to Lab... why should I?) very carefully - sharpness fall off at the edges on a second layer. Then I uprez with Alienskin BlowUp2 (which I find the leading scaling tool currently - far superior to Photozoom and Gen. Fractals IMHO). I uprez in 2 or 3 steps. Then I sharpen again with Focal Blade... again rather soft... just to make the details visible. Then I create a layer with highpass sharpening - again sharpening without blacks and whites. Now I have a fine detailed crisp image on screen. The third sharpening stage I do with Photoshops "selective sharpening" with a setting depending on the paper/printer. Finally some noise...
I don't know... maybe there's a way to do it in less steps. But I for myself figured out that this way I get the best results given an output size of up to around 300% upscaling (so it's 120x160cm with a single shot from the P45... with stitched images of the tech camera the upresz factor is less but my workflow seems to be suitable as well here). Too, I find that sharpening with a too high radius always leads to artefacts. With my individual 3 steps sharpening I can always set a small radius and control the sharpening intensity with the filter amount.
Again: I'm not sure if there is a way to do it in less steps. But at least I get the results I appreciate. But that has nothing to do with C1 V4's capabilities of sharpening which I find much improved as already mentioned above. It's just that the layer control in Photoshop is more sophisticated (regarding the layer fill options).
Regards, Thomas

 

[Jack]

I have played around with this 86 different ways, and for me, the best result is to pre sharpen in C1. So my process is: I first pre-sharpen in C1, then output sharpen in CS via a multi-step smart-sharpen action I wrote that moderates sharpening in the shadows and highlights as you do Thomas, but at the same time mine additionally targets high-frequency detail. Then my output sharpening is balanced for the final output size and media.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

I use C1 for sharpening at a base level for all my masters than add for whatever media I need.

 

[Don Libby]

This has turned into a very useful post for me so once again kudos to Doug.

I've found I can't do as much with a PC as those with a MAC however I have no intention of switching. I've been working with Photoshop since forever and I often have to remind myself that I didn't learn it overnight so I can't expect to learn C1 overnight as well. The biggest factor for me is the fact that C1 now supports 64bit which for me is huge. I'm also using C1 more now since I completely switched to the Cambo RS-1000; actually I now open C1 first and work on the images prior to doing anything in CS4. Each time I open C1 I find I learn more and more.

I'd post a screen grab of my work space however it'd look almost the same as Charlie.

Thanks guys!

Don

 

[Guy Mancuso]

I rarely use PS anymore. Most everything I do is in C1

 

[thomas]

I think with regard to uprezing and sharening there is no "wrong" or "right". I find this totally up to ones taste. I for myself don't like uprezing that softens fine structures too much (with S-Spline mostly) whilst others appreciate just that. Too, I don't like sharpened highlights (whites) very much whilst others like that look of crisp "contrast" (well, I like a crisp look as well this is why at one stage I use highpass sharpening but with the highlights excluded). I think everyone has to figure out which way to go to get the required results. Sometimes it's even better (for me personally!) to uprez certain images without prior sharpening and do all the sharpening on the final resized file... it depends.
If C1 would provide a control to soften the sharpening of the higlights and the blacks I'd probably use the C1 sharpening at the RAW stage. But in fine details C1 sometimes introduces artefacts (white dots... even at moderate sharpening values of 80-0.5-0.5) and when there is further uprezing these atrefacts become visible in an unpleasant way.
Regards, Thomas

 

[thomas]

I've found I can't do as much with a PC as those with a MAC however I have no intention of switching.

I think the limitations in C1 for Windows are minor. You can't customize the toolbar (I don't use the toolbar at all so I wouldn't care). You can't save workspaces [which is the topic here, okay ...] but within a workspace you can enlarge/reduce thumbnails, show/hide tools and browser, toggle portrait and landscape mode and anything else.
There are some good features in the Windows Version that are not available on Mac (unfortunately). For example you can click on the sliders in the adjustment tabs and move them with the arrow keys (okay, recently the editing of numeric fields was introduced on Mac as well ... so no real advantage here anymore). You can set shortcuts to zoom in/zoom out - I miss this very much on Mac (on Mac you can set "to fit" or 100%... or you have to use the zoom tool). Hmh... there was something else, but I can't remember anymore as I didn't use the Windows version for some weeks.
Regards, Thomas

 

[Don Libby]

While it would be nice to have a custom workplace like I have w/CS4 it isn't any sort of deal breaker. It looks that each platform for whatever the reason has slightly different options. I'm about to dive into EIP this morning which should prove interesting.

Don

 

[Jack]

(white dots... even at moderate sharpening values of 80-0.5-0.5) and when there is further uprezing these atrefacts become visible in an unpleasant way.
Regards, Thomas

Kick your threshold up to around 2 in C1 instead of 0.5 and see if the white dots disappear. Then do some targeted high-frequency sharpening in CS.

,

 

[thomas]

Kick your threshold up to around 2 in C1 instead of 0.5 and see if the white dots disappear. Then do some targeted high-frequency sharpening in CS.

already tried that. unfortunately it has nothing to do with the sharpening filter itself. I rather think it's the conception of the filmcurves which I find a bit agressive in highlights (for ALL cameras). You can avoid the "white dots" much better when you use the "linear response" film curve. But than you start from scratch with the "look". Actually the Phase camera profiles are really good and the initial setup already creates a pleasant look to start with. So... I prefer to store my files without sharpening and sharpen on layers in Photoshop. Takes time... but it's not a big deal. There is nothing better with the sharpening in C1 so I don't lose quality. It would just be more comfortable...
Regards, Thomas

 

[Don Libby]

Here's an image of what my workspace looks like ..

Don