Capture One 5.0 Color Editor

[thomas]

Anyone here using the Color Editor in C1 to increase saturation of camera profiles to access certain printable colors?

I have a serious issue with the newly introduced "smart saturation" in the Color Editor.

In V4 (and V3) when you increase the global saturation in the Color Editor the entire profile extends symmetrically - which is logical.
So the profile keeps the relation of the colors to each other… at least roughly.
In V5 with smart saturation the profile entirely assumes a different shape.
Now this is a serious issue if you want to "blow up" the profile and at the same time reduce the regular "saturation" (the whole process intentionally targeted to further print related editing in Photoshop).

See the attachment:
The inner colored profile is the regular P45 Outdoor Daylight.
The outer colored profile is P45 Outdoor Daylight with global saturation increased by +30 in the Color Editor of V4.
The inner white profile is P45 Outdoor Daylight with global saturation increased by +30 in the Color Editor of V5.

I think this will be also an issue when you are creating your own profiles. I can't imagine that "smart saturation" is helpful at all for these purposes.

I can imagine that not many care about this. But if so, please contact the Phase One support with a feature request - they should either return to the conventional saturation mode of V3/V4 or should add a slider with conventional saturation.

Thanks!

 

[Jack]

Thomas,

I am guessing that "Smart" saturation was an attempt to add "Vibrance" to the color editor -- in effect balancing saturation of lower colors to match higher colors. Clearly not good for what you want to accomplish with a profile, but I think it has some merit for general processing when wanting to balance the overall saturation without having to dropper every relevant color...

 

[thomas]

I am guessing that "Smart" saturation was an attempt to add "Vibrance" to the color editor -- in effect balancing saturation of lower colors to match higher colors.

yes, correct.

I think it has some merit for general processing when wanting to balance the overall saturation without having to dropper every relevant color...

yes, of course that's a nice feature for image editing but...

Clearly not good for what you want to accomplish with a profile

... and also not good for the creation/editing of camera profiles (measured with external profiling software).
I think to preserve the full capabilities of the Color Editor and what it is (was) intended for it should provide both: regular and smart saturation.
Only with smart saturation this is going too much in the direction of an Adobe/ACR/Lightroom toy.

Of course I still can use my profiles created with V4... but at a certain point I want do be independent from V3 and V4.
Currently I only use a profile with global saturation blown up in the Color Editor by 15% and counter balanced with a decrease of the "saturation" in "exposure of -13%. The color balance, of course, is not exactly the same but it's still very, very close (both visually and by numbers).
Another option certainly would be to use a bigger working/output space in C1 such as ProPhotoRGB. But me personally don't like the concept of ProPhoto. ProPhoto is a "workaround" and it's only so popular because Adobe didn't manage to incorporate full blown color management in their RAW softwares. ProPhoto doesn't refer to any real world device...
I'm a big supporter of direct source->print conversion without any intermediate color space (particularily if the intermediate color space contains theoretically colors). Of course all that is doable but why would I? I don't have any problems with color consistency from RAW to print so I would be glad if I could simply keep my workflow.
But well... I'm not very optimistic that Phase will re-introduce regular saturation. So I'm afraid I have to keep V4 for future profiling :-(

 

[thomas]

the Color Editor (...) should provide both: regular and smart saturation.

good news ... for me
Smart sturation only applies to the basic tab whilst the advanced tab still works with conventional saturation. Hopefully it's not just a bug