Capture One Pro Color

Hi,

About ten days ago I purchased Capture One Pro 10. (I have been a Lightroom CC user last four years).

I seem to get a bit of a problem.

I shoot Nikon D800, RAW 14 bit lossless Compressed, sRGB.

On Capture Pro 10, after processing, I export to hard drive sRGB, 100% quality JPEGS.

Once exported the JPGs have a slight different color balance in that they are a tad bluish when compared to what is seen on Capture post processing.

Any ideas why? or suggestions?

I have attached two screen shots for comparison.

 

 

It's a colour profile issue. Any further than that I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.

Try disabling the "save colour profile with image" option, or enabling it. Or not opening the file using its embedded profile. Or using the embedded profile. Whatever works.

 

Colour profiles are supposed to make colour handling easy, transparent and cross-platform/cross application/cross colour-space. IME they do nothing of the sort and are a complete PITA!

I agree Joe, they are a PITA. Have already done what you suggest thurning things off and on in all permutations and combinations!

Thanks for taking the time! Have a good day.

You need to check whether Capture One is using your custom display profile that is the same as Photoshop as seen in RGB working space>MonitorRGB listing in the dropdown menu in Color Settings. If available you need to read up on Capture One's color management setup. I have no experience with C1 so I can't help you on that.

Hi, I can't help with Capture One but I do know that if Lightroom needs to be reinstalled on my PC (fortunately rarely) it's default colour profile is ProPhoto RGB. This has the effect of desaturating any photos posted online (IE PhotoNet), setting the profile to sRGB has the answer.

At least for me.

Thanks Tim, Gerald and Rodeo, I will check out the things you mention.

Most of the cameras I've used (Nikon, Sony, Leica) give you color space options of sRGB or Adobe RGB. If your editor CONVERTS that to a new color space, e.g., Profoto RGB, there is no problem since the file contents are adjusted appropriately. If the editor ASSIGNS a new color space, each word in the image file is mapped to new colors, which will be incorrect. You can test this in Photoshop under the EDIT command, CONVERT or ASSIGN, and see the effect immediately. Make sure the default setting is the same as the original. I doubt that Capture One is guilty of this, but check the settings nonetheless.

 

My educated guess is that Capture One applies the default color space (Profit RGB) to original output, not to the imported image. You can set a default in Photoshop, but it will work in whatever color space it detects in the image, or convert it per your instructions.

 

Most conversion programs have default adjustment settings which will change the appearance of the image. You can defeat these settings, change them to suit your needs, or accept the results and work from that point. This would be my first line of inquiry into the problem. This is different from color space, and is generally a permanent change once saved.

 

Capture One is a color-managed program, which will read the embedded color space and display it correctly, regardless of the setting. You may notice a change in gamut between sRGB and other settings, but the colors will be unchanged. That said, the color space makes a significant difference when displayed in a non-color managed program like most internet browsers. A wide-gamut color space like Profoto RGB will appear unsaturated, whereas sRGB will be much brighter, closer to its color-managed appearance.

 

The monitor profile (default or by calibration) is usually applied at the system level. You will get poor color accuracy if the editing program applies the monitor profile incorrectly (e.g., a second time).

 

All of these factors are covered by the broad topic of Color Management. You will benefit by doing your homework.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Ed_Ingold

Internally, C1 uses a profile similar to ProPhotoRBG (see: Colors in Capture One - even though this is for C1 v8, it should still apply to v10 as well.). There should be no need to set the monitor profile, and you cannot actually switch the colour profile used in the editor (only the input profile, via the camera selection, and the export profile in the export recipe).

 

C1 v10 has a new tool (looks like a pair of glasses/goggles) to do output proofing, which should help identify issues like this. Just click the tool (by default, it's available all the way to the right on the top toolbar) and it should show your image as it will look using its current selected output profile (so the one found in the selected export recipe). More info: Control your Output in Capture One Pro 10 - The Image Quality Professor's Blog.

 

There is also an option in View -> Proof Profile, where you can set a default colour space. Frankly, for all I've seen, this is best left at its default, unless you really know you need something very specific. I'd check if it's set to something specific, and if yes, just reset it to default values.

Last but not least, check your Export Recipe, and check which colour profile is selected there (if any); if these JPEGs are for web use, just select sRGB as profile.

Hi acm

 

Lots of variables to consider. To help narrow this down, import or view the exported JPEG from Capture 1 Pro 10 back into Capture 1. Compare the images before import vs the JPEG you exported from within Capture 1. If they look different, then the issue is in the Export details from Capture 1 Pro.

 

If they look the same, then likely the issue is elsewhere.

 

This is just a suggested divide and conquer first step so we can start separating out if this color difference is caused by C1, PS, System Color Management etc

 

John Wheeler

Looking at the screen shots, that's not a "slight" difference in my view, but a blooming great big one.

 

The difference looks comparable to that between a space using the D50 white point, and one using D65.

 

It might be worth checking White Point settings throughout the chain.

 

I'm not sure if the white point can be decoupled from a particular colour space - like sRGB with D50 or D65 - but it definitely looks like a white point issue to me.

Keep in mind with dull earth tones as in the OP's sample image white balance can be mistaken for increased saturation (assign large gamut to a smaller gamut color space) and vice versa.

You need to check whether Capture One is using your custom display profile that is the same as Photoshop as seen in RGB working space>MonitorRGB listing in the dropdown menu in Color Settings. If available you need to read up on Capture One's color management setup. I have no experience with C1 so I can't help you on that.

IF Photoshop is using it, so is C1.

There must be a point (or 3x3 sample) on the monkey's fur or blurred highlights where the color picker shows neutral grey - say 159,158,160 or something like that.

 

Now if the exact same area shows vastly different channel numbers between the original and re-opened image, then you know a real change is being made to the saved image. But if the colour-picker shows almost the same numbers, then you know it's a profile issue.

On second fresh look at the OP's image preview comparison between C1 & Photoshop I'm going to correct myself and say it looks more like some C1 white balance setting is not being applied when exporting to HD as an sRGB jpeg. I've seen a lot of the effects of profile mismatches and usually it's either quite subtle where you can barely tell usually on calibrated/profiled sRGB gamut displays or it's so way off like assigning sRGB color space profile to AdobeRGB which will make the preview quite desaturated but not affect whites as in the background bokeh behind the monkey.

You mention that you shoot RAW files, sRGB. RAW files do not have a color space, so sRGB is only used by the in camera processing software to generate a JPG image with sRGB color space. The RAW file will contain all the in camera settings like Picture Control Profile, color space, etc. If you process the RAW file using Nikon Capture NX-D software it will read the in camera settings and generate a JPG that matches the one from the camera. If you process the NEF file with Lightroom, it will not read the in camera settings and will generate an RGB file (JPG, TIFF, etc) using Adobe Standard camera profile unless you selected one of the camera matching profiles. You can also select color space for the file that Lightroom outputs (sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc). I don't know about C1, but I assume it does not read in camera settings like Lightroom and will use it own camera profile to generate an RGB image that you can output with various color spaces (sRGB, Adobe RGB, etc).

 

I doubt that RGB images from two different RAW processing software packages will match. Try selecting different camera profiles in Lightroom and C1 to see what happens.

C1 has its own colour profiles for the various cameras it supports, similar to Lightroom. Those profiles will not be the issue here, as they're not used for export - and the issue is clearly between an exported JPEG and the on-screen display in C1 itself. Without the OP responding with more information on his settings in C1 (especially the export recipe and the proofing profile), it's all a guessing game (even for those of us who actually use C1 ;-).