Capture One vs Photoshop Sharpening

High.

Background:

I have a 10D with Photoshop elements for post processing. I have

just downloaded the Capture One LE demo, and I have about 14 days

left of the trial.

Question:

C1 appears to do sharpening differently than Photoshop Unsharp Mask.

C1 "appears" to only work on the full size image. Is this correct?

C1 "appears" not to have a radius adjustment. Is this correct?

Am I better off sticking with photoshop, if my primary adjustments

are sharpening, and not color?

Thanks!

You are correct Jim. Allow me to make a broad generalization and say that Capture One users are employing it only for RAW development purposes, including extracting better exposures from their captures with no image degradation. Since sharpening should be done as the last step (after image sizing), I suspect most don't do it at all in C1. For a more authoritative response to this question, I suggest posting it on the C1 users forum at:

http://www.pictureflow.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=27

Just curious, have you played with the exposure, contrast, and levels controls? You mention your primary adjustments are sharpening and color. Have you no need for highlight, shadow manipulation? : )

"Just curious, have you played with the exposure, contrast, and levels controls? You mention your primary adjustments are sharpening and color. Have you no need for highlight, shadow manipulation? : )"

Well, I am still figuring that part out. I do level adjustments regularly in PS. I think I am beginning to like C1 better for this purpose. I think I am starting to develop a workflow with C1 as a first step, followed by Photoshop.

In C1, I adjust levels and exposure, do minor cropping and output to a TIFF at my desired resolution. In PS, I then apply sharpening to all photos (to taste), then run a batch conversion from TIFF to JPEG.

For major surgery, I think PS is better because of layers and the clone command (ie, if the subject is 3 stops too dark, but the background is perfect, I fix the subjects in a seperate layer from the background => or just use a little dodge if I missed by 1/2 a stop).

Daniel,

Sounds like you have some RAW experience. How does C1LE compare to Adobe RAW add-in give your comments?

Don Lashier has authored a wonderfully detailed

<a href="http://www.lashier.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=20503&gal_col=2">review</a> comparing ACR, (adobe) with C1 and Canon's RAW converter. I couldn't say it better.