More and more I print directly out of C1. In the beginning, it was only for contact sheets. But when I saw what was possible, I started to use C1 for printing as a default. Now, only for special tasks do I switch over to PS.
Here are a few questions and observations.
First of all, I was wondering whether there was any technical advantage for printing the RAW file directly out of the converter. I don't know how that process works. Does Capture One generate a sort of temporary TIFF (or the like) to print from? In which case, the perceived advantage when comparing to printing with PS would not exist, I guess?! I tend to believe that I see cleaner files when printing from within C1 (But that's maybe wishful thinking ,as it would be a so much simpler and elegant work-flow ).
Then there is the question of Sharpening. Here also, I believe I noticed cleaner files, less artefact's than with PhotoKit (Nick or whatever else I tried). I have only to prepare the file once for all output sizes! No resampling, up or down sizing etc. I would greatly appreciate, if you could share your practice regarding ink-jet output oriented sharpening in C1.
Soft proofing is definitely not possible the way I am used to do it, because I can't compare side by side. I can only toggle between two differently optimized variants AND associated output profiles. One variant for the master version and one for the specific medium. For the profiles, best practice I found till now, like a PhaseOne training video indicates, is setting the paper profile in one process recipe and a very large one, like the camera profile itself in another one. This allows for quicker switching between profiles than with >View>Proof Profile. Still it is far from being as useful as a side by side comparison in PS. What do you do?
Lastly, the two other things I miss most are the healing brush and the clone tool.
Other than that, I just wish C1 would be more stable and faster here under Win7x64 16RAM (Why is it that PS CS5 can do so much more and be so much more stable and all that while being ultra responsive at the speed of light?)
regards