Capture One processing to wrong ICC profile

[sanvandur]

This is weird. My Process Recipe in C1 (v6.3.1 on Mac OS 10.6.8) is set to embed the camera profile from my P30+. For reasons I do not know, C1 is processing certain P30+ plus files to sRGB with my "embed camera profile" recipe. Any ideas?
Here's a screen shot of my process recipe:

[Wayne Fox]

I guess I'm curious why you want to imbed an input (camera) profile into an output file?   The camera profile is used in the conversion of your image, but the output tiff file should be in a working space. Normally the profile should be set to whatever working space you would like to use sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB.

[scott morrish]

I imagine there will be some very different ways of thinking about this.

My take, for what it is worth, is that one reason for embedding the input profile would be to retain all of the colour information that a sensor can capture.

It seems reasonable to assume that printers in the future will offer increased colour gamut.
Even widely used colour spaces like Adobe 98 have limitations in parts of the spectrum.
So... depending upon your workflow (and especially if you might reprint images in the future), retaining the camera profile might be advantageous for colours that are currently out-of-gamut when printing via devices available today.

The camera input profile might have its own limitations or foibles, depending on the camera in use and the quality of the icc profile, but as i understand it, it gives you the best shot at retaining all that the sensor has to offer.

All of that said, of course staying in Raw is better again, if you are able to complete editing without resorting to Photoshop's pixel based editing.

[sanvandur]

I imagine there will be some very different ways of thinking about this.

My take, for what it is worth, is that one reason for embedding the input profile would be to retain all of the colour information that a sensor can capture.

It seems reasonable to assume that printers in the future will offer increased colour gamut.
Even widely used colour spaces like Adobe 98 have limitations in parts of the spectrum.
So... depending upon your workflow (and especially if you might reprint images in the future), retaining the camera profile might be advantageous for colours that are currently out-of-gamut when printing via devices available today.

The camera input profile might have its own limitations or foibles, depending on the camera in use and the quality of the icc profile, but as i understand it, it gives you the best shot at retaining all that the sensor has to offer.

All of that said, of course staying in Raw is better again, if you are able to complete editing without resorting to Photoshop's pixel based editing.

^^^^^^^

This is the reason for embedding the camera profile. However my concern is with my C1 not converting to what I'm telling it to.
For now I'm going to try resetting C1 to see if that solves the conversion problem.

[scott morrish]

^^^^^^^

This is the reason for embedding the camera profile. However my concern is with my C1 not converting to what I'm telling it to.
For now I'm going to try resetting C1 to see if that solves the conversion problem.

Sorry: I was responding to Wayne's question as to why it mattered. Hopefully resetting should fix the problem for you.
Good luck.
Scott

[sanvandur]

No sweat Scott! I was on the phone with Doug Peterson from Capture Integration and we actually talked about the pros and cons of embedding the camera profile. So your comment turned out to be perfectly relevant
Doug Peterson suspects that the problem might be within a specific adjustment in Capture One that somehow makes Embed Camera Profile not possible (a bug). He's going to look into it further... being the totally awesome and knowledgeable part of of Capture Integration that he is. So my workaround is to just convert to ProPhoto when processing from C1. The difference between ProPhoto and the P30+ camera profile is probably negligible for my workflow, so I should be fine.

[sanvandur]

Doug Perterson is THE MAN
He just called me back with his findings. If I understood him correctly, when making  local adjustments (layers) with the Color Editor, Capture One will not embed camera profile when processing RAW files (I don't know if this is specific to P30+ files). This might be resolved in future Capture One updates...

[Doug Peterson]

Credit in this case goes to Phase's Head of Support who ID'd the reason right away. It's not something I had run across in the past. Though I did make the logical jump that an adjustment in the color editor could be the explanation I wasn't able to (on my own) figure out that it was specifically color-editor-used-on-an-adjustment-layer.

In Capture One the color editor is actually manipulating the ICC profile itself, so it kinda makes sense to me that it would cause difficulties with exporting the image with the embedded native camera profile. I won't lie though the exact technical underpinnings of this are beyond me.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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[sanvandur]

You're still The Man

[Stefan.Steib]

@ Sanvandur

Besides- embedding is the correct way to keep camera data media neutral as defined in the latest valid ECI Workflow papers (= industry standard at least here in Europe) - see here:

http://www.eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=en%3Adownloads&cache=cache&media=downloads:eci_general_downloads:eci_whitepaper_1_1_eng.pdf

and here the Digipix definition -  very helpful:    http://www.eci.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=en%3Adownloads&cache=cache&media=downloads:digital_photography:digipix3_v300_en.pdf

Greetings from Munich

Stefan

[tho_mas]

My take, for what it is worth, is that one reason for embedding the input profile would be to retain all of the colour information that a sensor can capture.

...

The camera input profile might have its own limitations or foibles, depending on the camera in use and the quality of the icc profile, but as i understand it, it gives you the best shot at retaining all that the sensor has to offer.

not quite right.
C1 works with a certain internal color space (apparently a huge color space). The input profiles ("camera" profiles) are assigned to the files in order to create a certain look. Some camera profiles are quite large, some are quite small (depending on the camera model). The profiles are not referring to the colors the respective camera actually can capture. Actually it would be appropriate to call the input profiles "camera working spaces".
But... those input profiles are assigned anyway at the beginning. Therefore there is no gain in a further conversion to a particular color space (AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB or whatever). For instance: when the input profile is much smaller than ProPhotoRGB but you set your output to ProPhotoRGB... then you are only transferring the very same colors in a larger container (which might be useful with regard to workflow reasons... but not with regard to preserving/discarding colors).
I do embed the "camera" profiles and also leave the files in their "camera" profiles when adjusting the files in Photoshop and only convert the final file into a certain output profile (printer profiles or sRGB for web).

As to the issue: yes, the Color Editor alters the actual input profile. When you add a Color Editor layer there is no way to merge the two profiles (the original input profile on the bottom layer and the altered profile on the upper layer) into one new profile. Therefore C1 chooses the smallest nominator as output profile (which is sRGB).
When you work with Color Editor layers you simply should set a reasonable output profile of your choice (AdobeRGB, ProPhotoRGB, ECI-RGB... whatever).