Color Edits as ICC profiles.
January 19, 2012 8 Comments
A unique feature for Capture One Pro 6 is the ability to create custom camera ICC profiles.
In Capture One Pro 6, you can make advanced color corrections on RAW or JPEG images. As with any tool in Capture One, you can save your corrections from the Color Editor tool as a Preset for easy reuse the next time you have a similar image in need of color corrections. But any color correction done in the Color Editor can also be saved as a camera ICC profile.
This is very convenient as the created ICC profiles can be selected directly in the Base Characteristics tool or in the Capture tool tab in the Next Capture Adjustments tool when you shoot tethered.
If you, for instance, are photographing food, you often want the food to look nice and more colorful than it really does. Use the Color Editor to tweak the colors and save the result as an ICC profile. The next time you shoot food tethered, just select the desired food ICC profile to correct the colors as you shoot.
The left image shows the colors from the default ICC profile for the camera. The soft cool light doesn’t give the apple a very appealing color. The right image was shot using the special ICC profile made for this particular lighting condition.
How to create a custom ICC profile for your camera
I open the Color Editor and start in the Basic tab to add some global saturation. The saturation slider in the Basic tab is safer to use as it is specifically designed to prevent oversaturation of the colors. Then I move on to the Advanced tab where I use the color correction picker to select the color of the green apple and push the saturation, hue and lightness until I get a fresh looking green color. When satisfied I save my corrections as a Color Editor Preset. This step is not essential, but it is easier if I need to iterate my color edits.
To create an ICC profile I simply click on the Action menu for the Color Editor tool and chose “Save as ICC profile” as shown below.
ICC profile naming
When creating a new ICC profile it is important to use the right naming convention to ensure that the profile will show up in the drop down menu for the used camera.
By default Capture One suggest a name consisting of
1) Unique camera model name
2) “-“
3) “color corrected” (This is the only part which can be changed)
The application uses the unique camera model name and the “-“ to match the ICC profile with the right camera model.
The last part of the name should be changed to a meaningful description of the profile.
In the example above, I save my Color Edits made on an image from a Canon EOS 5D camera changing the name to a meaningful one:
Next time I shoot tethered I can select this ICC profile directly in the Capture Tool tab in the Next Capture Adjustments tool. By doing this, I ensure that every new shot will show the colors exactly as I want them.
