Scaling in Capture 1 or Photoshop ?

[shayaweiss]

Hi,

When you size up or down a file, is there a difference whether you do it with Capture One or with PhotoShop ? Do you resample with C1 or PS? As you might have guessed, I am after maximum quality.


In advance, thank you very much for your insights.

[fredjeang]

Hi,

I never scale up with Photoshop, only down.

The problems starts when you... UP-scale.
I have a Genuine Fractal in a Unit but to be honest I hardly use it.

In my approach, I choose on purpose size-resolution directly from the Raw original, regardless of the camera resolution.
So yes, it can be done in C1 from the very beginning.

If you do not do that from the beginning, the results when you apply filters, styles, sharpening etc...may be disappointed.

My personal rule is: Sized up from the beginning in C1 then work on the image / Sized down at the end in Photoshop.

But that is of course very personal.

Cheers.

edit: Oh yes, I forgot: I shoot only raw if what I want is boosting the reso.(and I want it often)

[shayaweiss]

Please let me give you some details:

My Workflow and Setup:
I shoot tethered Raws directly into C1 Pro 5.1.1. I than send processed Tiffs (16bit, ProPhoto RGB) @360ppi for an Epson large format printer, to PS4 for soft proof, output sharpening and print.

My Question:
In order to fit the 4:3/645 ratio images on paper, I need to change their output size. As I fixed the ppi# at the optimum 360 for Epson, I do use the SCALE function in the C1 process tab. Maybe it is better to do that in PS4?

Thanks in advance you for your insights and thank you FredJeanG for promptly sharing your practices.
 

[Steve Hendrix]

Please let me give you some details:

My Workflow and Setup:
I shoot tethered Raws directly into C1 Pro 5.1.1. I than send processed Tiffs (16bit, ProPhoto RGB) @360ppi for an Epson large format printer, to PS4 for soft proof, output sharpening and print.

My Question:
In order to fit the 4:3/645 ratio images on paper, I need to change their output size. As I fixed the ppi# at the optimum 360 for Epson, I do use the SCALE function in the C1 process tab. Maybe it is better to do that in PS4?

Thanks in advance you for your insights and thank you FredJeanG for promptly sharing your practices.

My perspective has always been to test and experiment - easy enough to do. Try scaling in C1, then try in Photoshop, then print and compare. C1 scaling is pretty straight forward, while scaling in Photoshop (and of course other programs) may have particular techniques that enhance or detract. My view is that as Photoshop goes from version to version, effective scaling algorithms may change, procedure for effective scaling may change (for instance scaling in thirds or tenths). And the same could be said for Capture One from version to version - it may not necessarily be documented.

My thought at one time was that scaling in raw would always yield a better result than scaling a processed tiff. But one day a test of that (in an unnamed digital back raw program) revealed that the scaling algorithm in the raw software was quite poor and Photoshop did a much better job.

Print and compare - best method, IMO.

There are others who truly specialize in scaling that I'm sure can offer more insight.


Steve Hendrix

[annamaerz]

There are others who truly specialize in scaling that I'm sure can offer more insight.

That would be nice!

[tho_mas]

The C1 scaling is mostly somewhere between Photoshop's "bicubic" and "bicubic smoother".
Actually more like "bicubic".
It's mostly fine for 200% but not necessarily for arbitrary scaling sizes.
It depends on the motif. Actually it depends very much on the motif.

Upsizing is a workflow for its own, IMO. There is a lot to consider...
All in all I prefer the new Alien Skin "Blow Up 2" plugin for Photoshop for the most purposes based on an image without sharpening prior to upsizing (i.e. all sharpening will be applied on the final image... which is time consuming if you work on layers...).
Second choice is "bicubic smoother"... depending on the motif with soft sharpening (rarely) or without sharpening (mostly) prior to upscaling.
Sometimes even "stair interpolation" (Fred Miranda) does a nice job. It is based on "bicubic" but works in multiple steps. Works fine if a somehow "rough" look is desired.

As Steve said... try and compare.

... IMO

[annamaerz]

Upsizing is a workflow for its own, IMO. There is a lot to consider...

That's why it's nice when you can hear the advice of the experienced specialists. Just trying, which I evidently do, will not get me that far, unless I want to quit my job in order to reinvent the wheel.

Thank you tho_mas.

Is there anyone else willing to share his expertise about Scaling in PS vs C1?

[BartvanderWolf]

Is there anyone else willing to share his expertise about Scaling in PS vs C1?

The question is, why do you want to scale your image dimensions? For down-sampling you need a different approach compared to interpolation / up-sampling, so one needs to know what the goal is that needs to be achieved.

When the goal is to prepare for large format print, then Photoshop's bicubic smoother and Capture One's scaling deliver similar straight forward results. When one uses a dedicated up-sampling method, then better results can be achieved. IMHO, the Genuine Fractals approach creates posterized results that can better be looked at from a great distance only. 'Blow-up' tends to exaggerate the edge contrast too much (and rounds-off sharp corners) unless applied with a lot of constraint. Benvista's 'Photozoom Pro' can produce very natural looking enlargements. However, I like Qimage SE the best because it offers a lot of workflow benefits (e.g. no need to resample your original because it's done on-the-fly, and offers automatic sharpening after resampling, even for different sizes in the same run while nesting on larger paper stock) and its Hybrid SE resampling method is both fast and delivers excellent quality (enhancing edges but without exaggeration).

Cheers,
Bart

[shayaweiss]

Thank you Bart for sharing!

The question is, why do you want to scale your image dimensions? For down-sampling you need a different approach compared to interpolation / up-sampling, so one needs to know what the goal is that needs to be achieved.

In fact it would be interesting to know more about both ways, up and down scaling. C1Pro 5.1.2 offers such a handy way of directly setting ppi and the out size scaling, that it would be nice to get to more about the technical aspects involved in comparison to PS.

[!--quoteo(post=0:date=:name=annamaerz)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE (annamaerz)[div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]Just trying, which I evidently do, will not get me that far, unless I want to quit my job in order to reinvent the wheel.[/quote]

also it would cost money, involve a work-flow adaptation every time you think you got it, ...