Fstoppers Reviews Capture One Styles: Spectrum

As previously reported on Fstoppers, Capture One's new "Spectrum" Styles Pack is designed as a finishing tool for cinematic color grading applied to your photographs, providing a wide range of toning options for stunning yet subtle results that make no impact on exposure or contrast to keep the dynamic range in tact. Phase One offers a number of Styles as workflow-enhancing enhancements and time savers; Spectrum is the latest and at $49, the least expensive in their lineup. Here's what I found after putting the new style to the test.

Capture One's Spectrum Overview

If you've never used Styles with Capture One, they're simple to work with and install, and can be great timesavers added to your workflow. They can be batch applied and are available in a variety of aesthetics. Spectrum is the first full Styles pack I've used with Capture One, but have a few others from samples, as well as some custom styles I've created essentially as presets. After downloading the styles from Phase One's store, in the menu bar navigate to Adjustments > Styles > Import... and the software will place the Styles pack for you.

The Spectrum Styles features include:

• A selection of 15 color grading styles available in 2 strengths each for a total of 30 different styles. 
• Optimal Capture One Styles Pack for for cinematic color grading while maintaining "key capture parameters such as exposure, white balance, or levels."
• Can be individually or batch applied to a raw, JPEG, TIFF, or PSD file starting with Capture One Pro 10.1.

What I Liked

• Spectrum adds gorgeous color grading enhancements to my photographs.
• It's wonderfully understated. Filters can quickly become overpowering and, in my view, are then anything but timeless. Spectrum is designed not to affect contrast or exposure, and some might argue the filter as not being overpowering enough, I see it as being perfect.
• While the adjustments are subtle, the intensity can be varied and there are many options to choose from.
• As a finishing tool, this is a great creative component to add to my workflow.
• All Styles have a live preview to quickly view the effects for the active image simply by hovering over the style in the Styles menu. You can batch preview a selection of images to see how the style will apply, as well.
• With each new Styles Pack added to to my collection in Capture One, the application becomes more powerful and independent of other production software.

The following photographs showcase the original image compared to the applied Spectrum Styles SP-1+, SP-4+, and SP-13+.

What Could Be Improved

• This is more of a Capture One item relevant to styles, but upgrade Styles to having its own Tool Tab for faster access to Spectrum and other great Style Packs. Rather than navigating through four layers of menu items, you can easily access the tool "Styles and Presets" in the Tools viewer as an expandable list. That's much faster, but would be great to see it available by default as its own tab. I currently have it enabled under the Tools Tab "Quick."
• The ability to create a shortcut leading to your favorite styles or drag-and-drop to re-sort would be another huge plus.
• Stackable styles. This could get complicated, here's a quick example: I have a number of styles including some I’ve created specifically to counter lens distortion and vignetting on my DJI Phantom 4 Pro, which revert to default after applying another style. I will probably have to create an LCC profile for the Phantom's optics since DJI hasn't provided one to Phase One *coughs* get with it DJI *coughs*.

Spectrum is my first full Styles set from Phase One and I can easily see myself readily using more of them. Having the full range of adjustments to choose from within the spectrum gives a much more complete picture of what it can do, but if you want to try a test drive, you can check out free Styles samples, as well as a sampling of their other collections on the Phase One website.