Capture One Editor TIF Format Bug Caution

I came across a very irritating bug when I was editing some shots that were saved in the 16-bit TIF format. For photos that had saturated, shiny surfaces in them, the Capture One editor (I tried both the 22 and 23 versions) ruined them.

I'm actually a big fan of Capture One, but here's a case where it does an absolutely terrible job. I generally avoid using the TIF format, mostly because of its large file size. Using LZW compression certainly helps, but the files still tend to be big. In some cases, editors force you to make files with this format to retain the best image quality that they can export.

Black edges that aren’t really there on the red flowers

More black edges that aren’t really there

Look at the obvious black edges on the bright, shiny plastic flower above. This looks like something a really cheap digital camera from the 90s might do. This is a crop from a Capture One23 editor. The photo was loaded from a 16-bit TIF file that was using LZW compression.

I tried various editor adjustments to get rid of the false black borders between shades of red-orange, but nothing really worked to eliminate it besides resorting to using the ‘healing brush’.

Lightroom: no ugly black black edges on TIF

ON1 editor: no ugly black edges on TIF

Zoner Photo Studio editor: no ugly black edges

NXStudio editor: no ugly black edges

I don’t normally edit TIF images, since I deal in raw-format whenever possible. I was using some shots that were exported from my DaVinci Resolve video editor, which can’t save frames in a raw format. I saved the frames in 16-bit TIF format with LZW compression, which should still yield great quality.

My Capture One editor consistently makes the shots look awful when there were are bright, saturated, shiny surfaces in them. At first, I was blaming the DaVinci Resolve program for exporting garbage. I just couldn’t find what I was doing wrong in DaVinci.

Out of desperation, I tried editing the exported TIF shots in Lightroom. No problems found. I then tried various other photo editors, which all succeeded without any issues at all. Only Capture One fails. I actually have 3 versions of Capture One, and every version failed.

After doing some internet searches, I found out that other photographers have noted this same problem with the Capture One editor. This is just another excellent reason to try using raw-format files whenever possible. It’s always good to have a backup editor available, too.