Leaf Look for IQ1 100mp + IQ3 100mp

Photo by our own Michelle Matthews. IQ3 100mp raw processed in Capture One 9.3 using the Leaf Portrait profile

Capture One 9.3 provides the Leaf Look to the 100mp Phase One digital backs, a first for Phase One. To use this new look select a 100mp raw file and under “Base Characteristics” select your preferred option in [ICC Profile > Leaf > Leaf Color IQ 100mp].

The Leaf Look comes to Phase One

Starting even with their first digital camera in 1992, the color specialists in Leaf’s R+D team honed and maintained a unique set of color profiles. Adopted by many photographers in the fashion and portrait world, this look began to be referred to colloquially as the “Leaf Look”.

Accurate vs Pleasing

There are two basic intentions a color profile can have:

Accurate: seeking to reproduce, as exactly as possible, the color of the scene.
Pleasing: seeking to make the scene pleasing, usually with a type of scene in mind (e.g. portraits)

If you ask them, most portrait/fashion photographers will tell you they want accurate color. In reality, they almost surely do not. Accurate profiles are great for perfectly reproducing an expensive painting, but they make for a terrible portrait toolkit. They harshly reveal every variation and imperfection of skintone, and render zombie-like results in shadows.

Unfortunately most tools on the market are designed to create accurate color. You take a picture of a color target like the Color Checker SG, feed that picture through the software and out pops a profile that tries to nudge patches of the target toward their known values. When you’ve dealt with profiles hand-crafted by PHDs with decades of experience in color science, the profiles created by these prosumer software tools are thoroughly unimpressive.

Pleasing profiles must be crafted, shaped by human eye, and tested in a huge variety of real world situations. It is a time consuming and tedious task that requires experience, skill, and an astounding knowledge of color science and familiarity with the camera being profiled.

Lovers of the Leaf Look have been limited to picking from the Leaf Credo series, which lacks many Phase One IQ features (5-year warranty, wireless control/editing, focus mask, etc). The inclusion of the Leaf Look for the Phase One IQ3 100mp and Phase One IQ1 100mp provides them a clear path forward.

Enough Talk… Show Me

The images below were mostly drawn from our publicly available Phase One IQ3 100mp raw inventory. To do your own testing (e.g. to compare color after normalizing the difference in contrast) download Capture One 9.3 (free for use with Team Phase One cameras) and some raws.