Phase One Capture One Pro: Custom Palette Setup Rocks
This video is worth watching for understanding what follows:
Capture One Pro 10 Webinar | Three Stage Sharpening with Proof View.
The palette configurability in Phase One Capture One Pro is outstanding. This kind of capability is a feature I’ve asked Adobe for in the Adobe Camera Raw dialog in Photoshop, but with no progress so far.
Configuring it this way lets me get at the controls I need for raw conversion in the order I typically use them—perfect.
Even better, each palette can be collapsed, so that if I am working on images where I have already dealt with overall stuff, I can hide most of them and just tweak things like minor exposure adjustments, sharpening by aperture*, etc.
Update: I am unhappy about two behaviors on a dual-display setup in which the main display shows the image and the 2nd display shows thumbnails: (1) moving left to the 2nd display, unwanted palettes pop up on the main display, which is really obnoxious, and (2) there seems to be no way to eliminate the area reserved for palettes on the 2nd display, so much of the window is wasted (I am using floating palettes).
* That latter point is a feature no raw converter has AFAIK, that is, setting a a default sharpening setting for each aperture on each camera. And yet I always need that feature for an aperture series.