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Capture One vs Lightroom: Pros & Cons | Design Shack.Capture One photo editing software
Capture One vs Lightroom – which is the best photo editing software for you? If you’re still not sure, you can download a free trial for both programs. There are many great reasons to make the switch from Lightroom to Capture One. In this fast-track guide you’ll learn about the most important differences. Capture One Pro is the must-have image editor for professional photography. Learn 10 reasons why pros prefer using Capture One’s photo editing software.
Capture one pro 12 vs lightroom free download
Capture One Pro’s photo editing software provides fast and easy tethering with a lot of options. Migrating from Lightroom to Capture One: Practice practice practice! Export a high res file from Lightroom into your desired Capture One Pro Session and try to recreate the ted Reading Time: 8 mins. May 13, · Capture One has more editing tools than Lightroom. But it’s not better than Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is much more advanced than both Capture One and Lightroom. Is There a Free Version of Capture One? Capture One is not free to use. But it offers a day free trial. You can use it to test the : Roshan Perera. Feb 08, · Capture One Layers vs. Adjustment Tool Brush in Lightroom. With the release of Capture One Pro 12, Phase One introduced layers that pretty much work as you’d expect – opacity slider, rename option, copying masks between layers, inverting masks, and all that. Everything you do is completely s: 1.
Free photo editing software from Capture One
Food photographer and stylist Michaela Hartwig uses Capture One Pro to create sumptuous and mouth-watering photos. When I first started working with Capture One Pro , I quickly realized that it offers me the incredible lucidity in the library as I know it from Lightroom , combined with the power of Photoshop when it comes to layers.
You might be wondering — why are layers important? But have you ever created several adjustments in Lightroom and then had difficulties finding the right one when you wanted to change it? This has never been easier than when applying those adjustments in Capture One Pro across separate layers. Just to name a few advantages: You have a very clear overview over all the adjustments applied on the image.
You can create radial masks and linear masks. You can fill masks over the whole layer but you can also erase parts of the mask. And to me the most important advantage: You can change the opacity of masks. Imagine this: You created a tone curve with a matte film effect and some blues and greens in the shadows, it took you quite a long time to find the right balance of colors.
Instead of now destroying your fine-tuned color tone curve, just turn town the opacity. This way you can still keep the desired color effect of the tone curve but with less of an effect. The color tools in Capture One Pro are incredibly versatile, powerful and there are many different ways to achieve your color goals. This was intimidating for me the first time I worked with Capture One Pro. But once you understand both the single tools and how they work together, you will love color grading with Capture One.
You can use the levels tool or the tone curve, the color editor, the advanced color editor, the skin tone tool, the color balance. There are no rules and no borders. I particularly enjoy using the tone curve and the color balance tool to give my shadows, my mid tones and my highlights the specific color grading which my pictures are known for.
The color balance tool in particular can have a huge effect on contrasts and colors in a very comprehensive way. It allows for modifications which would otherwise require tons of layers and a lot of effort in Photoshop: the Skin Tone Tool. I am not a beauty photographer or retoucher, but this tool is still incredibly helpful for food photography as well. I want to show you how critical it is via the below picture.
In this picture, I have several different tones of green. Some parts have a saturated, rich green and other parts have some yellow tones. I pick the color of my choice and by using the sliders in the red square I can adjust all colors in the marked color wheel to my desired color point in terms of hue, saturation and brightness.
When I have several colors in my shadows, this can also have an uncomfortable effect on an image, so I use the skin tool for correcting. Greens before. Greens after. Catalog-based workflows — equivalent to catalogs in Lightroom, is possible in Capture One Pro. But when working on current projects, I always prepare my work with Sessions. Here are the top 3 benefits from working with Sessions:. However, this is what I would recommend: Apply your styles as new layers if you want to combine with another layer.
For example, you can apply a Style as a layer with one specific adjustment, i. As mentioned before, you can adjust the opacity of those layers so that you can make the Style match to your image without changing the Style itself. It was so incredibly slow, so I preferred to use live view on my phone. However, identifying mistakes on such a small screen and getting the sharpness right was difficult, or even impossible, to achieve.
This was the first feature from Capture One Pro to become critical to my workflow: Tethering. But I use it every time I do a product or recipe shot for a client to make sure I get sharpness and composition on point. Export a high res file from Lightroom into your desired Capture One Pro Session and try to recreate the look. The sliders in Capture One Pro work differently from the ones in Lightroom — you have to get used to them. For example, when using the HSL tool in Lightroom, you will need to use the color editor in Capture One Pro to achieve similar results.
When it comes to the clarity, you will find the biggest difference to Lightroom. Capture One Pro offers you 4 varieties of clarity. It gives you a subtle contrast of the mid tones, in combination with structure you get a crisp and sharpened result without the artificial look of the clarity tool in Lightroom. Almost every food photographer relies on the clarity slider in Lightroom, resulting in a very specific look.
Give it a go and edit some of your favorite images in Capture One Pro. You will need to go through a few images until you like the result of the edit.
The Capture One Blog and webinars found on Youtube are really helpful when starting out. In particular, the resources which focus on color grading tools like the Advanced Color Editor, the Skin Tone Tool and the Color Balance are highly valuable.
You will be surprised by the possibilities! Michaela Hartwig trained as a fashion designer and worked as an accessory designer for a few years, but always had a passion for baking and decorating deserts. Encouraged by friends to create a cookbook, Michaela started a food blog in and dove into the field of photography as a result. Since then, she has practiced every minute to become a better stylist and photographer.
In , she quit her day job as a designer and began working as a full-time food photographer, stylist and blogger. Rather than following conventional food photography approaches featuring perfectly-styled plates, Michaela says her images always contain some kind of imperfection — desired or not.
Michaela is currently based in her hometown in the countryside close to Munich, where she has a small studio with a kitchen and a huge shelf for one of her most expensive passions: beautiful ceramics.
Maximum control over color grading The color tools in Capture One Pro are incredibly versatile, powerful and there are many different ways to achieve your color goals.
Greens before Greens after Sessions over catalog-based workflows Catalog-based workflows — equivalent to catalogs in Lightroom, is possible in Capture One Pro. Just go into your PC structure folder, double click on the desired session and Capture One will open your files within that session automatically.
Capture One Pro creates an automatic folder structure within the session. It creates four default folders once you start a new session: Capture, Selects, Output, Trash. The Capture Folder contains all the images that were shot tethered or imported from your SD card. Once you make a selection of your favorite images in Capture One Pro, they will automatically be moved to the Selects Folder.
If you want to delete specific images, these will be moved to the Trash folder by default, but they are not gone. You can easily move them back. And the Output Folder is the folder where your exported variants will be sent unless you choose a different folder.
This is especially helpful when you want to build up your portfolio. Migrating from Lightroom to Capture One: Practice practice practice! Share this:. Michaela Hartwig Michaela Hartwig trained as a fashion designer and worked as an accessory designer for a few years, but always had a passion for baking and decorating deserts.
Free photo editing software from Capture One
As with our Final Cut Pro vs Premiere Pro comparison , we did our best to put these two programs on an even footing and test them on a wide variety of different computers with different specs. We don’t just want to find out if Capture One is faster than Adobe Lightroom for one specific camera’s Raw file or on one particular operating system. The broader our testing, the more we can learn about when, how, and why one program out-performs the others.
To keep the results as comparable as possible across cameras, we used the Raw studio scene comparison image from each of our four cameras and duplicated it times, leaving us with raw files in all. Each test was repeated a minimum of three times in a row to ensure consistency and eliminate outliers. Finally, since both programs are updated quite frequently with further performance and feature improvements, it’s important to note that we used the latest versions of both Capture One 21 You can see the full spec breakdown below:.
Admittedly, the PCs we tested are quite a bit more powerful than either of the Macs, but this isn’t about comparing operating systems. Using these four machines allowed us to see what sort of impact a discrete GPU has on performance, compare M1 against Intel, compare AMD vs Intel, and compare at four distinct price points. In terms of navigation, copying edits or presets across hundreds of files, and the smoothness with which an image preview renders as you move a slider back and forth, there was no noticeable difference between the two programs running on the same computer.
This is because both Capture One and Lightroom Classic use GPU acceleration to help with high resolution displays and most basic photo editing tasks, putting them on an even footing. And in terms of browsing images in your catalog, a recent update has pushed Lightroom ahead somewhat, making it possible to speedily inspect even 61MP Raw files at a pace that most users would expect to find in Photo Mechanic.
But back to our measurements. When it comes to import and preview-generation, it might surprise you to learn that Lightroom Classic was faster across the board. This was on our slowest test machine with the largest files. As file sizes get smaller and hardware gets better, the gap in performance decreases. Still, in our testing, Lightroom Classic continued to outperform Capture One each and every time.
You can see all of the data in the tables and graphs below. Unfortunately for Adobe fans, that’s pretty much the end of the good news. The results of our export test show that the more powerful the machine, the wider the performance gap between Capture One and Lightroom. For our slowest laptop, the Intel MacBook Pro with integrated graphics, the gap was quite small.
Capture One was between 15 seconds and 1 minute and 48 seconds faster depending on the file type. But once you throw in a discrete GPU or Apple Silicon, plus hardware acceleration, the difference is staggering. This same export, with the same edits, took more than 24 minutes in Lightroom Classic. Even the M1 Mac mini, which doesn’t have a discrete GPU to pick up the slack, saw export times drop by up to 27 minutes when switching from Lightroom to Capture One.
You can browse the raw data for yourself below. When you add up the total time spent importing and exporting images, Capture One 21 is definitely faster than Lightroom Classic CC. Much faster. But the size of that gap in performance depends on a few factors. We said it in our head-to-head comparison of Final Cut and Premier Pro , and we’ll say it again here: nothing beats a well-optimized app. When it comes time to export a few hundred fully edited JPEGs from your most recent shoot, this lack of GPU acceleration leaves a lot of performance on the table.
For users of Intel-based machines with no GPU it’s basically a wash between both programs when it comes to import and export. Even in a small-scale test, where we’re only exporting Raw files at a time, that translates into 13 to 27 minutes saved per export if you’re working with a camera like the Fujifilm GFX Extrapolate that up to hundreds of images exported week-in and week-out as part of a professional workflow, and we’re talking about saving several hours of export time per month, while giving up only a few minutes during import, compared to Lightroom.
Whether you’re a die-hard Capture One fan or you’re determined to keep using Adobe products, keep these results in mind when making your next computer purchase: to get the most out of your software of choice, you should prioritize the right hardware and vice versa. These are the only bits of hardware that Lightroom actually uses during import, preview generation, and export, so unless you also regularly use GPU-accelerated apps like Adobe Premiere Pro, you’re better off skimping on your graphics card and putting your money elsewhere.
For Capture One users, your best bet will be to purchase a well-balanced system, or go with an M1 Mac. You can, of course, also build your own PC, mixing and matching parts as you see fit. For many — possibly most — photographers, the decision to switch to Capture One Pro from Lightroom Classic will be driven by the desire to escape Adobe’s subscription model.
The ability to pay once and buy yourself a perpetual license is a massive draw. Better yet, Capture One offers Nikon, Sony, and Fuji users an even cheaper version that only supports their camera brand. Though they do also offer a subscription option, so who knows what the future will bring. As we showed above, Capture One users aren’t lying when they say that C1 is faster than Lightroom Classic.
If you’re rocking a new M1 Mac or a PC with a discrete GPU, Capture One is much better optimized to take advantage of the graphics capability lying dormant on your motherboard when you’re exporting batches of heavily edited files. For the enthusiast users who edit and export a few photos at a time, a couple of times per week, Lightroom is still probably best.
Cloud integration, mobile support, and the ability to transition seamlessly between Creative Cloud apps is great. Even if you hate Lightroom and the subscription model, you may want to look for another alternative with a more user-friendly design and less focus on “pro” workflows. But for professional users who are working with thousands of images week-in and week-out, Lightroom Classic will cost you twice: once when you pay that subscription fee, and again when you count up the hours lost waiting for your exports to finish.
Update : Adobe reached out to clarify that the company has no plans to discontinue Lightroom Classic CC, and will continue developing it alongside the cloud-based Lightroom CC.
I have both programs. I have owned each since the early ‘s. The problem with C1 is I dislike the color and the custom camera profiles I make using the same Color Passport software are horrible. Add to that the kludgy interface and clumsy tool pallets and that equals slower workflow. Every job, I start out trying to use C1 and end up back in LR. There are many things like sharpening in which C1 is superior, but the color issue for me is a biggie. I use it for tethering, when I tether, because LR is horrible tethering and Smart Shooter is better than both because it doesn’t pre-apply any settings which slow the computer down.
Tested LRc and there is no lag at all…during adjustments…. Capture One Well, it’s at least taken a very noticeable step backwards. Sliders are now laggy whereas they had been instantaneous.
Back for Lightroom for the time being I go. My R6 is not supported with camera color on adobe softwares and I’d like to know how’s the situation on Capture one, I might give up on Lightroom since whatever I do starting from adobe colors is never going to match canon, for my needs at least.
Adobe color is ok, but it steals a lot of time from my workflow, and it annoys me a lot. It’s particularly bad with Canon cameras, it performs a bit better on my Pana cameras but it always retains some kind of “color haze” that is difficult to remove.
You almost never export everything you import. So practically speaking for me CO would confer very little advantage. But also – you are ignoring the elephant in the China shop – Adobe Bridge – which is a speed demon.
Next – select all those now preset files and open them in Camera Raw I have used Capture One for years and won’t give LR a chance. Man I might switch to Capture One, does it creates a little file for each picture instead of having catalogs?
You can’t just decide to edit a handful of images. For LR, I create a separate catalog for each job and only import a fraction of what I shot client selects0. Thats called a Session. In the end I used LR for Weddings, Family Portraits and C1 I kept for my personal work – portraits, abstract etc as the image was so much better AND the cataloging process was far more intuitive for me anyway.
Lightroom doesn’t seem to like working with networked drives – unless I’m missing something probably. The above article mentions the subscription model for Lightroom – Capture One has a subscription model too! This has become an interesting comparison. I’m tired of LR, especially because it forces me to start from adobe colors with my R6, and I detest adobe colors.
They still didn’t find a way to import canon color profiles into LR for new canon cameras. Workflow is about a lot more than import and export speed.
How about image quality, user interface, ease-of-use, tech support, FTP integration, print modules, add-on hardware automation? Is LRc tether tools that inferior?
These are all factors in selecting software. For a professional photographer, the cost differential is trivial. Perhaps DPR could offer a series of comparisons on various feature sets, such as basic edits, fine-tune color correction, sharpen and noise, local adjustments, export, presets, third-party plugins, file management.
These applications have a rich feature set to compare and keep a review team busy for months. Agree except yes, LR tether is truly awful in comparison. But if you do C1 is the way to go. Reasonable comparisons. Except on import speeds. With a CFExpress card, via Thunderbolt 3, Capture One 21 current version is just as fast, but the difference between the two is so small it does not matter. And not having cloud services, that’s a plus, not a negative. Adobe’s cloud is a joke an s a complete waste of space on my computer.
So I don’t use it. I use Adobe’s cloud service with many shoots, largely to show client images, get feedback and finalize the job. For me, it’s a very useful addition to LR. Let me tell you where the real speed advantage of C1 lies When I shoot tethered in the studio to a Session who’s using Catalogues?
At the end the Export Recipes take care of automated export to Cloud Services, FTP Servers, printers and back-up drives and in whatever format and size you want. Fully automated. That is what saves time I love how poorly optimized and performing i7 and i9s were in the current generation of MacBook Pros. I’m also using both Lightroom and Capture One and still find the integration and capabilities of Lightroom make it my preferred editing software still. The small pieces of time I pick up here and there working in C1 are lost through having to export a file to work with it in Photoshop and then have to come back to C1 if I want to make any further changes later on.
A bit of a flawed summary. I was disappointed that the article didn’t address picture quality. In my opinion, this is much more important than speed. I have been using LR since it was first introduced, but I use C1 now for most of my professional work because it simply does a better job of delivering accurate skin tones. I shoot Sony for my professional work. If ease of use is your main criteria, I do think LR is easier to use.
Its library function is better, and the cross-platform integration is better for now. I use it to create virtual copies of the picture I just edited so I can create 4×6, 5×7 and 8×10 Aspect Ratio crops. I can then export these different AR crops to send to customers so that they can print out different size pictures if they want. NOTE: But if I end up wanting to change something in the picture, it is so easy to make the change, and then create new VC’s and just copy the crop over to the new VC’s.
In C1 they are called “variants”. A Clone Variant copies with the adjustments at the time of its creation. A New Variant starts at scratch. So I checked out the website for pricing. I guess the main reason for me to look for an alternative to LR Classic is to find a non-subscription option. LR Classic does everything I need. And I’ve gotten pretty quick and getting things done in it. They had some kind of discount that included upgrades to both versions 20 and 21 for that price.
Maybe they gave more favorable pricing to older versions? I guess I am also interested in seeing how it does with exporting to another editor, like GIMP, and back and how that works with keeping files organized within C1.
Is there someway to do show the editing speed test? Is C1 better in that regard? If you mean that the preview doesn’t update as you move the slider in real time then that’s a glitch. My modest pc does that. At some point It stopped and I fixed it. I cleared out a cache or something. Google it. Import and export I can press a button and go watch TV or something. Editing speed is what matters to me.
I’m stuck on the last non-subscription LR so I don’t know if this applies to the latest LR Classic, but the wait for the preview to load when I switch from one photo to the next is unbearably slow. If C1 does this faster, I’m immediately sold on it as the rest of the functionality I need seems to be in the spec sheet. I don’t think it is a glith, as I experience the crawl on multiple fast machines. The slow speed in the development module seems to have more to do with file size than anything.
The RAW files I have are generally about MB each, and it takes a couple of seconds to load it up, and sometimes it freezes. C1 was always faster in terms of usage. When I had slower computer I remember that c1 worked smoothly and ui was responsive. Well, i don’t compare export times, these are similar. LR like any adobe product was always heavy and felt sluggish.
C1 went the right way and they did everything to make program transition transparent and I think they put more effort into program than adobe into lr. The only thing I miss from LR is the plugin which finds focus point, so I use nx studio instead if I have any concerns with af. I do NOT think there is a “steep learning curve” for C1. You had to take classes or watch tutorials to get proficient with LR as well and C1 is about as difficult.
In fact I think it is easier because layers make it easier to see and understand what is happening on your photo. Just try and change the Develop tool structure in LR – go ahead, just try. In C1, regardless of version, you can customize the tool structure too meet your desires. Note I did not use the term need? See what I did there?
LR is easier to use if you have never tried anything else. C1 can be customized to meet what you want to do. You do not have to follow the way Adobe says you have to do it. A fundamental issue for me in Lr is that when you open an image you already edited, you cannot even see if it has any local adjustments applied. No indication whatsoever. You do not know that C1 comes with a LR “like” workspace as a default?
As for what you can do with C1 layers? Luminosity masks one click away. Copy adjustments from one layer to another. Grey scale masks. Refine Mask.
I gave up on LR a while back and settled on C1 for conversion and basic processing, with On1 for fancier edits. That was my primary motivation, not speed. Adobe lost me when they reneged on the implicit agreement between them and us that we’d be able to purchase upgrades when and as needed. I do not need or want constant updates. As someone else pointed out, this equates to renting beta software. However, the word ‘perpetual’ apparently doesn’t translate into Danish correctly.
Rather than the English definition ‘of unfailing repetition or lasting duration’, in Danish it apparently means ‘good for one year’. After which, you pay again.
C1 does not manage files. The user defines the file structure, C1 allows the system to manage the images that are imported. C1 does not force a structure for files. No appears to have mentioned that while Lightroom has a proper keystone tool, Capture One’s keystone tool is in a rudimentary state, more or less, and doesn’t always work as it should.
That’s unfortunate. I guess if you do a lot of architecture photography, C1 isn’t an option. Yes exactly. There’s just no better solution for a big real estate shoot than using the ‘auto’ or ‘vertical’ transform function as opposed to manually correcting.
Paying for Capture One once a year is hardly less than paying for the monthly Adobe Photography Plan. The latter comes with MANY other benefits for that price: huge amount of cloud storage and Adobe Portfolio, one of the best online platforms for displaying work.
I had Capture One for the last year or so because I anticipated shooting tethered, and we know it’s excellent for that. I’m not really a tethered shooting guy so it wasn’t of use to me in the end. The program is fairly easy to learn and very fine overall. But it’s just easier for me to stick with LR Classic and not unhappy with it in any way.
It’s a steal when you include Portfolio which is integrated with LR. For a short while last year C1 offered Portfolio for free via SmugMug. After a year you start paying and it’s not even integrated with C1. If you’re like a lot of us and don’t feel the need to update our processing software every year, the perpetual license is the real bargain.
LR is simpler to use but in some ways more polished. I can get near the same results with both but I have more options with C1.
Both are great programs. It depends on your needs. If I was a working pro I’d more than likely use C1. I don’t need all the offerings of C1 has. As a hobby shooter I prefer simple.
I can send files to PS which is more inconvenient. LR does offer Range Masking which reduces the need for layers. I know that C1 introduced layers a few years ago which many like but read is not true layers like PS.
Not sure fi that makes any difference and admit I don’t know enough about it. What I can say is that you do not understand. Sad really if you need someone to tell you the difference you are a novice. Phillip Forsten, have you ever used C1? With C1 Layers you almost have access to the full toolset on each layer. So for example you can have multiple curves. Or levels a tool Lr does not have…. Or color corrections etc. It is far more flexible than Lr. You can toggle local adjustments in Lr, but that toggles ALL of them.
Of course pretty much all that C1 has which Lr does not have is in Ps. Personally I settled on C1 because of its much more extensive luminosity tools. The review, while decent in what it did, is very incomplete from my perspective.
I have been a user of both C1 and LR. I am not a professional, though will have high volume at times. I now do most of my current work in LRC. LR wins big here. In processing, C1 layers wins, tough the proper use of PS changes that.
Ability to deal with skin tones and colour – C1. Ability to use plug-ins, LR. Interface with Photoshop, LR. Other features, like map, books , slideshow, and personal website though not used by most pros , LR by a mile. Ability to customize your workspace – C1. Thus a final choice of packages is not so easy and becomes very personal. C1 is probably better but LrC now allows to customize which panels you see and in what order you like. Presets can also be managed.
For this Thanks to Adobe! No serious amateur or professional wants to go years without upgrading. That’s thinking. I was in print media for about 30 years and now retired for over Many years ago the 4 colour strippers said they would never be replaced.
Then PS came along and I believe it was somewhere between 70 and 80 thousand dollars to get a license. It would take 5 years of waiting for the old way to be cheaper. No thanks. I prefer regular updates and I can quit halfway into that timeframe if I find something better.
No big sunk cost. Phillip Forsten I can see how that might be an issue for some, but the ability to have regular updates for new cameras and a much more affordable price for that vastly outweighs that concern for me.
Further, there is no “cheap legitimate” version of Photoshop CS6. I switched from LR to C1 three years ago and one of the biggest pros is that you can create sessions and not just catalogues. This is huge when you just want one editing folder for one specific photo event rather than an entire catalogue. Sessions is an alternative workflow to Catalogs – so offers the freedom from ingesting images that many Lr critics harp on about.
They have nothing to do with the excellent function of the History panel. It may offer nothing for you, or it may be a revelation. The latest version of Capture One is so swift at exporting images full quality jpegs of Fujifilm X files at around 20mb each that I tend to sit at the computer and wait several seconds for a progress bar to pop up before realizing that the task is already done.
Importing files is still relatively slow, but that’s when I get up to grab a coffee. Cap1 is faster, especially when it comes to customer service. Also, when you buy C1, it’s yours forever and if you’re not constantly updating cameras, you don’t have to pay dues to Big Tech.
You really can’t believe anything Adobe tells you now, as their revenue stream has priority on their creative stream. While Adobe may be making more money have you seen what LrC Too much to list but you can look it up. As far not being creative I can’t really agree. I have been a LR user since it was introduced. I have never tried Capture One. Why the emphasis on speed? I am more concerned with what I can do with the software.
Working in layers is good but I don’t do it on most images and my subscription includes PS so I can when I want to and my software is always up to date. It’s fun to watch all of the Adobe dinosaurs find ways to justify staying with that software.
I’m not sure who is processing pro photos on their phones, but sure People who need all the crap in Photoshop might try to take better photographs in the first place. And this is the problem with a lot of the DPR users What are you, 15? I’m not interested in speed, I would like to see a comparissment about IQ. I someone really interested if it takes 23 or 30sec to do whatever? Really, your comparing processing speed across chip architectures and acting like a computer magazine?
This review is simply preposterous. Way to go selling a new product version and scrambling the hardware comparison. Sorry to see you drink the kool-Aide. The one and only feature I came here looking for is file handling, and the generation of extraneous files xmp? Skimmed over the article and didn’t see anything.
It’s hard to imagine that these minute differences in speed really make a difference to anyone. I’d have to disagree with the hardware recommendations for Capture One – it benefits greatly when paired with an RTX GPU, and gets faster as you move up between models. With the same CPU and a , it became 1 minute 30 seconds. Not sure about others, but for every photos that I import, I keep about 20 and export 5. Maybe I am spectacularly incompetent, but for me the import difference is a factor of 10 in favor of LrC and the export difference decreases the C1 advantage by a factor of So for the 20 MP camera, 20 sec on import becomes 3 minutes and 2 minutes on export become 6 seconds.
What always amazes me is how many so called reviewers place so much emphasis on export time and not importing. It’s perfect for viewing and culling shoots with thousands of images. You can cull first before doing the LrC import, saving that time where LrC is much slower than Photo Mechanic for scrolling through the images of a big shoot. I love what C1 does for my images. LR and I were never on the same page.
I could get what I wanted, but it was painful and time consuming. What’s not so amazing is the Catalog system in C1, particularly the Windows version. It’s broken. It works ok until your image inventory started to climb. Under 50, images is fine, over that and you will start having issues.
I’ve got numerous support requests to no avail. Either C1 won’t, or can’t fix it. So I’m stuck with a usage somewhere between sessions and catalog, but it’s stable and works. I don’t know how well Capture One is faring these days, but the update to the latest versions of Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop have been near career-ending for me. I can only wish that Capture One would be the ‘savior’ solution, but even then I still need Photoshop With Adobe, I’m ostensibly renting malware.
So, yeah, I’ve considered everything, and tried every reasonable thing I could, and spent hours on the phone with tEk tHuHpPeRt, and this is where I am now. You get 7 apps and tools in total with several more to try. Plus some cloud space. Plus you are covered on mobile versions too. Buying a license is around euros. You are comparing apples and oranges here. The value you get with Adobe is night and day, not to mention seamless integration with one another.
Just PS and LR alone would justify the subs price Bridge and other goodies and integrations are sugar on top. This reminds me of those shystery signs painted on the windshields of used cars at dealerships. Except the current versions are littered with all kinds of bugs that make it nearly unusable as a professional.
Adobe’s software is rented betaware, at best. Speed is rather easy to test and measure. I did not buy Capture One because it looks like faster software. Usability and results final IQ have also some serious importance.
Difficult to test in a valid way. Finding new software after Aperture started to disappear was not easy for me – i tried to read and compare So – this test did not offer many reasons to choose LR or C1. Perhaps it helped to choose a new faster Mac or PC. You can put up as many of these comparisons as you like, but you’d still have to pay me to use Capture One.
Or DXO for that matter. I still use C1 for some projects because it has more advanced coloring and tethering options. Especially with CoPilot. But, the main reason for me to still use LR is a mobile workflow with the iPad and the fact that lens profiles are seriously lacking in C1.
For example, the Sigma 85mm DG DN for sony is not supported and that lens has a lot of distortion natively. LR fixes that in a second. Not only profiles are better, the raw conversion is better.
I think I should just drop LR subscription and use the old perpetual version of LR, because other than supporting new cameras and lenses it adds nothing of substance, and DXO does that better anyway. This uses the corrections supplied by the lens manufacturer that is embedded in the raw file. Way better than the profiles these software companies come up with themselves.
With Sony, C1 can stop development today, and you would still be able to correct lenses that don’t exist yet that are released any time in the future. LR for whatever strange reason won’t use and profile for new lenses until tl Adobe issues an update, and on some systems the whole profile is never used they do their own geometric corrections for E mount lenses IIRC , so it’s not quite the same level of support for the embedded profile that Capture One has.
Both are still better of than any of the converters that rely on a 3rd party open source database of profiles tho, which is pretty much all the other options save for DxO who also makes their own. I’m still surprised how little this comes up when discussing these programs or Adobe alternatives in general, Adobe easily has the broadest body support, I like C1’s lens profile handling better tho. We ran a bunch of tests in the studio and it just doesn’t work using “Manufacturer’s profile”.
I don’t see why a profile wouldn’t be included in the RAW file. Are you saying that when you turn in-camera corrections on and shoot jpg, no lens corrections is applied to the jpg? If it works with jpg then that means a profile is available which means it should be included in the raw file.
I don’t see why a profile would be available and not be included in the raw file. Sigma doesn’t control that aspect, Sony does since it’s their camera. What is important is to measure performance of interactive operations, which you want to be as instant as possible. I can do other things while those are running. I have a test set for my own evaluation and I stopwatch the time as well – but most important is how effective I can use the software.
I could not care less for import times beside an orientation whether a new purchased MacBook works faster. Nothing you have to sit and wait for is totally unimportant. For me, waiting for LR to startup is definitely annoying at a minimum. Phillip Forsten Do you mean Lightroom Classic? If so, how do you keep current backups of the LrC catalog? Months of work with no catalog backup or integrity check seems extremely risky to me.
Phillip Forsten Thanks for the reply, I am not a time machine user. Will it back up the catalog while Lightroom Classic has the file open? But this is rarely a deal-breaker. In Lightroom, you have several modules that you can use to organise, edit, print, etc. There, you can scroll through all the settings without changing tabs. Your image is in the centre, and all the adjustment settings are on the right-hand side of the window.
On the left-hand side, you can look at your editing history and apply presets. The program has lots of advanced tools. This might make the editing process very challenging for beginners. Lightroom is more beginner-friendly, according to many users. Its interface is simpler, thanks to its straightforward modules and panels. Capture One and Lightroom offer unique editing tools. Many of them are similar, but there are also a few that are exclusive to each program.
Local adjustments are specific changes. For example, you might want to darken the sky without affecting any other area of your image. You can achieve this with a Gradient tool. Local adjustments are common in landscape and portrait photography editing.
Capture One has very similar tools. Both have decent local adjustment options. Both can help you edit very specific parts of your photos. Capture One offers a layer system. You can use layers to place adjustment settings on top of each other. You can think of this as painting over an image to enhance it. You can also change the opacity of these layers. This is great for making effects look less intense.
Many photographers use Lightroom with Photoshop. Photoshop has advanced layer options and is good for detailed retouching. Also, you can also pay a monthly fee to use Photoshop and Lightroom together. Many photographers find it affordable. Capture One has an advanced colour wheel. You can use it to change very specific colours in your images. You can use it to edit the hue, saturation, and lightness of specific colours. This is great for basic colour correction.
Capture One seems to be much better at sharpening photos in a non-destructive way. It also has a special Structure tool that can help you bring out the textures of your image. In Lightroom, the closest tool you can get to that is Clarity.
Capture One and Lightroom both use sliders. You can use these to intensify or dull a specific adjustment. All you have to do is drag the slider to the left or to the right. Capture One software offers a handy Annotations option. This is very handy in almost every photography genre , especially studio photography. Your instructions might be too vague.
Capture One makes this very easy. You can highlight specific areas of an image using the Annotations tool. You can then send these annotated images to other members of your team. This can save you a lot of time and stress.
Capture One and Lightroom both offer a variety of extensions. These can make your editing process smoother. They can also let you get creative with your work. Lightroom goes hand in hand with presets. You can download pre-made presets, which are basically colour styles.
You can use these colour styles to give your photos a specific look. For example, you can make a simple photo look like a vintage picture with one click. You can also make your own custom presets in Lightroom. Many photographers have turned this into a photography business. As a result, there are millions of presets for all kinds of looks, styles, and photography genres.
Lightroom also offers bulk editing. You can apply one preset to thousands of photos with one click. Wedding photographers use this very often to edit thousands of photos within minutes. Capture One has presets, too.
Besides presets, Lightroom offers a wide variety of extensions. These are some of the most efficient tools in the editing industry. You can transform your photos into seamless HDR photos or panoramas.
If you have Photoshop, you can merge your photos in it without exporting them from Lightroom. You can also download external extensions made by other companies. Lightroom is compatible with all kinds of advanced programs. For example, you can download a plugin like Luminar.
Capture One offers a few extensions, but most of them are related to organising and resizing pictures. The latest version of Lightroom is made for photographers of all kinds. This has its pros and cons.
