Capture One

[tbob]

I am quite impressed with Capture One as an alternative processing program. I had to look for an alternative to Aperture and NIK. Due to a software glitch, which cannot be fixed, NIK HDR will not import back to Aperture.

I have tried Aurora HDR and it is just too gaudy for my taste in some instances

Here is an example

As shot, part of a five shot series for HDR, the best shot for processing to have the vertical sun ray not overexposed




The Aurora HDR version, with no further process.




Processed a bit more in Aperture to reduce the blue on the stubble and reduce the noise




The Capture one version using the highlight and shadow sliders in the HDR section and then processed

[Shadowman]

Nice treatment on the sky, the foreground and structure have been recovered yet most effectively with the Aurora processing.

[tbob]

My problem is the blocky and uniform tone mapping in the HDR versions. I have yet to venture into exposure blending or stacking programs. But that would require yet another program, more processing and I am not a huge fan of spending time post processing (personal preference).

[NorthernFocus]

Impressive indeed. The Capture One version recovered detail while still looking realistic. Lovely shot.

[tbob]

Impressive indeed. The Capture One version recovered detail while still looking realistic. Lovely shot.

I will try Capture One on several other shots I did the same morning as HDR ready (five shots one stop apart) If I can do as well then I will probably no longer do the five shot thing. Cuts down on the number of images to deal with.

[billtils]

Trevor, Nice work but not surprising to me as I too am an Aperture refugee who moved to CaptureOne. I did this some months ago after trying all the usual suspects including Lightroom. With the usual rider that "good" and "best" inevitably have a component of personal preference, at the end of about 2 months trying the lot, C1 came out best for its RAW engine performance, and good enough in its overall editing and cataloging to make it a hands down winner. It also was streets ahead of the competition in regard to importing my Aperture library. All that was with Version 8. I am now on Version 9 and have benefitted from about half a dozen of the regular C1 Webinars, and "good" has advanced to "very good indeed thank you".

[tbob]

I must admit I was shocked at how well the program handled this task. I am still making the psychic transfer to Capture One from Aperture. I suspect I am just playing silly fools and should just forget Aperture entirely rather than try to be adept at both systems.

The webinars will have to wait until the pressure of my full time job are lessened, just do not have the time to devote to taking one.

[NorthernFocus]

...If I can do as well then I will probably no longer do the five shot thing. Cuts down on the number of images to deal with.

I've nearly stopped shooting multiple images for HDR blending. The dynamic range of modern sensors and software capability have made blending multiple exposures unnecessary in most cases.

[billtils]

Trevor, they are recorded and can be viewed at your convenience on youtube. There are several tutorials there too.

[tbob]

Fare Thee Well HDR using five shots. Capture One wins the cage match.

I processed 5 more images, all using Aurora HDR, Aperture (trying my best to pull out shadows and denoise) and Capture One with the HDR sliders and several masks on the areas I needed to work in isolation

This was the best of the bunch

Aperture, not shown as it would cause you to blind yourself rather than look at it


Aurora with the horrid blocky tone renderings areas and Blue tints in the shadow





Capture One

[shreds]

Welcome to the C1 World. Was first introduced to it ten years ago, but still cant afford one of their cameras

(Although they are not that useful for the kind of photography I do anyway).

- Maybe to put one in a glass case for the pride of owning one perhaps if I ever won the lottery?

[tbob]

I truly lust after the cameras. I cannot quite think of any justification beyond naked desire. Now if I could just convince some sucker (Sorry; I meant astute art lover) to part with ten to twenty thousand $CDN for one of my images.

[Daniel Salazar]

hi Trevor, good to know that you are discovering the magic of Capture One. Aperture was a great product, unfortunately is not there and in my opinion, C1 is the best one out there. They still need to work on the DAM aspect, however, as RAW processor they have a great engine.

[Manfred M]

Capture One's name says it all. It was designed for tethered shooting for Phase One digital backs. Other functionality followed. The catalog functionality is quite new.

The one thing to remember about it is that it is 100% compliant with ICC standards that are designed around a CMYK print workflow. After all the is the target market of the medium format market. It therefore has a much more restrictive color workflow than either Photoshop or Lightroom that was designed ground up for photo editing. That means some of those features I use a lot in ACR like HSL are missing. It works well for RGB too.

It is a bit quirky to use and does take some getting used to. Lightroom is a lot easier to use (this is something I have found and other C1 users have confirmed to me as well).

[billtils]

I have found that any shortcomings in C1 are easily dealt with by calling an external editor, and that the number of times I want to go to the external editor (Affinity Photo) diminishes with each release - now approaching zero. The only recent visits have been to use Ap's excellent stacking to kill off ISO noise, and to use its inpainting brush which leaves the C1 heal tool dead in the water.

It's difficult drawing meaningful comparisons between photo editing programs because they differ at least as much in how they do things as in what they do. For example, I had no hesitation in dumping LR as a potential Aperture replacement after extensive use in a 30 day trial. C1's performance in a 30 day trial at the same time left me much more impressed, but all of that could well have been different if my habits and experiences had been different.

Any way, from being a happy Aperture user who was (insert some suitable word indicating displeasure) at Apple for killing it off, I am now an even happier C1 user.

[Daniel Salazar]

It is a bit quirky to use and does take some getting used to. Lightroom is a lot easier to use (this is something I have found and other C1 users have confirmed to me as well).

I would recommend you to take your time to learn how to use it. The best of all, you can change shortcuts, change the tabs and tools to your like, it is very user-friendly and do not have to learn the given shortcuts as R for Crop.

[Manfred M]

I would recommend you to take your time to learn how to use it. The best of all, you can change shortcuts, change the tabs and tools to your like, it is very user-friendly and do not have to learn the given shortcuts as R for Crop.

Thanks Daniel - I primarily bought Capture One for its tethered capture capabilities (Lightroom is just not all that stable and I kept losing the connection and did not like what I saw with Nikon's Capture NX). I have no use for the cataloging function and as a raw converter, I prefer both ACR and DxO Optics Pro. I never do anything other than these basic prep functions, before importing into Photoshop.

In my workflow, I shoot jpeg +raw, so I either use the images straight out of camera or go into a non-destructive workflow with Photoshop, which I have been using since 2003 (well before Lightroom or Capture One were on the horizon). So in reality, I am more than happy with the subset of the functionality I have been using since the release of Capture One version 7.

[Marie Hass]

I have been using CaptureOne for the past two years and love it. Using it has improved my work flow and ease of processing my images.

They are now up to 16 layers. You can now copy and move layers from one image to another. Healing and spot removal are awesome. Basic cloning is good, but sophisticated cloning needs work. Easy to pick and choose adjustments to copy from one image to another. Create new variants allows you to try new paths on a variant of the same image - side by side with what you just did. And so much more.

I love the tethered shooting capabilities and use it when I am working in the studio.

My next purchase will be OnOne.

Marie

[Manfred M]

Marie - the name "Capture One" says it all. The product started out life as tethered capture software for the high end data backs for medium format cameras. Adhering to icc standards was a key principle used by the software. Phase One / Mamiya / Leaf were the initial cameras / backs supported.

It has been evolving and adding functionality with each new release.

[JBW]

I started out disliking Capture 1 Sony Express. Then I had it explained to me that my computer needed upgrading. I liked it after my computer upgrade. I just upgraded to capture 1 Sony Pro and I really like how it works.