The Reality of Switching to Capture One
That was our topic yesterday on ‘The Grid’ my weekly video podcast for photographers, and my guests were both dear friends and icons in the community, the awesome Matt Kloskowski, and ‘Cool Frenchy Guy’ Serge Ramelli. It was a really eye-opening discussion for a lot of folks, and I’ve embedded the show below so you can check it out (you can just let it run in the background while you edit your images today). 🙂
Thanks for giving the show a listen (or a watch, or both). 🙂
Current Capture One users – before you go and post a comment…
Watch the episode. Just actually watch it before you post.
I’m off to NYC today for a day trip for some meetings, and I’m right back home tonight. It’s pretty Brrrrrrrr up there for a Florida guy like me, but I dressed pretty warm so I won’t turn into a total popsicle.
Here’s to staying warm on a Thursday!
-Scott
This was a very, very bad show. You’re selling out to a program of the past. I also miss the slightest degree of artistic considerations, and I’m disgusted by the shameless price calculations and comparisons that make you look like bad salesmen instead of photographers (admittedly, Scott Kelby does take great pictures). When you said there are only seven people outspokenly satisfied with C1, and that C1 users shouldn’t watch the rest of the show, I knew I was in for some extremely low-level, opinionated trash talk. It doesn’t help that Serge Ramelli is spamming all over IG and FB and I’m sick and tired of his over-edited, clichĂ© wallpaper photography. The French should know that good wine needs no bush.
LR is just a piece of software, and so is C1. They do almost the same thing as LR has done for me for the last ten years (with hardly any real novelties to the user experience and interface). C1 is slightly more advanced and indeed loads a preset (aren’t you preset sellers?), which is good enough and in my view better than “Adobe Color”. Indeed, LR doesn’t load the native profile either for Nikon, only Capture NX-D does it and that’s the rendering I prefer, but that software is plain bad. Also, as with other Creative Suite programs, LR is bloated, unintuitive, and overcomplicated. I don’t want hundreds of ways to load a RAW image and thousands of presets. Just one and a couple of film simulations, that’s just fine, and C1 got it right.
For my workflow, C1 is three to four times more efficient and faster, although I have ten years of experience in using Adobe products. Despite your fanboy words, I still dislike their price plan and subscription model, and I don’t like PS at all, so as soon as I have no educational discount, I’m forever out of their ecosystem. If the open source programs become just a little bit better, I might even give those a try, but for now C1 suits my needs and I would recommend anybody who can get it at a discount price to give it a try. Generally with software I buy, I skip one or two upgrades before buying a new license. That way, some software lasts long enough, and there are no surprises and there’s not the feeling that the company is taxing away your hard work. Costs are sunk, we only have to use it and get the most out of it. Note that C1 is also selling stupid presets, and also offers a subscription model, so probably one day it will become just as annoying as LR and their gospels.
Someone above wrote “Adobe is dead.” What? Really? This is why comment sections have become such a wasteland. Anyone with a keyboard can type anything.
As a person who used Lightroom,Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity Photo, On1 Photo RAW, and Corel Aftershot/PSP I’m going to chime in. After spending alot of time with each I have chosen Capture One and Affinity photo to be the setup I use. I thought I’d chime in.
I’ll start with cost. Affinity Photo costs $50. C1 costs $299 for a perpetual license, upgrades are now $149 (or less). Total cost of ownership when starting fresh: $349. I have owned and used both for a few years now. I only spent $120 to upgrade to v20 of C1 (my upgrade was discounted). So total cost for next year will be the same for me as Adobe LR/PS.
What does Capture One do well? Customizing UI for your workflow, and output(s), better color management and better RAW rendering. Yes you can tweak a bunch of stuff in Lightroom to make the image look very similar and then claim “It’s the same”, but it isn’t and never will be the same simply because they both have different render engines. LR is excellent don’t get me wrong but when you get down to examining color gradients, and skin tonality C1 does it better and makes those changes easier to manipulate. Editing your RAW images with the layers implementation in C1 is very handy and is all about manipulating colors, tones, and sharpness. It’s not a full Photoshop replacement, but it does support all kinds of masking, and even clone & heal all on the RAW level.
What does Affinity Photo do well? Immediate feedback while using brushes, built in frequency separation tool, and supports many PS plugins. It doesn’t edit video, it doesn’t edit 3d objects, but it does edit images and has all the tools needed to do so. (Honestly, even if you are a LR/PS user I’d recommend buying it, it’s inexpensive and works very well) While I don’t think it will ever become a Photoshop killer, or do everything Photoshop does I can say that for your standard photographer it will do everything you need.
I am considering switching to Fuji sometime in 2020. Basically I am waiting to see if they will release any upgrades to their present X-line of cameras. However, I do have a Fujifilm x00f that I recently bought and use. I’ve done alot of research on line and on youtube about Lr and fuji files (both for and against Lr). The files I upload from my x100 to Lr work fine and look great. The “worm” issue is easily solved with changing the standard Adobe default settings in Detail and then using the Option>Masking slider and that usually does the trick. In all honesty, I have not tried comparing Lr and One1 using the free trial download of On1. But for now, I see no need to change. When and IF I do make the total switch to Fuji I will probably take a closer look. Adobe did do an improvement upgrade in Camera Raw for fuji files already. As more people begin to use the Fuji system (their medium format camera line is SO much less expensive than the present market), I am hopeful Adobe will come up with more improvements in handling Fuji files.
OOPS, I meant Capture 1!
Keep drinking the cool aide. Adobe is dead. I love capture one should have switched early.
The three of you are amazing! I have learned so much for all three of you over the years. Thanks for your passion for photography and your desire to help people become better photographers. I’m a Fuji shooter and all I’ve been hearing about the last year is how awesome CO is for Fuji files. And then I began to read more and learn how to process my files correctly in LR. I’m completely happy using LR and feel no need to learn a whole new program. I was interested in what you would have to say today and you confirmed what I have learned and experienced. I love Matt’s PetaStopper reference!
So three LR/PS guys are going to talk about the “reality” of switching to something else. Right.
Anyone that pays retail for anything, including software, deserves what they get. So no one is going to pay $450 for Capture One over a twelve-month period.
And that’s really the point, one that has always been completely ignored by Adobe and all of its shills. When an upgrade comes out, you make a value judgment. If the new features are worth the price of the upgrade, you upgrade. If they’re not, you don’t. But you have a *choice*. If you want to wait for the next upgrade, or the next one, you can. But you get to decide, and you get to continue using the product even if you decide to skip an upgrade.
You have no choice with Adobe. You keep on paying the $120/year regardless of the value delivered. (And I heartily disagree with the idea that Adobe is delivering great value. They are not.)
The audience for this wasn’t people thinking about C1. It was for LR/PS die-hards who want to feel better about themselves for sticking with Adobe. Mission accomplished.
(I’m not a C1 user. I still use LR6. I haven’t switched because I don’t *need* to switch, and Adobe hasn’t delivered enough value to get me to rent their software. When I move to Catalina, I will switch, but it may or may not be to C1.)
In all seriousness, some users think it is a big plus for Affinity Photo that it is NOT Photoshop. (Especially the iPad version.) While I agree that Ps is a pretty great app and the Photography Plan is affordable … Affinity Photo is a one time purchase of $50 and handles most photography processing needs with aplomb especially on Mac as it fully utilizes Metal 2 code for the heavy lifting while using a much smaller footprint and doesn’t have the infinite complexity as well as the cruft and crud collected by Photoshop over several decades. Not to mention AP can also handle Mac full screen mode properly.
A co-worker of mine was asking me for a recommendation. He’s an ex-Picasa user. Not really interested in editing photos, just keeping track of his collection of photos (probably iPhone) in albums, facial recognition, etc. So the Photography bundle is overkill for him.
Best I could find was either On1 Photo Raw or Photoshop Elements (he doesn’t mind a one time fee of about $100).
Anything I overlooked?
Thanks for the video. It was interesting. I switched from Canon to Fuji this year and yes the talk on Capture One has me interested. Like many, I was ready to ditch Adobe when they went to the subscription model. I did stop using three of the products as I can’t justify the cost. The Photography program is a great deal, period. Been a longtime Lightroom and Photoshop user and I’m sticky with it. It just makes no sense to change now.