Capture One Pro 11 vs Lightroom... wow what a difference.

Richdog

Richdog

Richdog

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Yesterday I bought Capture One Pro 11 after being a Lightroom user for years (the Sony edition is a crazy low 80EUR, complete no-brainer) and while of course I do not yet have the exhaustive experience to make definitive conclusions, my initial impressions are extremely positive.

  • C1 is about 10x faster when împorting and editing photos from my NAS... Lightroom was appalling in that regard, slow and stuttery.
  • The menu system is super clean and logical and tabs stop me constantly scrolling and fiddling around.
  • It appears to work magic with NR and sharpening, never have I been able to reduce noise while retaining detail to this extent. You can literally max NR and max sharpening and the image looks surprisingly good.
  • The clarity slider has multiple "methods" which greatly improve the end result. The "Natural" method avoids looking too artificial.
  • The "Auto adjust" button produces extremely decent result all things considered, mch better than my experience with Lightroom.
I just need to spend a couple of months learning it and I get the feeling that it is really going to be less of a pain in the rear than LR was. I still have LR subscribed until Q2 next year so it's accessible if I need it.

Anyone else tried C1 and noticed similar? :)
 
I started trailing Capture One over Lightroom early this week.
I agree it makes your photos look better, just by viewing them and not touching any settings.
Using the Auto button, it works wonders compared to Lightroom.

You're right about Sharpening and Noise Reduction, but I've found if you export them to Photoshop for further PP. The default settings are too strong and your photos look plasticy.

I didn't like the UI at first, but once you're used to it or you've created your own menus, it's OK.

I prefer Lightroom's spot removal feature, which can be set to high contrast B&W for easy detection.
I can't find a way of auto importing a finished photo back into Capture One, once it's been saved in Photoshop. Lightroom does it, if you leave the program open at the same time as Photoshop.
I wish it had the Pano feature that Lightroom has.

Overall Capture One is a superior product.
If anyone from Phase One is reading this, I will gladly accept a lifetime licence and the use of your Medium Format cameras :D
 
Marzipanogram said:
I started trailing Capture One over Lightroom early this week.
I agree it makes your photos look better, just by viewing them and not touching any settings.
Using the Auto button, it works wonders compared to Lightroom.

You're right about Sharpening and Noise Reduction, but I've found if you export them to Photoshop for further PP. The default settings are too strong and your photos look plasticy.

I didn't like the UI at first, but once you're used to it or you've created your own menus, it's OK.

I prefer Lightroom's spot removal feature, which can be set to high contrast B&W for easy detection.
I can't find a way of auto importing a finished photo back into Capture One, once it's been saved in Photoshop. Lightroom does it, if you leave the program open at the same time as Photoshop.
I wish it had the Pano feature that Lightroom has.

Overall Capture One is a superior product.
If anyone from Phase One is reading this, I will gladly accept a lifetime licence and the use of your Medium Format cameras :D
Click to expand...

Hi Marzi, interesting points you raise there, I still have to try these features so I will give it a go and see what I think. Spot too in LR was indeed easy as pie, so it will be interesting to compare. Good point about panorama stitching, I did use that in LR, so I need to research what options are available. How do you do it now with your panos'?

As for Photoshop, I rarely if ever use it so shouldn't be a problem for me. The reduction in frustration though from having a program that is loading and editing files like lightning can simply not be overstated, it is a world of difference and is going to work wonders for my workflow, in fact I can now finally process 1500 photos from the USA that I was putting off for that very reason, lol. :)
 
Richdog said:
Hi Marzi, interesting points you raise there, I still have to try these features so I will give it a go and see what I think. Spot too in LR was indeed easy as pie, so it will be interesting to compare. Good point about panorama stitching, I did use that in LR, so I need to research what options are available. How do you do it now with your panos'?

As for Photoshop, I rarely if ever use it so shouldn't be a problem for me. The reduction in frustration though from having a program that is loading and editing files like lightning can simply not be overstated, it is a world of difference and is going to work wonders for my workflow, in fact I can now finally process 1500 photos from the USA that I was putting off for that very reason, lol. :)
Click to expand...
Panoramas: I've only don't one so far since switching. I used Ps to create the pano and kept my fingers crossed ;)
Other options I'd use would be PTGui Pro (paid) or Microsoft ICE (free).
But Lightroom seems best if you need to expand the photo to fill in the gaps.
 
jonneymendoza said:
Can you somehow import the presets from LR into capture one? i have build a huge list of my own presets in LR and would hate if i have to do redo it all again
Click to expand...

No you can't.

I did a quick search and found a "no" answer here:
https://blog.phaseone.com/jumping-ship-to-capture-one-pro-from-lightroom/

Q. One question: its possible to import to C1 style presets from LR? Any tool to do this? Thanks and kind regards from Argentina.

A. As far as I know, there isn’t. Capture One Pro will import as many settings from your photos as it can, and you could then tweak the images and save a new preset in Capture One, but I don’t know of a way to import LR presets as such.

If you search for the page for "Lisandro", you'll see the fully answer.
 
I actually still prefer the colour I can get from Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom, but I didn't have a choice but to use Capture One instead since I shoot with Phase One's digital back - Capture One provides much better functionality and image quality (calibration).
 
I moved over to Capture One last year and find it far superior in just about every way.
There's is no way I was ever going to buy into Adobe's rental scheme that brought promises of regular updates, fixes and feature additions when in actual fact we got the same slow experience with the same issues for an increased cost.
 
I have managed to improve LR performance by tweaking the performance settings but it's still annoyingly laggy to the point where I am grinding my teeth waiting for it to switch between images etc... fair enough it is getting the images from a NAS, but CO does the same thing extremely smoothly and rapidly.

I really have no idea how the LR can still be so badly optimised with all of the development that goes into it.
 
Has anyone noticed that with C1 the exported JPEG files are ******* huge when the slider is set to 100% quality? I'm talking 2x or more larger than equivalent Lightroom JPEG's... sometimes close to the size of a compressed Sony RAW file (40MB)!
 
Hhhhhmm what timing with this thread. I just used LR for the first time on my upgraded rig (3570K > 1700 @ 3.9) and was not impressed with its performance, I swear it almost ran slower.

Might give C1 a go - is there a trial? It's a shame as I quite like LR though I am still definitely a novice. Hope the learning curve on C1 is OK.
 
Yup, you can get a free trial with C1. Definitely worth a look ; if I didn't have a GFX I'd be using it solely and ditching LR.
 
doodah said:
Hhhhhmm what timing with this thread. I just used LR for the first time on my upgraded rig (3570K > 1700 @ 3.9) and was not impressed with its performance, I swear it almost ran slower.

Might give C1 a go - is there a trial? It's a shame as I quite like LR though I am still definitely a novice. Hope the learning curve on C1 is OK.
Click to expand...
My light room is laggy on my laptop and its no where as good as your PC,I'm sure light room is just laggy no matter what you got,I'll be trying c1 as well in the next few weeks.
 
Schizo said:
My light room is laggy on my laptop and its no where as good as your PC,I'm sure light room is just laggy no matter what you got,I'll be trying c1 as well in the next few weeks.
Click to expand...
Lightroom just runs like a dog. Period. I almost threw my laptop out of the window earlier when I tried to edit a set of images with it.

This thread is a good read and sums things up... https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2396874
 
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