Capture One Pro 5.1

[Madison]

I am curious: any Capture One Pro 5.1 users out here?


I am baffled by the level of detail it extracts from my raws. It was like looking at the same raws but shot with better glass (and I shoot with L glass to begin with). That good.


It's slow though. And it boasts a feature called inverted color editing and it is NOWHERE in the manual. At all. So I was wondering: does anybody use it? Is it fast or slow on your system: and how do you go about toning images that are almost completely saturated, with the exception of certain very narrow color groups (this is what you should be able to achieve in that software).

[gbc]

I used it in the photo studio of a magazine I worked at. Can't say I have that much experience with it, but in terms your question of speed, it ran pretty damn slowly. And this was on relatively new mac pro tower.

[Alan]

Madison, I'm curious about Capture One Pro vs other RAW converters you've used.


Adobe vs Capture? DPP vs Capture?


What is your work flow after the RAW conversion? Photoshop? Lightroom?


What aspects of Capture One Pro shine the best?


I've heard some swear by it, but is it worth the price?


If you use other converters, could you post an example from each work flow?


Thanks.

[Madison]

Well I dont have a good comparison Alan. I downloaded a trial because I heard the demosaicing routine in C1 was superior. I didnt believe it. But I stand corrected. Seeing what detail Lightroom (2.6) created from my raws and seeing what detail C1 created from my raws: it was like shooting with better gear (and I shoot 5D MkII L glass anyway). I was BLOWN AWAY.


Fine details like fabric textures were all intact in C1. And that is before I made corrections to things like sharpness and stuff. Just the basic rendering of a raw in C1 blew me away.





That said, it was a complicated program to work with. I remember hating Lightroom's interface when I first learned working with it (v1.3 I think a while back). I have grown used to it now. I suspect if you grow used to C1 you will not notice it after a while.


However I think C1 is slow. And I mean 'wait seconds to see simple color hue change' slow. It will re-render everything and take its time. And my system is pretty fast I tell you. The sheer slowness of it makes me wonder about a possible future workflow: I saw an article online (I cant remember where) where somebody made sure he got the best possible raw render out of C1, saved it as a 16 bit tiff to an output folder, that Lightroom was set to automatically import, and move from there. He used C1 to get the most out of his raws (which is basically what the program is for: it is not very focused on extensive postprocessing like Lightroom is) and then do the rest in Lightroom. He said differences in Lightroom between the source raw and the 16 bit C1 tiff were so minimal he did it like that and with good results.


I am doing a fashion shoot this Tuesday, and will postproces this way to see if it works for me.

Note: I hear reports that Lightroom 3 (coming somewhere in 2010, with an incomplete beta available publically for testing) has improved demosaicing routines and will render much better files than version two did. Somebody told me 'it was getting very close to C1' so I am curious to see if this is true (yet I refuse to do beta software so I will wait for a final. And, knowing Adobe's track record, possibly even wait for the first incremental update after the initial release of Lightroom 3).

[Madison]

Well I tried postprocessing in Capture One Pro 5.1 but it was SO slow compared to what I am used to, that I went back to Lightroom after working for an hour and not getting it done. Every thing you do: it renders a new preview or something. My God. Despite the vast improvements in rendering structure and detail it has over Lightroom, I went back to Lightroom and postprocessed a lot faster and with more options. With less detail and fine structure though.





I guess its a trade off. I didnt even finish proper postproduction in C1 because every time you do something, progress circles appear and take their time to render something. It was soooo user unfriendly. I wish Adobe would pay PhaseOne for their RAW rendering technique and incporporate that in Lightroom. THAT would be a match made in heaven. (Shots below are from Lightroom).

[Alan]

Madison, thanks for that C1 update. I'm thinking that as time goes on, both ACR and Lightroom will catch up to C1 (sounds like they're getting close, already). We all spend enough time post processing images. It would drive me nuts to have to wait so long with each and every operation. I'll sacrifice a bit of detail with Adobe for less time sitting on my butt, in front of the computer.


Good experiment, by the way. And, I like the composition!