There are plenty of things about Lightroom that bug me and despite being a hardened user of more than 6 years, I thought it was about time give something else a go. The newly updated Capture One caught my attention and opened my eyes.
Capture One 20 launched earlier this month and it claims to be the best version ever for dragging Lightroom users into its fold. In keeping with photographic traditions, the naming convention is illogical, having moved from Capture One 12 straight to Capture One 20, apparently to avoid unlucky 13 and reflect the fact that it’s 2020. (Shh. Almost.)
I should preface this article by explaining that this is entirely a personal experience and that your mileage will vary. Like many of us, I’m set in my ways and while I like playing with new things, I’m also resistant to change. The thought of ditching almost seven years’ worth of Lightroom images is not a pleasant one, and I can’t figure out how I could run these systems alongside each other for a year or two in order to transition without it being too expensive for me. That’s a big reason to stick with what I’m used to. With all of that in mind, if there’s an aspect of Capture One that I don’t like, it’s probably because it doesn’t suit me, rather than it being something fundamentally wrong with the software.
I will also add that I’m not delivering beauty, fashion, or product photography to high-end commercial clients. I’m a part-time professional working on small jobs and lots of personal projects. I’m often delivering large batches of images from events without intensely detailed editing. My post production is often light as budgets are small.
Painful Pricing?
If you decide to opt for the subscription model, you'll be paying $20 a month. No Photoshop to sweeten the deal.
I downloaded a thirty-day trial, and being a Sony a7 III shooter, I opted for the Sony version. Capture One offers versions specific to Sony or Fujifilm cameras, and it’s much cheaper than the fully pro version: $9.99 per month compared to $20 per month. However, I sometimes shoot images on a Canon (one old camera and the odd rental), and I occasionally like to throw a Lightroom preset onto something shot with my iPhone. I can’t justify more than doubling the cost of a subscription to accommodate this infrequent use. Capture One is dramatically more expensive than Lightroom in this regard. Notably, my Adobe subscription includes Photoshop, and ditching Lightroom would mean having to fork out again for image-editing software such as Affinity Photo. Suddenly, making the transition is looking incredibly pricey.
If you live in Europe, expect to pay up to 33% more than US customers. Ouch.
(It’s worth noting that Capture One Express is available for free to Fujifilm and Sony users, but this Express version does not support tethered shooting and nor does it have any layer or masking tools. A few other features are omitted, such as annotating files, keystone correction, and spot removal. For a full list, click here. Given that the potential to remove dust specks is absent, it feels a little pointless.)
[Edit: Unlike Lightroom, Capture One Pro can be bought outright: $299 for all cameras, and $129 for the Sony/Fuji version.)
Capture One can import a Lightroom catalog, and one quick way to get started is to grab a load of images in Lightroom, add them to a Collection, export that Collection as a Lightroom catalog, and then import that catalog into Capture One. Ratings and collections are maintained, but any editing beyond crop, rotation, orientation, white balance, exposure, saturation, and contrast will be lost.
The Need for Speed
One of the first big changes compared to Lightroom is the speed. In Lightroom, if I’m browsing through a freshly imported batch of photos, hitting R to switch to the crop tool can take a moment. With Capture One, it’s instantaneous. Zooming in to an image is also refreshingly quick and far more logical, and with the completely different layout, there’s no need to transition between Library and Develop modules — something that can sometimes be quite laggy in Lightroom. While the process feels less intuitive (at first at least), spot healing is also noticeably more responsive.
Significantly More Control
The second major aspect that makes itself felt is how much more control there appears to be in Capture One, to the extent that it feels a little daunting. While I’ve been using Lightroom extensively for many years, it’s not so often that I dive into the HSL/Color panel, but when I do, I feel like I have a reasonable understanding of how things work. By contrast, Capture One feels like it’s on another level, with color wheels and words like “Uniformity” that quickly made me feel out of my depth. No doubt it’s a skin retoucher or product photographer's dream, but I just wanted to run back to the safety and comfort of Lightroom.
Help. Send help.
Layers Upon Layers
The third huge difference is how layers function. While Lightroom has never fully embraced the concept of Layers (which is a little odd given how fundamental they are to Photoshop), Capture One is invested in their power and deploys them very effectively. The potential to change specific parts of the image is vastly superior to Lightroom: simply create a layer, draw in a mask, and you can make any change you like, using any panel. While Lightroom restricts you to an adjustment brush (or gradient) that can be used to tweak exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpness, etc., Capture One’s entire array of panels is available. If you want to apply, say, a curves adjustment to a specific part of the image, go ahead.
Notice "Face smooth" in the panel on the left, and "Face smooth" just above the image itself. The layers are always within reach, allowing you to jump around very easily.
You can even mask out a couple of separate parts of the image and apply completely different presets. Masks can be quickly inverted, filled and feathered at will, giving you far greater control.
Stepping back for a moment, it’s a little strange that Capture One's use of layers is so much more like Photoshop compared to Lightroom. Just being able to label your adjustments makes a huge difference, allowing you to keep track of multiple changes without having click around trying to remember which pin brings up which changes. Perhaps Lightroom has held back because it assumes you can do all of that stuff in Photoshop. Whatever the reason, compared to Capture One, it feels incomplete.
No Need for Photoshop?
My assumption is that these three factors — speed, color control, and layers — means that you will spend more time in Capture One and a lot less time in Photoshop. As someone who spends very little time in Photoshop beyond occasional compositing and the odd bit of cloning, for me, it’s overkill — especially given the step up in price. For anyone who’s shooting commercial work, it makes much more sense, especially given the control over color and potential for easily copying layers between different raw files.
After a Day of Play
After an hour of playing, trying to replicate the look and feel of one of my images edited in Lightroom was proving impossible. The learning curve here is quite steep and no doubt it’s doable, but it takes a greater degree of skill than I have available. I’ll be spending more time playing and watching tutorials over the coming weeks and if you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. A few bugs have sprung up: the keystone tool occasionally blacks out the image, and the entire application crashed once — “Graphics hardware encountered an error and was reset: 0x00000813.”
My capacity for causing software to crash is really quite something. Usually I can crash a Photoshop update within 24 hours, and I barely touch it.
Speaking of the keystone tool, Capture One feels slightly more refined than Lightroom, but the basic functionality is the same. Photographing people in weird places on buildings at height combined with my alarming inability to hold a camera straight means that this is a tool I use quite frequently. As a result, Lightroom’s “Auto” button comes in very useful when trying to fix an image, especially photographing events when quick edits are crucial.
Shot at an event, I don't want to spend any unnecessary time trying to get things straight. The "auto" button is quicker, even if it then needs a bit of fine tuning.
If you click Capture One’s keystone magic wand, you just get a message saying “Some of the selected Variants could not be adjusted.” From what I’ve gathered, this tool is only available if you shot your image using a Phase One back, as Capture One wants to use the data from a Phase One gyroscope and accelerometer. If you use Lightroom’s “Auto” button in the Transform panel regularly, expect a much slower workflow when switching to Capture One.
In Conclusion
Capture One is not for everyone and certainly isn't for me, but I'm going to continue playing for the duration of my 30-day trial and I'd urge anyone to give it a quick spin, if just to see how much control the layers functionality gives you, and how much snappier certain aspects feel over Lightroom. If I were producing high-end commercial images, this would be the obvious choice as my retouching work would be a lot more detailed. I also feel that Lightroom is quite limited in terms of functionality by comparison, and jumping over to Photoshop to make up for its shortcomings isn't always ideal.
I'll continue with Lightroom in the hope that Adobe makes some significant changes in the next year or two, and also waiting to see what Serif produces. Its Affinity Photo software has proven very popular and there are rumors that it will create its own digital asset manager. Being a fan of Designer, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Affinity will produce an alternative Lightroom/Photoshop duo geared towards photographers that fixes all of the problems that Adobe seems reluctant to address.
Obviously I'm just scratching the surface here and no doubt experienced Capture One users will have a lot to say, but hopefully it's of use if you've not played with Capture One before. Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments below.
LR‘s RAW converter sucks big time which disqualifies it from the get go. Just run a test and try to get back as much highlights or shadow detail back as you can and compare it to C1 (or Aperture, which is even better).
In terms of no need for Photoshop, cannot create the same natural feel on either LR or C1. I mask with Channels and have fine tuned tools - non of that filter bs which simply masks your bad photography skills.
Sorry... if you know what you are doing you‘ll use the best tool to get the job done. And that means C1 for RAW conversion, exposure, shadows, temperature maybe a bit of colour if you’re in a hurry. Everything else in Photoshop.
The “costs” of having both Adobe and C1 are relative compared to the latest $3000 lens you bought from Sony
I no longer do any professional work and just do photography for fun and family. Switched to C1 about a year ago and i love it. The learning curve was steep at first, but i found that the starting point of loading a raw image in C1 was better than LR. The highlight and shadow recovery seems to work much better as well in my experience. I have a nice little work flow for pics of the kids and family and have enjoyed learning how to edit the skin tones and textures using YT tutorials.
I really dont get why pepole think C1 is so hard? Mabye im just to photoshop and that make it easy..
I've been trying Capture One for a few months now and I'm really torn—on one hand, it's rendering of the files from my Canon EOS R is just flat out better than what I get out of LR. I love the color control, layers, and normalize features. The ability to command-select several images and have them all up at once for editing is glorious.
Where it falls down for me is when I have to do any compositing (which is all the time), or want to stitch a panorama or merge HDR. Sure, I could get HDR software, but I really dislike most dedicated software's HDR "look". In LR it just makes a single DNG file with a lot more dynamic range. I could merge panorama's in Photoshop (ignoring cost for a moment), but it's a hassle compared to LR. You can use 'edit in' in Capture One to bring images into in Photoshop, but there's no 'edit as layers in Photoshop' option. If you're compositing, you're left with a TIFF file of each image you want as a layer, and you have to manually merge those into a new file in Photoshop.
So, from a workflow perspective, it's a major hassle. If I were tethering, that's another story...
From the cost perspective, why is there no Canon-only license like there is for Sony & Fujifilm? I would probably still want the full version because I have a bunch of RAF files on my computer that I might want to process using C1... But a subscription is twice that of what Adobe offers. Right now I'm paying it because I'm still trying it out, but I can't justify paying for both Adobe and Capture One... I might buy a perpetual license, but I would have to be pretty sure I was going to stick with it....
I love the results I get out of Capture One, but it's a frustrating proposition.
This might help: https://blog.captureone.com/psd-files-capture-one-now/
Thanks, I read this but it I still wish the process was as smooth as Lightroom where I can 'open as layers' in Photoshop. Maybe this will be possible by version 21...
You mentioned switching from edit to browse in lightroom can sometimes be slow. With capture one you can quickly display the browse display, hit 'g' for a full view or 'ctrl-b' for the sidebar view. Both of these display instantly.
I've always hated the colour from LR, and detested the awful speed. I tried nVME storage, upgrading CPU and most recently added a 2080 and LR is still quite slow.
C1 is *fast*. I've had it for a while and it's had it's own problems for me in the past, v12 and now v20 is incredible. My PC goes as quick as I can, every adjustment is basically instantaneous and I feel I've finally achieved what I set out to have so long ago with LR. A lot of the small improvements they've made over the past few iterations have propelled it to incredible levels as well, even something as simple as being able to adjust the crop on multiple selected images at once and the tiny little tweaks that just make so much sense.
Only thing I miss is dehaze. I know it can be replicated but it's handy having a slider there for it that's so effective for certain scenarios.
C1 has much better looking skin tones out of RAW files too.
I hate Lightroom Cloud...so crippled so this might be worth a try..
LR if: you want your photos on all devices to cull, edit, and share. Pump out volume of content. Quick editing. Drone photography with the profiles from DJI. Shoot with several cameras and mediums (phone, Gopro, DSLR, mirrorless). Want to see and edit (with the preset) video clips.
Capture one. High end commercial studio editing and retouching. For work where a client is looking for 5-10 perfectly edited images or less. Tethering. You are staying at a laptop or desktop to edit. I have used both....10 years full time consumer portrait photographer. Seniors, models, families, aerial, etc. Spent the last 3 in cap one. It’s overkill for most of my work as a session with 80 pics for a high school senior doesn’t need professional high end retouching using cap one. Recently went back to LR because my profiles and presets on CC are on my phone, desktop, iPad, and laptop if needed. Just my thoughts.
It is not that hard of a switch. Really, it is not. I switched with 11 and upgraded to 12 for the built in luminosity masking. I probably will not upgrade to 20 as, while it will do more, I do not need the newest features. And you know what? Capture One will not sue me for using an older version. Also, Capture One has online webinars that are quite good. It took me less than an hour to nail the basic features.
Well, after Aperture wasn't supported any longer and the results where ... I tried C1 and stayed. It's too good for my purposes as amateur, and I switch one or two versions before upgrading (won't upgrade to C1 20) to keep the price lower.
Anyway: It has never been easier for me to edit my images. Adjust contrasts without affecting saturation? Easy. Recovering highlights or shadows without creating a completely flat look? Easy. Of course, I'm not into refined retouching, rarely use layers (that can do magic sometimes for high dynamic range images), but it works pretty well. But so would LR. I decided not to go that way because of usability, never had to learn that much coming from Aperture.
Capture One nails it with Fuji cameras. Plus their output quality from raws look better than Lightroom's. Capture One is literally an All-in-One solution to photo editing. Other than using frequency separation, hair strand removals, and detailed dodge and burning, there isn't much of a need for me to open Photoshop, though photoshop editing has been my highest quality of edits.
I really like capture One as that pre-program before finishing an image off in Photoshop.
Now for what I don't like Capture one for.
Lightroom by in large is my best solution for dealing with 15,000 image catalogs. I make use of metadata a lot and Capture One for metadata feels lacking to me. Same goes for bulk applying keywords, keyword-hierarchy, and other searchable attributes. With my detailed metadata, I'm able to search and organize photos by people, names, model releases, locations, shooters, ect. This is a handy feature for when I have repeat clients spanning years.
The biggest issue of me dumping Adobe is simply the Cloud. Capture One is awesome for single client commercial shoots. However when I do events, weddings, and quick turn around, it's Lightroom hands down. Being able to bulk apply metadata, and edits, across an entire shoot is better in Lightroom. Also having the photos that are on my PC sync to the cloud onto my mobile devices extends my productivity when I am away from my desk.
My workflow feels unified being able to rate and cull images on my phone, make basic exposure and detail adjustments from my ipad, finalize and output images from the desktop and all of this is unified under Adobe Cloud. Plus being able to share albums instantly with clients for comments and review right out of the cloud is handy too.
If Capture One offers a cloud based ecosystem where I can work my photos from any device, I'll jump ship completely.
I acquired Capture One Pro (Sony) some time ago and have given it a workout; not impressed! I won't be upgrading to the latest version.
I subscribe to Lightroom/Photoshop and have used these two package since they were released on Windows. I guess I'm habituated to them BUT I also use Affinity Photo (and like it a lot) and Luminar 3/4. I much prefer Luminar to Capture One even though Luminar 4 does have a few bugs; hopefully fixed reasonably fast in future updates.
Really? I bought the latest version of Luminar and besides the cool AI features, it's processing is downright GARISH compared to everything else on the market. You're right though, Luminar 4 is buggy as hell. It crashes on me all the time.
I migrated from Lightroom (all the usual reasons; dismally slow, quite often refused to work at all) to Capture One 10, then 12 and now 20 and haven't looked back.
Loading images takes as long as Lightroom takes but once they're in place, everything else flies.
Since making the change I've probably more than halved the number of images that require finishing in Photoshop.
With regard to duplicating the finished results that you get from Lightroom, using C1, it's unlikely that you ever will as the raw conversion engine is completely different.
There was an interesting article published a while ago; https://fstoppers.com/capture-one/capture-one-vs-lightroom-ted-forbes-ta..., explaining it.
There's a very steep learning curve for C1P, as it's mostly designed for, and used by, digital techs for studio, tethered shooting. That's where it really shines. Over the years I've made dedicated efforts to learn it, but have always gone back to LR for my work. It really does depend on how much you need its specific features. Also, on my iMacs at least, CP1 has always been MUCH slower than LR installed on the same machine. So that's always been a hindrance for me, too.
I don't see how Lightroom is that much simpler. C1 actually allows you to customize it to your needs and this makes things way way simpler. It also allows a digital tech to use your computer(if necessary) by simply bringing a copy of the workspace file and even keyboard shortcuts. I am processing compressed raw a7riv files and was surprised how fast c1 processes them on my macbook 13": about 6-8 seconds per photo. I think with a9 it was 3-4 seconds per photo.
Save as 'Large Document Format'. PSB. You can't see these in LR (or any other editor I know of), but at least you will be able to save all your layers. Let's hope Lightroom starts supporting PSB's soon, because the high-res camera's really do push the limits of PSD's. I was using a Sony A7RIV and the raw files from it are over 120MB EACH.
The biggest issue is that you really CANNOT just shift your work from one to the other. Yes, you can shift the LR catalogue (although I encountered errors doing so that COP support were unable to resolve) but it really doesn't feel like for like once you have done it.
In terms of actual image processing, on an iMac Pro 10 core, the comparison is like the difference between a 900cc lawnmower and a Ferrari. COP is far, far more responsive and as you note in your review, it offers huge flexibility that LR lacks.
In terms of a DAM system, I think LR is better.
The ideal program would be a hybrid - so if Adobe could just buy COP and merge the two, that would be great. Thanks!
Just like when Autodesk bought Maya and merged it with 3ds Max! Oh wait... Just like when Autodesk bought Softimage and merged it with... (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ NEVERMIND!
But it would be extremely nice if Adobe's processing could match C1's and if C1's DAM could match Adobe.
C1 seems to be missing (and please correct me if I'm wrong) an 8-point keystone correction tool - separate points for verticals/horizontals rather than either/or or a 4-point. Both DxO PL (via Viewpoint) and LR CC support this, and it's a big deal for real estate / architectural editing with one point perspectives.
Do you mean the 4-line perspective correction (for squaring up 1-point perspectives)? They do have this—my only beef with this feature of C1 is that the points are all connected. In LR you trace four straight lines, in C1 it's a little trickier...
Bought my license in September, now they want 220 dollars to "upgrade" to a new version number which has... a little bit better denoise algorithm(which should have been there to begin with, the one in version 12 is awful, not pro by any mean) and 3 sliders changed. Bleh, they're just after a quick cash grab.
I must say I regret my purchase, the interface is a mess, the denoise is awful, the highlight recovery tool doesn't recover anything it just make the image worst, the shadow recovery just add noise which the denoiser is incapable of removing, the color option are potentially powerful but so complicated that in my hands they just make the image worst, the watermark can only do single line, the file manager doesn't dig into sub folder... I could go on, but the gist of it is that software is way too pricey for it's quality, performance and interface which are more akin to the free option available.
Still looking for a digital asset management system that allows bulk export of metadata for import into a GIS. So far only Aperture does this and will be keeping a legacy machine on the current version of OSx to maintain this functionality but it seems such a easy fix for any of these replacements.
That seems like a pretty niche feature for a raw processor... Are there not any plug-ins available that can do this?
No good ones that I've found. I can't be the only person out there doing forensic and environmental litigation work where geographic accuracy is important.
Good luck! Seems like location data has taken a back seat in many modern cameras and software (smartphones not withstanding). I don’t think it’s a huge priority for them. Which is unfortunate, I like having that metadata too, but it isn’t exactly key to my work.
I have been using capture one starting with 12 last February. There is a learning curve, but I'm getting the hang of it. You know that you can export your capture one edit into photoshop and then back into capture one. You can also move your edit from capture one into affinity and back.
As a Fujifilm photographer I've tried to move from LR to C1. But I couldn't really go full C1. I still need PS and I don't have money for both C1, PS/LR. So I tried Affinity that didn't really work great with my hardware. So for now I stick with LR. The files looked a little bit better in C1, but for me, it wasn't worth it.
"After an hour of playing, trying to replicate the look and feel of one of my images edited in Lightroom was proving impossible"
Doing that is a mistake. C1 has its own 'feel' which is often perceived as 'better'.
If you plan to use catalogs in C1 (rather than sessions), note that the import of your LR catalog into C1 is fraught with troubles. It is supported but it definitely isn't "smooth sailing".
C1's catalog search speed is far, far slower than LR. I have a 20,000 image catalog. I can search the entire catalog for anything with LR 6 but the same search in C1 can take 10-15 minutes.
C1 does not allow lens adjustments like chromatic aberration correction, distortion correction, and chromatic aberration correction on files in JPG format. Maybe they figure that the camera will have compensated for those things in JPG mode and some newer cameras do but a lot of older cameras did not.
Layers are a great feature but you're only allowed a max of 16 layers. Most of the time, that has been enough but I have had a few cases where I needed more.
LR's keystone adjustments, especially their AUTO keystone adjustment option, is far superior to that of C1, IMO. WIth C1, you enable the keystone tool then draw vertical and/or horizontal lines to show it how you want your verticals and horizontal lines, then click APPLY. This usually gets me close but fairly often I have to fine tune the corrections using the manual Keystone adjustments on another page.Even after that amount of tweaking, C1 may still not get it right. For difficult corrections I will still go into to LR and use their Auto keystone adjustment instead.
Finally, at least for my Nikon raw files, C1 does not offer the ability to select from any of the camera color styles - Landscape, Vivid, Neutral, Portrait,etc. unlike LR. I -think- with Fuji raw files it -does- allow this. Instead, C1 determines what they think is the best color conversion from raw and it's up to you to adjust the image for your camera settings manually.
On the other hand, I very much like the results when it processes my Nikon raw files and their Auto exposure adjustment almost never gets it wrong, unlike LR 6 which almost gets it wrong for me.
I have been considering changing over to c1 for a couple of years now. What keeps me tied to Lightroom is the history panel, being able to see my editing steps and go back to a certain step is very useful. I have been waiting for c1 to add a history panel with each new update. With all the minute adjustments that can be made in c1, a history panel seems a necessity. There is lots of great raw editors out there, and no history panel? Does adobe have a patent on it or something?
In my experience, the amount of work that one can do in C1 has been able to reduce retouching budgets for clients. Less time in Photoshop for something that's faster to do in C1 while still on set.
Considering the tethering control and color options, how anyone uses LR for commercial work anymore is utterly baffling to me.
I unfortunately still have to use LR for my H6D-100c files, but frankly speaking it's one of the reasons why I use that camera less and less these days.
C1 Pro is really a much better piece of software. One aspect that hasn't been mentioned is the quality of the color profiles. It's really quite obvious for the Nikon and Fuji cameras I am using.
The local retouching implementation of LR makes it a no go, while the layers in C1 Pro have now reached a very high level of maturity.
The only 2 aspects I prefer in LR are:
1. The automatic correction of verticals. That can be a major time saver and I hope Phaseone delivers something equivalent quickly
2. The launch time of C1 Pro can be long on large libraries
I have been using LR since 2008 and the full Creative Cloud versions since 2011. So I have an extensive catalog(s) of images and since I do video work I have the need for Premier Pro and Audition for audio. I shoot Canon 5D MarkIV and FujiFilm systems with both the X-Tran and Bayer sensors. LR has issues with the X-Tran sensor and I find my self shooting more and more images with the Fuji system, so I have been searching for a solution and I'm testing C1/20 now. I really love how C1/20 provides much more in the ability to edit an image and its speed has proven much better on my system then LR, but I still have my concerns including C1/20 into my workflow. Cost aside (not that I would want to spend more for any additional editing systems) I find it difficult including C1/20 into my workflow alongside LR. Maybe I'm just a little too attached to the LR cataloging abilities. I guess I will continue my 30 days of trial and hopefully come to a sensible conclusion...
Capture One still do not have Auto White Balance?
C1's always had auto white balance
Whatever the company, I hate the subscription model. In the end, It becomes really expensive. Probably not a big problem for companies but a real issue for private persons.
Hey didn't capture one marketing at some point not too far in the past make fun of CC's subscription model ?
Two of the reasons why so many competitors to Lr/Ps seems so much faster is that most of them take better advantage of multithreading and/or GPU acceleration. Adobe is still mostly a one thread pony, and only uses GPU in a couple or so modules.
So Lr/Ps benefits from faster, more expensive CPU's, and a little from better GPU, while most others benefit greatly from less expensive, not-quite-as-fast, multi-core/thread CPU's, and greatly from better GPU's. If one has a dual core CPU and an older GPU, one may not see significant —or any— speed increase with C1P, or other alternatives.
I have an older six-core CPU and a newer nVidia GPU, and my work with my developer of choice is actually more than adequate. (Still thinking of updating my MB/CPU to a modern system, but for other reasons).
My LR subscription is coming to an end in 1 month. I just cancelled the yearly automatic renewal, let's see if I can force myself to learn C1 until then!
I'm still on Capture One 10 and I love it! About 3-4 years ago LR was just unusable, it was horrendously slow! I was sick and tired of the software dictating to me how long it took to edit images, so I took the plunge with C1.
I bought C1P10 outright rather than a subscription. I can't bear the idea of going back to LR now, C1P10 has just been so much nicer to use and much faster! I can do so much with keyboard shortcuts that I barely have to use the mouse/Wacom tablet. Tabbing between sliders and using the shift and arrow keys makes editing a breeze and really FAST!
I also like how I can easily self contain projects ('session') and move them around on my computer without breaking a link to the high res source files and messing everything up.
Currently as I say I use C1P10, and I also have PS CS5. I really don't need the latest CC version of Photoshop, so for now at least things are working well.
C1 did take some getting used to as it is very alien coming from LR, but I can do almost everything I did before better easier and faster. The vignette tool is more sophisticated in LR than C1P10, but C1 have since updated it, so if I updated my software I would have the functionality that LR gave me back again but in C1.
The vignette tool is still the same. The crop tool has been updated though which is a great improvement. I generally use the radial gradient mask for vignettes as it offers more flexibility compared to the basic tool they have on offer.
Both these programs have earned their place, but both are also a bit stuck in the past in many ways as well. Built for an era where time consuming, bespoke retouching was part of a scheme where you could charge and get paid a fair wage for taking time to perfect each image.
The problem is that’s not the process the author describes needing to do here. He needs to batch process lots of images FAST. It’s real world photography as it’s often done today. Because the cameras are so smart today, a decent shooter usually get shots that are less than perfect, but not bad to begin with.
But you still need to make them pop.
Apply the spice that turns your basic chicken breast shots into honest to goodness treats. Not cordon bleu magician magic, but the type of food truck savory WOW that has long lines forming. That’s what people are willing to pay for in most cases.
We laugh about good fast and cheap, but isn’t that sorta what food trucks deliver? modest prices, high efficiency via a limited menu and production efficiencies, and still an attention to flavor and recipe?
Here’s my concern after reading this.
Basically, this shooter won’t make a nickel more if he pushes these shots from 75% as quality up to 90%. Don’t get me wrong, of course other shoots DO demand pushing to get as close to 100% as possible - and sussing out whether Lightroom or Capture One is better for those Situations, is fine. But because getting 50 shots pushed up to 80% in a couple of hours is often smarter business than getting 10 shots perfected in the same amount of time is kinda WHY Lightroom became as popular as Photoshop. But both of those venerable approaches and many others haven’t moved very fast in the changing landscape of the modern digital arts. And for my money, software like the more AI driven Luminar from Skylum is coming on strong because of that.
Nothing beats a great chef surrounded by Viking ranges and fast broilers.
But nobody also wants a kitchen without a microwave oven.
The industry landscape is moving WAY too fast for life without the best efficiency tools you can deploy.
Horses for courses and all that
Just my 2 cents.
I think you are absolutely right. However, how can I push 50 shots up to 80% in a couple of hours, when it takes up to 3 minutes to export one single 20 megapixels shot with some basic adjustments and maybe a couple of spot corrections? That's what LR has been all about the past year or even longer, even after deleting all Adobe products and reinstalling everything. And it happens both on my 3 year old laptop and on my recent quite maxed out desktop.
It’s certainly an issue. For me, 4 years ago I dropped enough for a maxed out MacBook Pro with a top spec GPU for my primary video work and noticed it DID NOT like certain programs with older code bases. But that same laptop could FLY with some of the more modern software. Programs like Pixelmator and Afinity Photo ran much faster than Photoshop or Lightroom. And I had to make a decision. I could throw beefier desktop computers at the inefficiency and stay with the familiar and try to counteract my productivity slowdown that way — or learn new software and stay more mobile. In the end, I felt it was right to change software for me.
I just popped for a brand new 16” MacBook Pro and on the software I use daily now, (Final Cut Pro X and Luminar, primarily) that laptop works EXTREMELY well.
Seriously, times have changed. Hardware is faster and more affordable than ever. And modern software can really leverage that to drive crazy productivity. But you HAVE to be willing to change your approach and your workflow as the advances are developed. And often that means leaving behind your older comfort zones.
My 2 cents anyway.
As they say, your mileage may vary.
I think you're completely right! My biggest issues are the following:
1) lack of time. The learning curve for C1 is quite steep coming from LR, and every time I downloaded trial version I gave up not because I didn't like it, but because of time.
2) cant really import old edits. This shouldn't be a problem but I have had a few very messy years before in my files/catalogs organisation, and without LR, I will be quite lost. If only you could just buy 1 month subscription to LR every now and then for emergencies, but no, at least here in Europe they force you to take a whole year membership.
Having said that, I just got so aggravated lately when sitting together with a client, wanting to show him a picture in full screen mode (in LR) and as soon as I pressed on the F key, the screen started flickering and after 3 minutes LR just crashed. Tried again later while alone, and the same behaviour is happening on both my laptop and top of the line desktop.
So first step was to cancel my LR subscription (it was due for renewal around mid January), giving me now 1 month to learn C1.