• 1
  • 0
Quentin Decaillet's picture

Lightroom vs. Capture One vs. the Others, What's Your Raw Processing Software of Choice?

I'm curious to hear from people shooting portrait, beauty, or fashion what their raw processing software of choice is and why.

Personally, I've worked with both Capture One and LR/ACR for a while, but I use the latter only when I cannot open the files in C1 (Hasselblad, Pentax, etc.). I love the tethered capture feature of Capture One and it's actually what made me switch to it. The color editing possibilities are fantastic too, much more refined than LR in my opinion. I'm currently trying to other apps that seem extremely promising for other genres, but nothing seems to beat Phase One's software in terms of color editing and tethered capture…

So what's your favorite raw editing software? By the way, this is not meant to be a war between Adobe fanboys vs Phase One fanboys vs the rest… I just want to see what most of you use and why :)

Log in or register to post comments
8 Comments

For portraits ACR. But i'm trying from time to time capture one, just can't get results that i want still.

You mean you can't get the results you want with Capture One, or in general? What do you feel you are lacking to get where your images where you'd like them to be? When comparing them to pictures that inspire you, what's different – colors, lighting, contrast, etc.?

Can't get results that i want, but it's problem that i just don't feel comfortable with capture one. But I just found article with Pratik Naik video, will check it, maybe after will be better.

I hear not the first time people saying, that for colors Capture One is the best :)

For studio shoots I'm tethering and processing through Capture One, but for generally everything else (lifestyle, outdoor portrait, event) I'm using lightroom. Mostly just because of the way I process things, it'd good mentally to keep them separate. Also I've made some film emulation presets in Lightroom that I haven't been able to transfer to Capture One yet.

I have just subscribed to Capture One, spent the last month watching You Tube videos before making my decision. Like any new software there is a period of adjustment and it is taking some time to get use to it, but the more I use it the easier it becomes.

I mostly use dcraw for demosaicing and then take the tiffs to Gimp, because it's the best GMIC host I'm aware of.

Hands down for Capture One

There are 4 reasons i love capture one these daysm i hould say i haven't used lightroom since Lr 2 or 3, buti've been using COP since version 8.

- First reason is that i have much more control or options in Capture One rather than Lightrooms simple adjustment sliders.
- Second reason is the "Skin Tone" tool which i have to say is a powerful tool for portrait, fashion, lifestyle & beauty photographers.
- Third reason would be the ability to mask and make layers like Photoshop (maybe not as easy as photoshop is), you can even dodge and burn when you get used to it.
- Forth reason, export quality. sharper, better color & many options to choose from.

However, there are few things i may not like the way it works on COP such as the healing & cloning system, photoshop is the best choice so far.

ACR on the other hand, would be my go to if im way deep in my retouching process on photoshop and it might take time to go back to COP and import a variant, do some small adjustments and then move back to Ps. i do not have much experience with ACR, but it can do lots of neessary tasks right in Ps when you need it.

PS. if you are new to Capture One and just got started exploring this programs, i should say you really do need some tutorials to begin with which PhaseOne for instanse have some on their channel ove on YouTube. Ther are even more if you know what you are looking for (payed & free).