Sunday, August 25th, 2024

Capture One

I've been using Capture One Pro instead of Lightroom Classic for a few months. I was inspired to purchase an annual subscription by all the rave reviews from YouTubers like pal2tech and that lot, as well as the early days of the Great Adobe Terms of Use Debacle.1

Many people champion C1 as superior to LrC (see above), but I disagree. Each solution has its strengths and weaknesses. LrC has excellent catalog management and a far more straightforward interface for making image adjustments. C1 can't compete with LrC's built-in AI noise reduction and automatic mask selection tools, either. However, the latest iteration of Topaz Photo AI is much better at noise reduction and sharpening than Lightroom.2 Used sparingly, Topaz produces very natural results, but most of the time, I like to leave the sensor noise in anyway.3

Capture One is also nice. It's fast and does everything you need photo editing software to do, and it does all of it exceptionally well. I think it will be my photo editor of choice from now on, if only because I can customize the interface how I want it (and I haven't figured out a way to switch back and forth between the C1 and LrC gracefully). If you're a photographer looking to break up with Adobe over their licensing update, Capture One is definitely worth a try, but you should know Adobe updated its license again and promises not to train AI on your images.4 On the other hand, if you're in the market for an app that's leaps and bounds better than LrC to make your pro photog workflow super duper fast for streamlined efficiencies and maximum profit, you're asking a lot, but who knows? Give it a try.

  1. Adobe Responds to 'Terms of Use' Controversy, Says It Isn't Spying on Users ↩︎

  2. A lot of people are demanding consumers be notified when AI is used in the creation of digital works, but the overwhelming majority of AI isn't anything like StableDiffusion or ChatGPT. The bulk of it describes basic automation and pattern identification — and it's in everything.5 ↩︎

  3. I didn't use any AI on today's bee photo. The only thing I did was apply the default color profile along with a +1.05 vignette to push the subject forward. ↩︎

  4. Adobe’s new terms of service say it won’t use your work to train AI ↩︎

  5. It softens hands while you do the dishes. ↩︎

Romeo Had Juliette

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