Capture one - does anyone use it or have views?

[crisscross]

As I still seem to be housebound and having given Aperture and DxO fairly good workouts, I thought I might as well give Capture One 4.6 a whirl too. I know that one of the photographers I respect most uses it. For RAW conversion.

Does anyone here have any experience or views to get me going?

[McQ]

I used Capture One exclusively prior to the 4.0 revisions. At that time I thought it had the best built in tonal curves of all the RAW development programs, including Photoshop ACR. There is something about how their highlight and shadows roll off that I've always found quite pleasing and realistic. I have also been quite a fan of how it renders detail for landscape scenes. Etcetera.cc also had excellent custom color profiles for a wide range of cameras. Overall, I thought that Capture One took a much more photograhpic approach to RAW development, while Photoshop's ACR took a more image-processing based approach. Since then, of course, Lightroom has come out to address that.

My biggest concern right now is with the future of their raw development software (in light of increased competition from Aperture and Lightroom, amongst others), combined with the very large development times they've been having between revisions. It took them nearly six months to have a fully functional release version ready for the Canon 5D, for example, which caused me to look into other programs. I really did not want to at the time, but had no choice.

With regards to version 4.6: I don't have any experience post v4. I have considered delving back into C1 software though, if they continue to show the improvements they've shown since v4 came out. Hopefully there's other members who know a bit more about the latest versions...

[crisscross]

Thank you for that Sean. I have had a look at it and the choice seems to hinge on whether you like to deal with things using Levels & Curves as in Capture One or take advantage of some pretty smart algorithms as in DxO.

You are obviously a master on the L & C; I rarely touch them, in fact one of the things at the finishing end I like about NX2 is that it has the alternative LCH (luminosity, chroma, hue) control.

DxO labs do seem to have done an incredible job in analysing what goes on in the actual box and lens and providing the custom correction. It is also probably better for the worse cameras, and the Digital Rebel series was severely price limited. I dare say the bigger Canons and even 450D don't need as much coddling.

DxO on order for when my 14 days is up

[The Blue Boy]

Chris,

I'm sure I'm not on my own in saying we eagerly await your test results!

Mark

[crisscross]

Chris,

I'm sure I'm not on my own in saying we eagerly await your test results!

Mark

I am afraid you won't see anything finished Mark. As previous post says, it is not software that I personally find my vague and intuitive approach is suited too - more for the technically minded. DxO on the other hand is the slide sliders dream and outperforms Aperture on what is normally Apple strewn ground.

BTW none of these are 'finishing' software having little or no facility for working on selected parts of an image. Maybe like Lightroom. DxO does however seem just the job for making CR2 from 350D ready to be treated as honorary Nikon image in NX2
(and thereafter saved as nef) - as is the Greater Black Back Gull in The Great Chuck & Colin Bird / Boat Challenge! 104