[Stuart Schaefer Participant Posts: 7]

Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

on: December 2, 2020 at 1:52 pm

Kevin Raber wrote:

You can do all the things you can do in a catalog.  I can sort by camera and lens or things like that.  I am putting an outline together for a tutorial and will make sure I cover that.

Kavin,

Thanks! I think I am getting an handle of on how sessions can work. Just so used to using catalogs of the years,

Will be looking forward to this tutorial especially if you add sessions and how you use them.

Cheers,

Stu

 

[Stephane Bosman]

Re: Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

Reply #1 on: December 3, 2020 at 3:57 am

Thanks Kevin for explaining how you make it work. But two things if I may:

1. Your approach is pretty complicated compared to just having one database, I’m sure you’ll agree with that. On the other hand, filing 100,000 pictures per year is bound to require some organisational effort.
2. My Lightroom database contains 40,000 picture, that’s my grand total of what I have done since 2004. I cannot envision putting in place a system like yours for such a small volume and I find it a disgrace that C1 cannot handle that satisfactorily in one database. After all, it is not as if C1 presents itself as an entry-level product!

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Bosman.

[Bud James Participant Posts: 94]

Re: Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

Reply #2 on: December 3, 2020 at 7:58 am

I switched from LR to C1P about 4 years ago after being disappointed with LR handling of Fuji X raw RAF files. It was an immediate improvement even with the C1P default settings.

Three years ago, I accomplished a lifelong goal of owning a Leica. I sold off my Fuji-X kit to purchase an M10 and a few Leica lenses. Using C1P yields excellent results with the native Leica DNG files. Since acquiring my Leica M10, I have added the M10-R and the SL2. All of my processing is done in C1P and I love the results.

Switching to C1P has eliminated my need for plug-ins that I used to use with LR. I cancelled my Adobe Creative Cloud subscription after I started using Affinity Photo to handle my occasional pixel-level retouching. It’s a great program and faster than Photoshop CC.

The only drawback with C1P is that it does not handle catalogues of large reference folder images. I had about 150k images in reference folders using LR. When I switched to C1P, version 9 at that time, catalogues over about 20k images choked the program. My solution was to split my LR catalogue into smaller C1P catalogues in 2 year blocks. I’m not a pro so I only shoot about 10k images per year. Unlike LR, C1P allows you to have multiple catalogues open at a time. You cannot search across open catalogues, but this feature makes it easier to browse over multiple years.

The customizable workspace of C1P is great and reminds me of Aperture. I love the interface, user experience and resulting image quality.

One thing that I do miss from LR is the Print Module. It is one of LR’s best features. C1P’s printing capabilities are usable, but not as polished as LR. Since I export my final print images a flat TIFFs, I started using the Epson Print Layout app to print to my Epson P900 17″ printer.

C1P offers a 30-day free trial so if you give it a try.

Regards,
Bud James

Please check out my fine art and travel photography at http://www.budjames.photography or on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/budjamesphoto

[Stephane Bosman]

Re: Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

Reply #3 on: December 3, 2020 at 9:28 am

Things I missed from Lightroom apart from a working catalog:

• Stacks! I was surprised how much I missed that. Even the free Adobe Bridge has that!
• Huge variety of plug-ins, even if I don’t use many. There are a total of 3 plugins for C1 !
• Open as smart object in Photoshop: that is a big one in my opinion, even if C1 layers reduce the need for an external pixel editor. But does not suppress it.
• The Print module: Lightroom’s print module is the best in the business.
• Super easy masking for capture sharpening.
• Spot and defects healing so much better in Lightroom. I couldn’t believe it when I realised I needed one layer per spot in C1. And unbelievable it was hailed as a major progress when they corrected that! It was just an obvious fix to an unacceptable defect.
• Export plugins in Lightroom, to anything like WordPress, SmugMug, Flickr, probably all the photo publishing services, really. I don’t think It would be possible for a third party to write an export plugin for C1.
• The Map module. Not essential but very nice nonetheless.

Things I didn’t like in Lightroom and made me look elsewhere at the time:

• Subscription, but I have gone over it, especially seeing it is actually less expensive than upgrading C1 and includes so many things like a web portfolio service, fonts, mobiles apps, Photoshop, etc…
• Sluggishness in starting up (on Windows 10) and switching between modules and between photos. I’m awaiting for a new M1-based Mac Mini, I have seen a video of a wedding photographer on an M1 with 8GB of RAM using Lightroom, it was as fast as Photo Mechanic.
• X-Trans rendering, but that has been generally improved and the new Enhanced Resolution feature now puts Lightroom at the top on that regard.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Bosman.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Stephane Bosman.

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1327]

Re: Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

Reply #4 on: December 3, 2020 at 7:12 pm

Stephane, We all find our own workflow that works for us over the years.  Based on the number of images I take a year and how I print, the workflow I described works for me.  No doubt the Catalog/DB of C1 is a weak point. There are so many things that make Capture One work well that, having used it since 2000, I have my way of doing things.  Somethings that all of us want in Capture One seem so simple to implement, but they are still missing.  The Before and After feature was just introduced.  That should have been done years ago.  It would be great to have history nf  few other things too.  I am in touch with a number of people at Capture One. ( was a VP at Phase One for 13 years) so I know some folks.  I have expressed my wants.

There is a big team there now, and they must be working on some new features.  I am really good with Lightroom, but I use C1 Pro as for me, it is faster, more customizable, and using it the way I describe it works really well.

I am preparing some upcoming videos that will show off some of the features, and once we are out of the Pandemic, I’ll get the team together, and we will do a new tutorial.  I have done two previous large tutorials, but it is time for a major update.

 

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[John Sadowsky Participant Posts: 169]

Re: Switching from Lightroom to Capture One Questions

Reply #5 on: December 3, 2020 at 7:39 pm

Stephane Bosman wrote:

Things I missed from Lightroom

There is no doubt about it, Lr is a better library (database, asset management, etc.) program.  Add to your list no face recognition keywording.

I also agree that the Lr print module is superior.  The recipes are nice, but that’s largely a fancy user interface, and it’s not directly linked to printing.  C1 doesn’t give us out-of-gamut warnings, and in “proofing” you have to select rendering intent via Preferences (WTF).

I’m not completely buying your “masking for sharpening” complaint.  C1 provides a threshold slider for sharpening, which is what Lr does.  The difference is that Lr provides a grayscale image to show you the sharpening isolation effect of setting a threshold setting.  I’d be the first to say some of the cool features in C1 are just better user interfaces.  For example, the keystone tool does exactly the same thing as the rotate and detail (vertical, horizontal, … ) tools do – it’s just a better user interface to those tools.  In this case, I’ll give you that Lr has a nice visualization that C1 doesn’t have.

Lastly, C1 has a Remove Spot tool that does not require an extra layer.  Requiring a new layer for each heal/clone was definitely an issue – but, as you say, one that has been corrected.  That said, that heal/cloning is done on a layer that can be clicked on and off, which is a significant advantage over Lr.

JSS

[Author]

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