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Capture One or Lightroom


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Capture 1 has a steeper leaning curve but IMHO is the better of the two once you get your head around it. As suggested above, try both, but persit longer with C1 simply because it takes longer to learn. Worth it though.

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Thank you. I'll take your advice. Also, for corrections that Capture One does not perform, i.e., removing dust spots etc..., I can always import a TIFF or JPEG file to Capture NX2, with which I am familiar, to perform those minor operations.

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Completely a personal choice, but after struggling with the C1 that came with my M8.2, then trying LR2, I downloaded LR3 beta over the weekend and for me, the LR3 beta seems to be the best of the three. It seems more user-friendly and logical (although from my experience logic and reason are rarely taken into consideration when it comes to writing software).

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  • 2 weeks later...

One of the things that has kept me a Capture One user since version 3 was the quality of its camera profiles. It was never my primarily raw converter (Nikon Capture 4, Adobe ACR, and now Lightroom were) but for absolute best skin tones and overall accurate color Capture One was IMO better than anything else out there.

Adobe has made great strides with its camera profiles and now they are much better than in the past. I still create custom profiles for my bodies, but the improvement over the current Adobe profiles is small.

With the introduction of Lightroom Beta 3.2 I think the gap between Lightroom and Capture One is nearly closed in regard to color accuracy and Lightroom is now superior in noise reduction. My M8.2 DNG files are noticeably cleaner processed in Lightroom and (with my profiles) virtually as good color wise as what I can get from Capture One 5.1.

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If you are using a Mac, make sure to compare also Raw Photo Processor (RPP). It is here: http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/ It is a free shareware labor-of-love by a photographer/software expert. At its core is a demosaicing algorithm that is more accurate (and more processor-intensive) than either LR (ACR) or C1. As I understand it, LR and C1 are optimized for speed (integer calculations) so you can instantly see modifications on screen, while RPP takes its time with floating point calculations. RPP only does a few things, but does them exceedingly well. It treats highlights in a particularly film-like manner. For some images, you will recover more detail and texture than via the competitors; for other images the improvement is subtle. I prefer its M9 color profile, too. As long as you're comparing, why not test this free but excellent option too? I really like (and rely on) the LR environment and tools, but RPP functions as a plug-in within LR. You can manage, edit, adjust, print, etc, with LR, but use RPP for the conversion of your keepers, then continue with the converted TIFFs inside LR. It does really nice B&W conversions, too.

Tim Nelson

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