A B Posted March 28, 2015 Share #1 Posted March 28, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) Hello, As an Aperture user I'm trying to make up my mind as to which DAM/Raw developer is best for me to use since Aperture has been discontinued andthe new Apple Photo app is too limited for my needs. My choice boils down basically to Lightroom or Capture One Pro. The logical path would be switching to Lightroom, offered with every Leica camera purchase, but since I'm not very fond of the Lightroom interface and workflow I've just downloaded and installed also the trial of Capture One 8.2 to evaluate it. However I'd like to know also the opinion of other Leica users, in particular how good is Capture One support for Leica cameras and lenses? Currently I’m using a Leica T with the T vario lenses and a couple of R lenses. thanx Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted March 28, 2015 Posted March 28, 2015 Hi A B, Take a look here Capture One Pro or Lightroom?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
otto.f Posted March 28, 2015 Share #2 Posted March 28, 2015 Don't know about support of C1 for Leica T, but I worked with C1 from the start with my M8 and never got convinced of LR since my M9. I also had Aperture all that time but rarely touched it. The quality of the endresults of C1 is unsurpassed by LR or Aperture in my view, although it has its hickups, but I am in no hurry. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpitt Posted March 28, 2015 Share #3 Posted March 28, 2015 I switched to Lightroom recently after using Apertue. Capture One produces fine results, but Aperture was more than just about 'developing' my RAW files. It was more an organizing tool in teh first place, making good use of keywords, albums, ratings and smart albums. When I started with Aperture 2.0, Lightroom was no match for Aperture in this department. Capture One was even worse IMO. Not sure how it is in that department now. Lightroom 5.7, folder use and collections, looks like it covers all I will need. I am still getting used to different namings and shortcuts, but I am sure Capture One would be even more of a challenge. e.g. who decided that Shift + A in LR was going to be a good shortcut for Cropping? Apertures C was more logical. And there are many more examples like that. I am disapointed with the LR tool to import from Aperture catalogs though. Keywords will be imported, and projects can become folders in LR. It will not import the adjustments made to my RAW files though and that makes it useless for me. I can not imagine going through all my catalogs and optimizing thousends of RAW files again! Not to mention some books I made... So, this month I started using LR for all new shots, but keeping Aperture and my catalogs for old work. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subject Focus Posted March 29, 2015 Share #4 Posted March 29, 2015 Both Capture One and Lightroom let you organize your photos however you like and they look at your photos folder to edit however C1 has the added benefit of a catalog to keep your photos in if you wish. The clarity slider is significantly better in C1. The performance in C1 is much better. The healing brush and sharpness mask, not sharpness itself, but the unsharpen mask thing in Lightroom is something C1 doesn't have. The raw converter seems much better in C1. I've just been using C1 8, Lightroom 5, and DxO 10 literally all this past week to decide which I want and I settled on C1 because the photos take less processing and look much better on C1 to me. 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpitt Posted March 29, 2015 Share #5 Posted March 29, 2015 Both Capture One and Lightroom let you organize your photos however you like and they look at your photos folder to edit however C1 has the added benefit of a catalog to keep your photos in if you wish. It looks like it was a stupid idea from me to not look at Capture One again. Thanks for making me reconsider. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpitt Posted March 29, 2015 Share #6 Posted March 29, 2015 Capture One Pro 8 can now also import Aperture catalogs, including most picture adjustments! That is much better than Lightroom 5.7 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted March 29, 2015 Share #7 Posted March 29, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) Lightroom allows for single and multiple catalogs, as well as importing Aperture libraries. Seems like you would greatly benefit from free video tutorials from Julieanne Kost and/or books from Kelby or Evening. BTW, LR6 should be released any day now. Jeff 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
A B Posted March 29, 2015 Author Share #8 Posted March 29, 2015 Thanx for all the feedback, in effect Capture One is generally highly regarded for its raw development output, it seems to extract a bit more detail, although it probably does not have all the bells and whistles of Lightroom. As I'm playing with CP, I found I like also the highly customizable interface. Yes I’ll take a look at the rumored Lightroom 6 when it ships before making a final decision, maybe Adobe improved the interface and workflow I doubt Apple will evolve the new Photo app into a professional tool: even if they do, how many professional or advanced amateur photographers are going to switch back from LR or CP or DXO? I’m still puzzled by the fact Apple decided to abandon the pro photography market; I’m sure they can get all the right resources to make a new and much more improved Aperture like app. best Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dpitt Posted March 30, 2015 Share #9 Posted March 30, 2015 Saying that Lightroom supports Aperture import is an overstatement IMO. see Aperture import plugin now available Information that is NOT IMPORTED into Lightroom: Image adjustments Smart Albums Face Tag Region of Interest (face naming tags are mapped to keywords) Color Labels (other than optionally as keywords) Stacks (other than optionally as keywords) Any kind of creation (books, web galleries, etc) other than the collections that correspond to them Not importing image adjustments is a deal breaker for me. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanyasi Posted March 30, 2015 Share #10 Posted March 30, 2015 Those who use Capture One swear by it. I use it with a medium format back and I hate it. The raw conversion is excellent, but the user interface is poorly designed. It is not intuitive, and I find setting defaults unreliable. The file management system is overly complicated. If you are going to go this route I recommend the video on luminous landsape. It wasn't that expensive. The problem with it is that the two guys who made it think they are comedians, so it takes twice as long to cover the material. Unfortunately, if you really want to learn, this is your best option. They are systematic and fairly comprehensive. I was a LR user, but have since switched to a Photoshop workflow. You gotta pay your dues, but in the end Photoshop works best for me 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeitz Posted March 30, 2015 Share #11 Posted March 30, 2015 Software likes and dislikes are very personal, but I agree with Jack. Bridge and CS6 match my methods of work flow much better than C1 or LR. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
t_kennedy Posted March 30, 2015 Share #12 Posted March 30, 2015 I would recommend to download the free trial for both Lightroom and Capture One and see which you prefer. I switched to Capture One simultaneously with the purchase of my Leica M9 after making the comparison for myself. If you have your images catalogued logically, importing all your folders into C1 with their catalogue is not much different than using Lightroom, from a user interface perspective. You can still rate images with stars, use color tags, meta tags, create groups within C1 that are not replicated folders on your hardware, and print. All from C1. I am able to produce much better results with C1 than Lightroom, and it has taken much of my color stylizing workflow out of Photoshop and into C1 saving quite a bit of time. The only negative I have found with C1 is dealing with TIFF files is not as seamless as with Lightroom. Their back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop is very, very good. But not as good as having a better processed image to begin with! -Tim Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
otto.f Posted March 31, 2015 Share #13 Posted March 31, 2015 Those who use Capture One swear by it. I use it with a medium format back and I hate it. The raw conversion is excellent, but the user interface is poorly designed. It is not intuitive, and I find setting defaults unreliable. The file management system is overly complicated. If you are going to go this route I recommend the video on luminous landsape. It wasn't that expensive. The problem with it is that the two guys who made it think they are comedians, so it takes twice as long to cover the material. Unfortunately, if you really want to learn, this is your best option. They are systematic and fairly comprehensive. I was a LR user, but have since switched to a Photoshop workflow. You gotta pay your dues, but in the end Photoshop works best for me I must say I can't miss Photoshop alongside C1. Printing from C1 is also a pain in the ass 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
esquire53 Posted March 31, 2015 Share #14 Posted March 31, 2015 Those who use Capture One swear by it.The raw conversion is excellent, but the user interface is poorly designed. It is not intuitive, and I find setting defaults unreliable. The file management system is overly complicated. YES, YES, YES and YES ... 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
A B Posted March 31, 2015 Author Share #15 Posted March 31, 2015 Thank you guys, Yes I've dowloaded CP1 pro trial and I have the license for LR 5 that came with my Leica T, so I'm playing with them and trying to learn strength and weaknesses. I do know that Photoshop is a very comprehensive and professional software, but I'm not personally very fond of Adobe apps: I find them generally not intuitive, too complicated, convoluted and I really dislike the subscription method. Although cp1 interface is not like Apple and surely a bit messy, it still looks better than LR for my personal taste. One thing worries me about Capture One is that it comes from a relatively small company depending on hardware camera sales, and the camera market is not exactly doing well these last years: I'm wondering how committed they are in the long term to the software side and in supporting other cameras in addition to their medium format ones. I don't want to move again to a new app all my pictures and redoing adjustments after a couple of years Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
otto.f Posted March 31, 2015 Share #16 Posted March 31, 2015 "Redoing adjustments": one of my favorite aspects of working in RAW is precisely that I can always re-adjust with my eyes and judgment from that moment. Also, the 'engines' responsible for a good conversion evolve in time, which leads to the fact that a capture with 640ASA with an M8 from 2007, was worthless at that time and now perfectly showable and printable. For instance engine #7 of C1 was a quantum leap with respect to noise handling etc. compared to 6, 5 and further back. Paper evolves too and other papers demand other conversions. In the mean time, the time you need for a good postprocessing becomes shorter too because you learn and the programs get better. So the 'redoing adjustments' argument does not count for me. 2 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Clark Posted March 31, 2015 Share #17 Posted March 31, 2015 What about Photoshop Elements? Currently I use CS4 and if I upgrade my computer I'm thinking to go that route rather than use web based Photoshop. 1 Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted March 31, 2015 Share #18 Posted March 31, 2015 ... but I'm not personally very fond of Adobe apps: I find them generally not intuitive, too complicated, convoluted and I really dislike the subscription method. LR still comes as a standalone option, not requiring any subscription. For me, every iteration has gotten significantly better, with increasingly less need to use or update Photoshop. But software preferences are very personal….like cameras. Only way to know is to try…and in this case, free trial downloads from different companies are readily available. And with LR, free videos by Julieanne Kost are worth checking. Jeff Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bocaburger Posted March 31, 2015 Share #19 Posted March 31, 2015 I used C1 that came with my M8, then switched to LR that came with my M9. I can't say I preferred one over the other, or warmed up to either. They all have their plusses and minuses. With the M240 I've mainly been shooting jpeg and what little PP I might want to do (cropping, cloning out the occasional spot) I do in CS2 which I know like the back of my hand. I recently downloaded it to my laptop running Win 8 and was pleasantly surprised that it works without issue given that it's 10 yr old software. I've never paid for image editing software and done just fine. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanyasi Posted April 1, 2015 Share #20 Posted April 1, 2015 Thank you guys, One thing worries me about Capture One is that it comes from a relatively small company depending on hardware camera sales, and the camera market is not exactly doing well these last years: I'm wondering how committed they are in the long term to the software side and in supporting other cameras in addition to their medium format ones. I don't want to move again to a new app all my pictures and redoing adjustments after a couple of years The problem with everything is that it can become obsolete quickly, but that doesn't worry me about Capture 1. I have a Leaf back. Phase one and leaf backs are tightly integrated with Capture 1. One clear tie is tethered shooting. Unless the back business turns sour, I don't see Capture 1 disappearing. And contrary to what some want to believe there is a difference between the Canon and Nikon pixel monster output and medium format. Maybe that will change with the two new Canon 50 cameras, but I doubt it. Quote Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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