Capture One updates. Are they now too expensive?

[hansvons]

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8 hours ago, irenedp said:

There was a program called 3dLUT creator which had good reviews and may provide that.

I use 3DLUTcreator to design my own camera profiles. Very capable, very sluggish. 

[Anbaric]

On 7/13/2023 at 9:53 PM, dpitt said:

Important update.

As stated,  I was happy to purchase C1P  at a discount. I managed to install updates v23(16.1.2) and v23(16.1.3) and I thought to be safe for every update of v23 until 30th of September 2023.

Now I found out that I can not install v23(16.2.0) released in May! At least Capture One could have the decency to call it v24, but no it is still called v23!
So my 200 Euro bought a new, of the shelf product at 33% discount and one month later it is made obsolete by another version with the same name. Upgrading at the current price discount and with the 40% of for me as a customer buying within a year would still cost me 160 EUR to upgrade my v23 version to v23(16.2)

I will not upgrade and keep using my (incomplete) v23 for the foreseeable future, but it does not add to my customer satisfaction level,  I can tell you that... If they keep updating at that rate, making previous perpetual licenses obsolete...
 

Looks like they stung you with a new policy that only came into force for purchases made after Feb 14th 2023 (Happy Valentine's Day!). People who purchased before this date under the old policy will get all 16.x.x versions. You will only get 16.1.x versions, which means no feature updates, just bug fixes:

https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/7998068628637

Squeezing perpetual licence customers like this, presumably to 'encourage' them to move to subscriptions, just makes C1 look like a less attractive option in general. In your position, I would be inclined to make a complaint, explaining you bought their product under the impression you would get updates that will not now be forthcoming. Perhaps Customer Services have the latitude to upgrade your licence to the full 16.x entitlement.

Edit: Looking at the comment thread under the support link above, the reaction from C1 customers to the new policy seems to be pretty much universal anger, but C1 aren't budging.

Edited July 17, 2023 by Anbaric

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[wlaidlaw]

Most companies who insist that their customers are wrong, end up in bankruptcy. I too have been caught by the perpetual licence purchaser not getting updates and as a 20 year user of C1 I am hopping mad about this. In particular, I would want to receive new or updated camera and lens profiles. Unless this decision is reversed, this will be the last C1 update I buy and I would doubt from the comments I see in the C1 user forum, that I am alone in this. I think this is called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I now find that ACR does 90% of what I need and when used with Bridge and Photoshop, is far simpler for batch processing RAW images than C1 has become. 

Wilson

 

[dpitt]

8 hours ago, Anbaric said:

Edit: Looking at the comment thread under the support link above, the reaction from C1 customers to the new policy seems to be pretty much universal anger, but C1 aren't budging.

Indeed. They are not budging... I will keep using my v23(16.1.x) version of C1P for as long as it stays compatible with my Mac hardware and software. In a few years better alternatives from other vendors might be available. Capture one will never see a cent of me again.

For the DAM side of C1P and LR (organizing and keywords and more...), I can already recommend the free (open source) software Digikam. It has lots of features the former two can only dream of. The built in editor of Digikam is not much use to me. I just use it for all the rest and can open any individual file in C1P or LR or PS like packages.

For those who want to also edit their RAW files for free:

I got good results with  Rawtherapee and Darktable. The workflow is not as streamlined as with C1P or LR at the moment, but Darktable in particular has many features you can not even find in LR, C1P and PS combined. It just lags behind on the AI tools side.

7 hours ago, wlaidlaw said:

Most companies who insist that their customers are wrong, end up in bankruptcy. I too have been caught by the perpetual licence purchaser not getting updates and as a 20 year user of C1 I am hopping mad about this. In particular, I would want to receive new or updated camera and lens profiles. Unless this decision is reversed, this will be the last C1 update I buy and I would doubt from the comments I see in the C1 user forum, that I am alone in this. I think this is called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I now find that ACR does 90% of what I need and when used with Bridge and Photoshop, is far simpler for batch processing RAW images than C1 has become. 

Wilson

Lots of amateur users will find an other way to do what they want to do. Maybe it is their goal to professionalize their consumer base... But that might make it harder to compete with LR who already have more non professional users.

Edited July 17, 2023 by dpitt

[Marc B-C]

I am a fan of C1 and will continue to use it; it does just what I want and so I now subscribe.

I do remember, however, a huge furore over Adobe when it switched to subscription. So many people said they would leave. I did (mostly due to it's lack of ability to manage Fuji RAW files at the time), however, Adobe seems to still be doing okay. Tesla, BMW both now apparently run a subscription service if you want your heated seats / windscreen wipers radio (joke list) etc to work. It is not just photography going in that direction.

Sadly not everyone who moans will do anything about it.  @wlaidlaw and @dpitt are, I am sure, good and principled people, however, most people will just go with the flow with some moaning on the side.

 

[dpitt]

Important update!

I got an update of my conversation with C1P support about not being able to use my activation Key for anything above v23(16.1.x)
Their initial reply was referring to the update of their key policy and that they were sorry but....

I explained that I was not going to upgrade because I just payed for my C1P only 2 months ago, and that I was going to stay on my version v23(16.1.x) rather than forking out an other few hundred Euro's for an upgrade.

Now they revised my case and made an exception:
" Glad you got back. As you have purchased your license very close to the release of 16.2, I will make an exception and help you to add a free update to your existing license key. Now you should be able to have access to the latest version available."

So, I am happy for now. At least I now have a version that will be current for a few more months, and I do not expect free functional upgrades after this.
Maybe I will even purchase an upgrade of C1P in few years...

[wlaidlaw]

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I bought 16.2 outright about a month and a half ago and have had no updates since but maybe there have been no updates since. 

Wilson

[jaapv]

On 7/17/2023 at 9:27 PM, Marc B-C said:

I am a fan of C1 and will continue to use it; it does just what I want and so I now subscribe.

I do remember, however, a huge furore over Adobe when it switched to subscription. So many people said they would leave. I did (mostly due to it's lack of ability to manage Fuji RAW files at the time), however, Adobe seems to still be doing okay. Tesla, BMW both now apparently run a subscription service if you want your heated seats / windscreen wipers radio (joke list) etc to work. It is not just photography going in that direction.

Sadly not everyone who moans will do anything about it.  @wlaidlaw and @dpitt are, I am sure, good and principled people, however, most people will just go with the flow with some moaning on the side.

 

I am very happy with Adobe’s subscription; it keeps me up to date at a modest price. In fact the updates have been substantial and it has saved me quite a bit of money compared to periodical paid updates. 

[pedaes]

On 7/17/2023 at 8:27 PM, Marc B-C said:

BMW

Yep - just paid £25 to continue to have traffic camera warnings for another year.

[Pixeleater]

On 7/15/2023 at 3:53 AM, jaapv said:

Wilson, I run Topaz Photo AI now as a first step in any PS process. The sharpening there appears to be less prone to artifacts than Sharpen AI. I don’t know how well it handles significant motion blur though. 

jaapv, when you process in Topaz AI, how do you export to LR?

DNG>Topaz AI>LR

DNG>Topaz AI> File on Computer>LR

[jaapv]

I rarely if ever use LR, I use Photoshop, It can be used anywhere in the editing process, but I run it as the first step in PS. I think that it is a LR plugin as well, but I am  not sure. I suppose it can be used as a standalone (Edit In)

[Pixeleater]

I use it as the plug-in as well, through File>Plug-In Extras>Topaz AI. This uses a copy of the DNG which is then exported back to LR as a DNG. If I right click the photo to access the Edit In function, it changes format to TIFF.

 

I've read recommendations to first process in the stand-alone Topaz AI, save the image to your drive, then import into LR. Yields a better result. Not sure if it makes that much of a difference.

[jaapv]

Actually LR will use TIFF for operations like this, but it makes no difference as DNG is a TIFF based format. 

[jrp]

The only advantage that C1 has over LR / ACR is that it seems to produce a cleaner, crisper image when no adjustments have been applied. I find that for that purpose, DXO Photolabs is even better, especially if you use a camera + lens that is in their database.

Both of these lack some of the AI driven features that LR has (although DXO’s noise reduction is class leading).  I don’t really understand what C1’s business strategy is, because its pricing seems designed to appeal only to pros .

 

 

[hansvons]

17 hours ago, jrp said:

I don’t really understand what C1’s business strategy is, because its pricing seems designed to appeal only to pros .

You answered your question perfectly. 

[irenedp]

On 8/6/2023 at 11:52 PM, jrp said:

The only advantage that C1 has over LR / ACR is that it seems to produce a cleaner, crisper image when no adjustments have been applied. I find that for that purpose, DXO Photolabs is even better, especially if you use a camera + lens that is in their database.

Both of these lack some of the AI driven features that LR has (although DXO’s noise reduction is class leading).  I don’t really understand what C1’s business strategy is, because its pricing seems designed to appeal only to pros .

 

 

I work professionally, albeit in low volume, and still C1 is not a good option for me, because it is not cheap and I already have and would need to keep a quite expensive Adobe subscription -mine includes Premiere and InDesign-. On the other hand, because I mostly use Photoshop to edit my images and Lightroom as a catalog, the process is somewhat tortuous. On Phase One files -the subscription is free but limited to it- I develop the file in C1, edit the image in Photoshop -C1 creates a 16 bit tiff-, and then import both raw and tiff into Lightroom to have them in the catalog. 

Should I buy a static version of C1 for the Nikons and the Leicas? C1 seems to process better the raw, but I don’t use them tethered -only the Phase-, so it feels like quite an expensive proposition. I would have to stick to the same convoluted process. 

I think C1 is a good option for a high volume professional-wedding, corporate, etc- who does minimal processing. Then you can keep each client’s work in a session and group those in catalogs. For me it’s a no-go. 

Phase One is a niche company with 300 employees. C1 is their cash cow. Their cameras and other business have tiny audiences.  They have to price premium or their Private Equity owner would drop them in the bin…

Edited August 8, 2023 by irenedp
typo correction

[jrp]

The free versions of C1 have limited features, which is presumably why you go to Photoshop 

[Anbaric]

On 8/9/2023 at 10:12 PM, jrp said:

The free versions of C1 have limited features, which is presumably why you go to Photoshop 

The free Capture One for Phase One version isn't limited like the free Express versions for Nikon, Sony and Fuji - it has the full set of features, but only processes Phase One, Leaf and Mamiya files:

https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002465337-Capture-One-product-variants

If @irenedep doesn't use the advanced features of Capture One for Phase One, the free Capture One Express for Nikon might suffice, but there is no equivalent for Leica:

https://www.captureone.com/en/account/download/capture-one-express-for-nikon

Note that the installation of the Express versions can be a bit confusing. Capture One wants to upsell you to the full version, Capture One Pro, by offering to install it in time-limited demo mode (the same installer is used for all versions of Capture One). But you can decline this and go straight to Capture One Express (limited by features, but with a 'perpetual' licence). I've never tried this with Capture One for Phase One, but it's certainly possible to have two versions of Capture One Express installed on the same computer - you need to specify different installation directories.

The other good free option for Nikon is their own NX Studio:

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-nx-studio-review

https://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/products/564/NX_Studio.html

 

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by Anbaric

[Anbaric]

Just noticed on the German forum that the Express versions have been nuked. Not only will it be impossible to install them, but they will no longer function even if you already have them installed:

https://www.captureone.com/en/campaign/express-discount

'This means that starting January 30, Capture One Express will no longer be available.  ... You won’t be able to download and access Express from our website after the above-mentioned date. If you already own an Express license key, you’ll no longer be able to activate this. We’ll also end all support for Express. Your RAW files and edits will still be available until the above-mentioned date – after this time you’ll no longer have access.'

The worst of it is, the Express versions weren't touted as free subscriptions, but rather as free perpetually licensed versions. They have a FAQ about this that just refers us to their lawyers:

https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/15416245558301

'How is it possible for you deactivate my perpetual license?
For legal concerns, contact our legal team at legal@captureone.com for more in-depth answers.'

Behaviour like this is enough to put me 'perpetually' off the idea of purchasing a 'perpetual' Capture One licence. What is to stop them doing exactly the same thing with a full C1 Pro licence at some point? Even Adobe, who now refuse to activate older 'perpetually' licensed versions of CS (an absolutely scummy policy in itself), have not stooped to disabling installed copies.

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[wlaidlaw]

12 minutes ago, Anbaric said:

Just noticed on the German forum that the Express versions have been nuked. Not only will it be impossible to install them, but they will no longer function even if you already have them installed:

https://www.captureone.com/en/campaign/express-discount

'This means that starting January 30, Capture One Express will no longer be available.  ... You won’t be able to download and access Express from our website after the above-mentioned date. If you already own an Express license key, you’ll no longer be able to activate this. We’ll also end all support for Express. Your RAW files and edits will still be available until the above-mentioned date – after this time you’ll no longer have access.'

The worst of it is, the Express versions weren't touted as free subscriptions, but rather as free perpetually licensed versions. They have a FAQ about this that just refers us to their lawyers:

https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/15416245558301

'How is it possible for you deactivate my perpetual license?
For legal concerns, contact our legal team at legal@captureone.com for more in-depth answers.'

Behaviour like this is enough to put me 'perpetually' off the idea of purchasing a 'perpetual' Capture One licence. What is to stop them doing exactly the same thing with a full C1 Pro licence at some point? Even Adobe, who now refuse to activate older 'perpetually' licensed versions of CS (an absolutely scummy policy in itself), have not stooped to disabling installed copies.

I too am disgusted by the behaviour of greedy software purveyors in general, of which Phase One (C1) is just one of many examples. A perpetual licence should be just that. I hope someone or even better a class action takes the greedy b***ers to court and sues the pants off them (perpetually of course). 

Wilson