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Capture versus Aperture/LR


JHAG

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In its two last issues, LFI claims that C1 is way better in fine details

than its two rivals.

Personnally, I did not notice such a difference.

Meanwhile, to me Aperture is way ahead in skin rendition and tones

neutrality.

Your advice ?

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My personal experience is that Capture One 4.1.1 is the best on fine details, CA, purple fringing, etc...

 

I think Aperture does do the nicest on skin tones and is just great in color overall. Aperture does have a much nicer workflow. I also really love all the new features that have been added in 2.1. Since Aperture redid the RAW engine for 2.0 it has really made strong improvements in the files.

 

LR to me is the worst in color, details, or overall IQ.

 

I basically use Aperture for everything. If I really want to pull the absolute best quality out a selected file for the M8, I will then use Capture One 4.1.1.

 

Best,

 

Ray

 

 

PS. I hope all your troubles with Aperture, Phocus, and C1 got worked out on the new Mac.

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Thanks, Ray.

 

In fact, you're absolutely right with Aperture. Tones (especially skin)

are stunning with neutrality.

I realy love LR for its workflow : when just producing pictures for commercial

use (id est, rapid output), it's really my favorite. Event though I have more

tuning to do with colours.

Capture is very good too, but not as convenient as LR, IMHO, and I'm not

always convinced with that edge in fine details.

 

Yes, about my problems, it's nice of you to ask. I finally resorted (once

more) to the truly excellent Apple discussions forum. There, a canadian

geek gave me the command line that solved everything.

In fact, for Leopard, Apple has implemented an ACL system protecting

from accidental deletion. Just in case you would delete your System file,

late at night. ;-)

This is aimed to consumers, not to pros, and Apple should make it an option

on order. As I bought the iMac on the Pro Apple Store, I could have the option

to say no, thanks. Would have saved me about 4 hours…

 

Anyway, Apple has been very gracious repairing my G5 out of warranty,

even promising that if any problem occurs in the future, they would take

care of it. :cool: Try that with M$oft…:eek:

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Guest stnami

Colour - Sylkypix( Olympus) ........ Lightroom(film/Epson) ........... Raw Developer (Leica/ Epson landscape images)

B&W - Raw Developer and Lightroom

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I believe that anyone wanting to compare the big three converters should take a look at forum member Sandy McGuffog's blog at Chromasoft ChromaSoft: Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One Mini-Review Part 4

 

The intelligently written exploration provides some real insights and I hope that the man who provided us with Cornerfix will find the time to finish his inquiry.

 

Joe Englander

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I hope that the man who provided us with Cornerfix will find the time to finish his inquiry.

 

I have been bad about completing the series - but hopefully I'll have more time over the next few weeks.

 

For those interested, my high level conclusions on LR vs C1 Vs Aperture:

 

1. Capture One has the best unadjusted color rendition, in other words, color rendition without adjusting the various saturation/hue/tint or whatever sliders

 

2. Aperture is the best of the bunch for the ability to calibrate color - aka the ability to adjust color to what you want; it has the best controls, and measures in a variety of color systems (e.g., Lab). So if you want or need to match to a specific color, Aperture is your best bet. LR can get to the same result, but its color controls are less versatile, and it only measures in RGB, which makes the process more difficult. C1 is esentially impossible to adjust to a specific color rendition via the color controls - the problem it has is that its controls interact with each other in a way that makes calibration very difficult.

 

3. In terms Bayer interpolation, LR easily leads the pack - it generates significantly fewer artifacts than either Aperture or C1. Aperture is second best here, and C1 trails the other two significantly - it tends to generate both artifacts around edges and maze patterns in shadows.

 

Personally, I use LR when I have the time, because I can get it to the color I want with a bit of effort, and the interpolation is better. But I still have C1 installed on my laptop for when I want "good enough" results in a hurry.

 

Of course, all just my opinion, and YMMV.

 

Sandy

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Aperture + Nic Software's Viveza plugin is just sublime. I have Raw developer, Lightroom, C1(various) and CS3 installed and the application I keep using all the time is Aperture. As a single repository for digital files with the power of keywords, albums, smart albums and various upload plugins for web album software or sites it's a complete package in every sense.

It's colour management with onscreen proofing, dual monitor support, printing presets make it a breeze to use. Oh and the output is good too.

Aperture has my vote, but that's no surprise since I've been using it since v1.0 :)

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Thanks to all.

This part of Sandy's review :

"For Capture One however, it proved impossible to get close to having all the neutral patches at near to their correct values. The settings required were such that the exposure, contrast and brightness controls ended up at the extremes of their ranges. Given that what I was doing was making fairly minor (less than 1 stop) exposure adjustments, this seems to me to be a fundamental flaw in the way that Phase One have implemented their exposure controls. Now it may be that the forthcoming pro version of Capture One will function differently, but it seems unlikely that so basic a part of a raw developer would change between the standard and pro version."

… confirms my intuition and the fact that I found LFI's review slightly biased.

I'm never able to get neutral tones in Capture One, especially compared with what RAW Developper could give.

Sandy, thank you for this outstanding review, I found in there (in more conoscenti terms) what I felt in my work with LR.

 

PS

A naïve question : I received a mail proposing me a code for Aperture for 50 $.

Is it complete crookery/piracy, are these cracked codes or what ?

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I use Aperture everyday, wether it's slightly better or worse at producing a final image I don't care. The fact that it is the best at organising a library, keeping track of clients and general smooth running of a photography picture library business puts it way ahead of anything else on the market. I don't understand why when programs are compared to Aperture it's only ever the output of the image, there are lots of good raw processing programs to choose from, but nothing else comes close to Apertures other very important features. It would be nice to see a complete comparison of programs, workflow and organising at a professional level.

 

Kevin.:)

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I use Aperture everyday, wether it's slightly better or worse at producing a final image I don't care. The fact that it is the best at organising a library, keeping track of clients and general smooth running of a photography picture library business puts it way ahead of anything else on the market.

 

Kevin.:)

 

I think the same way but I don't know how to deal with the fact that 2 out of three of my camera's RAW files are not supported by aperture ( M8 yes, DMR no, DP1 no).

 

I am even thinking of converting in C1 to tifs all the DMR files and then import and organize them in aperture. same with DP1.

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Colour - Sylkypix( Olympus) ........ Lightroom(film/Epson) ........... Raw Developer (Leica/ Epson landscape images)

B&W - Raw Developer and Lightroom

 

I agree for RAW Developper : comparison with Lightroom or C1 is stunning.

Is there any other good developper par to Raw D ?

What's your take on DXO 3.5 ?DxO Labs - Home

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I will try to give the subject some enlightenment from another angle.

 

I've tried these:

C1 LE and the new pro demo from their website

Bibble

DCRAW linear converting with gamma and curves in PS.

UFRAW

Aparture

Lightroom

RAW developer

 

Lightroom has a "power" to the results that I like.

DCRAW/UFRAW has the highest resolution, but it's also more rough and getting good color can be a problem.

Bibble looks to bland for me.

Apartures colors look somewhat unnatural to me.

RAW developer looks artifical to me.

C1 strikes me as a fashion developer, the results look very candy. It also has some kind of blandness/flatness to the results compared to LR.

 

This is just my very biased point of view.

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Apartures colors look somewhat unnatural to me.

*** To me, they look very neutral. Does it mean "natural" ? ;)

RAW developer looks artifical to me.

*** To me, it's by far the sharpest of all.

C1 strikes me as a fashion developer, the results look very candy. It also has some kind of blandness/flatness to the results compared to LR.

*** Totally agree : schmaltzy. In accordance with all ads and promos made by C1.

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Tag price for Viveza is a little steep… :o

 

I'm also a great Aperture 2.x & Viveza fan. It may be expensive but once you start using Viveza you'll find that you can do pretty much all of your selective colour and tone adjustment without the need for Photoshop. The new dodge/burn (& sharpen etc etc) plug in with Aperture will also get you a long long way to using Aperture as a one-stop application.

 

At the moment the only common reason for using Photoshop with Aperture is for correction of geometry if needed. Viveza + Aperture is pretty much my image processing workflow now.

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