Is Capture On any good?

[Guest Felix Oscar]

Does anyone have experience with Capture One? If so please can you say if it is simple and easy to learn use.

 

I have been using photoshop - but have never really liked it. Tinkered with aperture and prefer that.

 

I am considering changing but don't want to spend months learning and unfortunately am not very technical!

 

Grateful for all info/replies.

 

Thanks

 

Of course should say Capture One.

[Imagery by Charly]

I've never tried Capture One myself, but most edit programs offer a free trial to use it to see if it fits your needs. When I started out, I used PSE 8 which was difficult at best for one who knew absolutely nothing about editing. I did a trial of Lightroom 3 and found it more user friendly, though still had that darn learning curve of edits to over come (and still learning). I watched every free video I could find on Adobe.TV, youtube, etc. and it helped, but not to the degree getting a gift subscription to Lynda.com did. Gosh there's some wonderful workshops to be found there on just about everything you can think of. It is well worth the monthly fee, which is what I have now. Lynda.com has a 7 day trial to all the workshops you can find the time to watch.

 

My kiddo kept harping on me to get PS and I put it off cuz I knew nothing. Then I took a Digital Imaging course at university which used PS CS6 and now more familiar with it, still use Lr 98% of the time though. Not really sure how buying it for school will work once I'm finished, but if Adobe stops me from using the CS 6 Production Premium discs I purchased for big bucks, won't be joining the Cloud. Instead I'll use Lr as long as it's a stand alone and onOne software Perfect Photo Suite 7. onOne has some great videos to watch also that even if they're not for the product you use, gives you more of an idea on editing.

 

Whoops I just noticed you have quite a few images up, so if you want me to delete this just let me know. I though sharing my experiences might help but prolly not.

[Chrissie]

Capture One is excellent, used it for years.Fantastic RAW conversion - fully customisable, layers for local adjustment etc. The software is also well supported by a helpful team.

[Martin P Wilson]

Capture One is excellent, used it for years.Fantastic RAW conversion - fully customisable, layers for local adjustment etc. The software is also well supported by a helpful team.

I agree.

[Number Six]

Been using Capture One 7 Express for converting Fuji X-E1 RAW files (when required) for a few months and find it very intuitive. Did have one occurrence when it gave a strange cast to the main subject of the image (a white classic car against a predominantly green background) which I couldn't get rid of - reverted to the JPEG which was far superior in terms of colour rendition. However, generally happy with it and they do have a 60 day trial period which is plenty of time to make your decision. Paid for my licence during a very good special offer period but no idea how often that happens.

[lensandbrushes]

I am in the middle of the 60 day trial for Capture One.  I find it gives much better results for my Olympus OM-D, but for images taken with the Canon 5DIII I still prefer the results from ACR/Photoshop.  I think I am (reluctantly) going to have to buy Capture One for use with the Olympus files, and continue with ACR for files from Canon cameras.

 

What I do not like about Capture One is the way it assumes you wish to use it for file management.  I have a system in place that works for me, so all I want is the RAW converter.  I most particularly don't want files named and ordered and backed up by my RAW conversion software.  It seems to be fairly easy to ignore that aspect of the software though.

 

Louise