Hi,
Capture One has more aggressive sharpening defaults than LR. I would suggest that you need to learn both tools before jumping conclusions.
I agree on first learning to walk before trying to run, and to having a good understanding of both programs before a meaningful comparison can be made.
Having tested both tools for something like two years, I would say that C1 does a better job on demosaicing of MFD images than LR. On he other hand, LR is good enough to handle an image to publish workflow. C1 one feels to me more like just a raw converter than a workflow solution.
In general Capture One is a better Raw converter if we look at conversion quality, ever since version 7 (when it jumped ahead again) and later incarnations. In my tests it usually generates higher resolution conversions, but as a result that might also reveal some capture artifacts that are caused by the camera/sensor combination. That's why it also allows to try and mend those artifacts.
Sharpening defaults are never to be trusted without a critical look, and then one can make one's own presets. It's probably necessary to repeat myself, but Capture sharpening is something quite different from general/creatitve sharpening, which is yet again something quite different from output sharpening. Personally, I don't use Capture One's (or Lightroom/ACR for that matter) sharpening, because they are all inferior to real/dedicated sharpening tools, but they are a convenient quick fix if time is of the essence, and 'good enough' is fine.
The main issue with all generic sharpening tools is that the Capture sharpening doesn't automatically adjust for the aperture that was used for the image at hand, and
it should adjust because that is often the most important variable in the amount of blur that first needs to be dealt with. If that would be implemented better, then we might be able to use defaults much more often for the rest of our sharpening tweaks.
Cheers,
Bart
