Considering a move from LR to C1

[KimALdis]

I'm evaluating C1 Pro with a view to making the move from Lightroom. I have some concerns, perhaps someone more familiar could shed some light.

1. There appears to be no equivalent to Lightroom's Publish Services, where remote image libraries can be managed quickly and easily. Is there?

2. I've made extensive use of the LR  Lua SDK for easing workflow. I see that Applescript is supported. How much can one realistically do with (shudder) Applescript.

3. Is it possible to build an export recipe or script that will allow me to add selected keywords to images post export. I've written a LR export plugin that does this and I use it a great deal for organising and keeping track of image exports and their locations.

4. Customising hotkeys in C1. Possible? How extensively.

any thoughts welcome. Many thanks.

[budjames]

I've been a LR user since the first pre-public beta. I have over 150k of images catalogued in my single LR catalog. Up until about 3 years ago, I shot various Canon pro DSLRs and LR works great. However, when I switched to Fuji-X cameras 3 years ago and sold off all of my Canon gear, I was disappointed by LR Fuji RAW conversions.

I heard that CaptureOne Pro 8 did a better job with Fuji RAW, so I gave it a try. I was simply amazed that the improvement in quality without doing any "tweaking" like I always had to do in LR. Version 9 was introduced a month after I bought version 8, so I paid the upgrade price.

Fast forward to today, C1P9 is my Fuji RAW processor of choice. It has replaced LR as my primary cataloging and RAW processing program. Although C1P9 does not offer Fuji Film Simulations like LR, I purchased the optional C1P film presets which offer settings for hundreds of film types including all of the Fuji films and those simulated in LR. I like these better than the LR film simulations. I can recreate Classic Chrome by selecting Kodachrome 25 and setting Saturation slider to -30. It works great!

Although I have printed from C1P9, LR's print module is superior. Plus LR offers LR Mobile and a nicer slide show module. I still run LR for my photo archives but I import my final images (.TIF) into LR so that I can use the print module and sync with LR Mobile. This works fine even though any changes made in LR or C1P9 are not recognized in the other program.

Martin Bailey, a fine art photographer Brit who lives in Japan, recently switched from LR to C1P9 for the quality improvements. He has a series of audio podcasts available on iTunes and on his website that talks about his reasons for switching the issues he needed to address. I suggest that you listen to these for a really excellent overview of what you are about to undertake.

I am very happy with C1P9 except, as of today, the program still does not have lens profiles for X-Pro2 or X-T2. As a result, you can notice some lens distortion between the Fuji RAW and SOOC JPGs, depending upon the lens you are using. C1 claims that they will fix this soon in a new release. There are no such issues with any of the previous Fuji-X bodies. I use the X-T1 and X100T with excellent results. You can check out images processed with C1P9 from my recent trip to China and Japan on my website, www.budjames.photography.

Good luck with your quest.

Bud James

www.budjames.photography

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I'm evaluating C1 Pro with a view to making the move from Lightroom. I have some concerns, perhaps someone more familiar could shed some light.

1. There appears to be no equivalent to Lightroom's Publish Services, where remote image libraries can be managed quickly and easily. Is there?

Hi,

There is no direct link from C1 to online services. The question is whether that is a big issue. The LR functionality makes life easier, so there is a convenience factor. However, the options are limited to a few vendors. Maybe it's (less convenient but) in the end better to select a vendor of choice and directly do business with them? That allows to select other parties than those (selected few) offered, and a much closer relationship with the vendor and better use of (new) functionality they might offer (in the future).

2. I've made extensive use of the LR  Lua SDK for easing workflow. I see that Applescript is supported. How much can one realistically do with (shudder) Applescript.

Depends on what it is that you want to achieve. Maybe it's already possible within the application?

3. Is it possible to build an export recipe or script that will allow me to add selected keywords to images post export. I've written a LR export plugin that does this and I use it a great deal for organising and keeping track of image exports and their locations.

No, C1 only allows to strip some of the Metadata, but not add it, when exporting. I suppose that the philosophy is that adding keywords and metadata is not an export related issue, but something that should be done in the keyword editor. Granted, I could see a benefit of allowing some additions pertaining only to a particular output session, e.g. for tracking purposes.

C1 does offer editing of file keywords, and also additive metadata and lists. So it could be achieved by selecting a number of files, and adding (a list of) keywords.
You can alternatively also make albums for specific jobs that you want to track. Metadata in output files can be edited by others, so they are not fail safe.

4. Customising hotkeys in C1. Possible? How extensively.

Keyboard shortcuts can be (re)assigned, as described here.

Cheers,
Bart

[KimALdis]

There is no direct link from C1 to online services. The question is whether that is a big issue. The LR functionality makes life easier, so there is a convenience factor. However, the options are limited to a few vendors. Maybe it's (less convenient but) in the end better to select a vendor of choice and directly do business with them? That allows to select other parties than those (selected few) offered, and a much closer relationship with the vendor and better use of (new) functionality they might offer (in the future).

Not so limited as you imply. Either way, for the most part I'm using Publishing Services to keep my own website up to date, a heavily customised Wordpress site running my own image management and display software. So I guess the vendor is me.

Depends on what it is that you want to achieve

Everything. Anything. But tag on export and publishing would be a start.