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Author Topic: Capture One Pro 4.0  (Read 19042 times)

craigwashburn

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« Reply #20 on: December 21, 2007, 05:17:49 pm »

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The export to web gallery is just slimbox, which is also available in LR. I do like it (in both), but C1 version frustrates me because I would like to have my images show up with their titles or captions, which you can't do with the C1 export to web.

In respect of the rest of your comments - just because one person (e.g. me) says they don't like the new C1 and you do, doesn't make either of us right or wrong and it certainly doesn't someone like me a bellyacher. C1 v4 doesn't do it for me - it feels too little, too late ; having been a C1 fan for a long time, I was *really* looking forward to this new version, hoping to see something that I could use to oust LR and Aperture, neither of which are quite perfect; I love Aperture's organisation, love Lightroom's develop module, love Aperture's workflow, love LR's web export when combined with TTG's Slimbox templates.
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Actually my reference was to many of the posters on the Phase One forum who have spent 5 minutes with it, haven't read the manual, and in case one was still using a beta, and still complain.  Internet asinism at its finest.

Of course there are legitimate concerns with it and a few bugs are there.  You can't make everyone happy, especially if you change some aspects of functionality.   I like C1's workflow and the file output can't be beat.  I haven't seen anything like your noise reduction problem - I can see changes right on screen in the preview (were you at 100%?) , and if you max out the sliders, yes it looks quite poor, just like if you max out every other noise reduction program..

Anyway, C1 isn't a DAM and I'm glad its not.  Too much bloat.  I want it to process files fast and make them look good.  It does this.  Lightroom and ACR output just don't look as good to me, and thats what it all comes down to.  I like the carefully thought out features that apply to professionals on the job - I use C1 while shooting with various staff surrounding and watching.   Probably why every top studio I've worked in is using it.
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ajtaylor

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« Reply #21 on: December 21, 2007, 06:02:51 pm »

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Of course there are legitimate concerns with it and a few bugs are there.  You can't make everyone happy, especially if you change some aspects of functionality.   I like C1's workflow and the file output can't be beat.  I haven't seen anything like your noise reduction problem - I can see changes right on screen in the preview (were you at 100%?) , and if you max out the sliders, yes it looks quite poor, just like if you max out every other noise reduction program..

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I wasn't at 100%, but even when I do go 100% it doesn't reflect what I end up with. Same for sharpening - looks great on screen, then pull it into PS, and it's hugely oversharpened.

I have to say that the Highlight recovery is very very good, though.
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craigwashburn

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« Reply #22 on: December 21, 2007, 08:25:19 pm »

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I wasn't at 100%, but even when I do go 100% it doesn't reflect what I end up with. Same for sharpening - looks great on screen, then pull it into PS, and it's hugely oversharpened.

I have to say that the Highlight recovery is very very good, though.
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Interesting, I can't say I've seen that at all.  The output looks identical to 3.7 over here, all settings being the same.  

One bug I found is that the process tab vastly overestimates the size of JPEGs when they are scaled down.  Something like ~240kb for a "40" quality jpeg at 600x500 px... the actual file size was like 20 kb and looked awful .  100 quality jpegs were acceptable and still only about 80kb.

I agree, the highlite recovery is very natural, and can be used in everyday shots, not just emergencies.

I also like the Targets in levels.  It took a few minutes to wrap my head around what it does, but its nice in that it rolls off clipped data smoothly instead of just chopping it.
That's great if you're going to a limited gamut medium like offset printing.  Little things like that are what made C1 the working pro's choice I think...
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Chris_Brown

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« Reply #23 on: December 22, 2007, 01:31:29 pm »

I've been using C1 v4 for just a couple of days. My usual processor of choice is C1 Pro v3.7.

From what I can tell, the biggest change is the interface and this has slowed me down considerably. I can work much more efficiently on v3.7. The gallery is not as intuitive and on my G4 and G5 Macs it is dreadfully slow to process images. On the upside is the additional image processing controls of High Dynamic Range and an updated sharpening algorithm.

I don't think I'll be using this program for jobs until the pro version is released and I've also upgraded to Intel Macs some time next year (I have a few more programs that must be ported over to UB before Intel comes my way).
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Mike Arst

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« Reply #24 on: December 23, 2007, 07:15:35 am »

I installed the release-version of v4 and went through the documentation carefully. I have again observed some of the problems users in the C1v4 user-to-user forum have been talking about. Despite the facile and not especially convincing dismissive remark about "bellyaching," elsewhere in this thread, there are still serious problems with this release.

Activation succeeded the first time. So I thought. Then the program somehow lost track of the activation and I was back in demo mode. It worked the second time (and is "holding" so far). It seems not everyone was so fortunate.

The unpleasant screen-display bug with the curves panel is still in the program; it is explained away in the release notes as a "known issue."

PhaseOne has now seen several messages about its failure to provide the option of using a ".\Converted" subdirectory as a default for output -- the kind of setting that can be made once and need never be changed. For people who prefer that kind of output-directory scheme, having to pick an output directory via a crude tree-control, every time, is a pain in the neck. It's flat-out inefficient. (If memory serves, Lightroom also lacks this feature; it's hardly some revolutionary thing and why it keeps being omitted is baffling; people DO use such features). The documentation has a rushed-together look about it. It contains some notable mistakes, such as documenting a major feature that doesn't seem to be in the program at all, documenting keystrokes that simply don't work, and not documenting certain keystrokes or mouse-wheel controls that do work.

In failing to respond to end-users both in the beta-test forum and in the newer v4 forum, the company is doing itself no favors -- their silence is having the predictable effect of fanning the flames. (There has to be some middle-ground between coddling customers to some ridiculous degree, and on the other hand simply ignoring them...)

Those problems aside for a moment, the conversions seem very good to me and as I think I said before in the thread, C1's rendering of fine image detail is the best I've seen. (Though I'll keep an eye out for the sharpening-related problems mentioned elsewhere in this thread.) The dynamic-range controls are great and so is the highlight recovery feature -- it seems better even than Lightroom's, and Lightroom's is good. So there's a lot of potential in this release. But they had better start taking care of business more effectively...
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craigwashburn

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« Reply #25 on: December 23, 2007, 11:38:12 am »

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I installed the release-version of v4 and went through the documentation carefully. I have again observed some of the problems users in the C1v4 user-to-user forum have been talking about. Despite the facile and not especially convincing dismissive remark about "bellyaching," elsewhere in this thread, there are still serious problems with this release.

Activation succeeded the first time. So I thought. Then the program somehow lost track of the activation and I was back in demo mode. It worked the second time (and is "holding" so far). It seems not everyone was so fortunate.

The unpleasant screen-display bug with the curves panel is still in the program; it is explained away in the release notes as a "known issue."

PhaseOne has now seen several messages about its failure to provide the option of using a ".\Converted" subdirectory as a default for output -- the kind of setting that can be made once and need never be changed. For people who prefer that kind of output-directory scheme, having to pick an output directory via a crude tree-control, every time, is a pain in the neck. It's flat-out inefficient. (If memory serves, Lightroom also lacks this feature; it's hardly some revolutionary thing and why it keeps being omitted is baffling; people DO use such features). The documentation has a rushed-together look about it. It contains some notable mistakes, such as documenting a major feature that doesn't seem to be in the program at all, documenting keystrokes that simply don't work, and not documenting certain keystrokes or mouse-wheel controls that do work.

In failing to respond to end-users both in the beta-test forum and in the newer v4 forum, the company is doing itself no favors -- their silence is having the predictable effect of fanning the flames. (There has to be some middle-ground between coddling customers to some ridiculous degree, and on the other hand simply ignoring them...)

Those problems aside for a moment, the conversions seem very good to me and as I think I said before in the thread, C1's rendering of fine image detail is the best I've seen. (Though I'll keep an eye out for the sharpening-related problems mentioned elsewhere in this thread.) The dynamic-range controls are great and so is the highlight recovery feature -- it seems better even than Lightroom's, and Lightroom's is good. So there's a lot of potential in this release. But they had better start taking care of business more effectively...
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I've been using C1 for several years, both on the Mac and PC.  The Mac version of 3.7 was very polished, the Windows version, while the quality of output was the same, had an ugly interface and many missing features.  

There were a number of other differences too, the PC version cached all previews in a central folder while the Mac placed them under the folder the raw files were stored in.  There are reasonable arguments for doing it either way, but I preferred the Mac way because there was no way to clear out the hundreds of megabytes of past job previews on a PC without wiping out all the previews of what jobs you were currently working on.  Thus you had to have a lengthy preview rebuild if you cleared the cache.

There definitely is a few areas that I have identified PO needs to work on.

- The relative output directory is one.
- The noise reduction has a different look to it.  You can remove more noise than you could in 3.7, but I find that at similar amounts of noise reduction, the grain is not as smoothed off as it was in 3.7... it's subjective but there.
- There is less highlight recovery in the initial load of a file, though you can use the highlight tool to get more data out than you could before.
- Inability to load 3.7 settings.  They do have a logical reason for this - the control algorithms changed and so the same settings on 3.7 are not the same in 4.0, but it would be nice if they approximated it or at least loaded some things in like exposure, levels and white balance changes.  Some of us have thousands of files and settings from 3.7 that can't be loaded in at the moment.

I've seen a couple bugs too where a thumbnail didn't have a profile applied to it, and some sorting problems in the browser.  Pretty minor.

The amount of detail it pulls out is impressive.  I now have to use very little sharpening at all.  I wonder if this is why the noise reduction works differently, because it does seem like it has the look of the old + more inadvertent noise detail.

I like the interface.  It's a little different but thus far I've found it works pretty well and is a step forward, especially on the PC.
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Mike Arst

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« Reply #26 on: December 23, 2007, 02:37:05 pm »

> the Windows version ... had an ugly interface

I thought that UI was downright user-hungery. I didn't use 3.7 much. So the UI change overall doesn't bother me. But, leaving the partially-undisplayed Curves panel as a "known issue" is lame -- likewise, not implementing the missing keystrokes (that are nevertheless documented). I can think of at least one way to mitigate the current curves display problem. If I could think of such a thing, so could they.

It seems a number of other users are irritated about the current cache arrangement, which leaves files scattered around the drive. You're right that there are arguments for both approaches. Pity they didn't implement some kind of either/or arrangement, as with Lightroom and its sidecar-files-vs.-no-sidecars approach.

Having used 3.7 only as a paperweight :), I don't have the problem of un-translatable settings. I see that the v4 settings are stored as XML. I suppose the 3.7 settings must have been stored as binary data, making a translation from the old system to the new -- even an approximation -- not breathtakingly simple. Still it's a shame they did not provide a way to get users into the ballpark, as it were.

I'm a bit surprised that image files I never processed in C1 (any version) are showing up in its history list. Some sort of added-value feature, I guess. :-)

> The amount of detail it pulls out is impressive.

Agreed. I have done a few (decidedly unscientific) 'shoot-outs' between raw converters. I found that Canon's DPP (which I find pretty unpleasant in general) did the best job of rendering fine image detail via the sharpening slider in its RGB panel (not the one in its raw panel -- too crude). But C1v4 seems to equal or match DPP in rendering image detail, at least with these 5D files. From what I've seen so far, I can leave sharpening entirely to Photoshop sharpening plug-ins.
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BernardLanguillier

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« Reply #27 on: December 27, 2007, 09:10:04 pm »

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Phase One  Caption One Pro - Version 4.0 (not beta) is now up.  (It is Capture One - Pro Version is coming later.   Edit:CD)
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I have downloaded the trial version and started to play with my D3 files.

I am impressed so far by the quality of the conversions.

- very good sharpness and detail preservation,
- natural colors.

Those feeling that their D3 is not as sharp as their D2x should really give C4.0 a try.

Regards,
Bernard

evonzz

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« Reply #28 on: December 30, 2007, 01:30:59 am »

How does the v4 deal with IPTC/xmp info when processing RAWs?

I had stopped using C1 3.7 pro for some time simplybecause of this workflow obstacle.  I had always favoured the RAW processing capabilities of C1 over ACR, but the Adobe workflow is smooth.  I havent started using Lightroom yet but am seriously considering adding it in the new year as i have only really read mainly very favourable reports.

Regarding free upgrade status, if i use this as a free upgrade will it reduce one of the upgrades i have if a pro version comes out?

Cheers

Rodney
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