CaptureOne's advantages

[craig16229]

Somewhere (I don't remember where for certain, but it may have been at Thom Hogan's site) I read about how great of a RAW processor CaptureOne is.

I downloaded a trial version and used it for a week, but did not find it delivered anything above and beyond what Capture NX is delivering.  The problem is I have been using Capture NX for more than two years, so I wonder if I am too used to my current workflow to be able to see CaptureOne the right way.

I must also mention that on the digital side, I shoot Nikon D200's and D300's only.


Thanks,

Craig

[Mike Arst]

I downloaded a trial version and used it for a week, but did not find it delivered anything above and beyond what Capture NX is delivering.  The problem is I have been using Capture NX for more than two years, so I wonder if I am too used to my current workflow to be able to see CaptureOne the right way.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225019\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I keep hearing that many Nikon shooters feel that NX/NX2 is the raw converter for .NEF files. If you're comfortable with that program, in my book you get an A+ for persistance, and maybe you would want to stick with it. (I'm relatively new to the Nikon system and I'm having a helluva time wrapping my mind around the weird NX user interface ... and living with its sluggishness on my machine.)

Capture One v.4 has done some good conversions for me, but as I have yet to become really familiar with Capture NX2 I haven't yet done a good comparison between the two. One thing I have seen with CaptureOne since the v.3.x days: I don't know how they manage this, but it seems to provide more accurate rendition of very fine image detail than the other converters I've worked with extensively so far -- ACR, Lightroom, and SilkyPix (but no opinion yet about NX and image detail). C1 v.4 is also pretty fast at raw conversion -- on my machine, faster than Capture NX or Lightroom, and super-fast compared with SilkyPix.

But C1 v.4 is a strange animal. It took them forever to get it to market -- during that time Lightroom appeared and seems to have stolen a lot of the others' thunder, including C1's.

So did that long development time produce killer features nobody else has? Doesn't seem like it to me. C1's "algorithmic" sophistication aside, there are some really crude things about it. The preferences dialog is beyond laughable, compared with user-settable options available in other programs. The UI was "improved" to the point of making a number of C1 v.3 users downright furious. Despite what the C1 programmers could have observed in Lightroom and SilkyPix -- like powerful HSL-based color editing -- they were content with an older, cruder "color-wheel" style color editing tool that IMO is unpleasant to use.

Judging by comments I see in forums, some people got used to C1 v.4 quickly and like it a lot. Others didn't, and don't -- including some beta-testers who begged PhaseOne to add some missing features, fix certain bugs, and improve features that were held to be badly implemented. My observation after spending quite a while in the PhaseOne forum back then: the company replied only rarely about those requests -- they wouldn't even log in to say "no" to the requests and explain why they couldn't or wouldn't make any of those changes. Day after week they were simply absent. It felt as if they couldn't have cared less what their end-users wanted...

IMO the CaptureOne user interface is generally much better than Capture NX's weird user interface. Just about everyone else's user interface is better than NX's, which to me has a "clear-as-mud" workflow. But as I say, if you're familiar with Capture NX now and are doing good work with it, you might just want to stick with it. (All of the above kvetching aside, if there's some distinct advantage to C1 in terms of raw-conversion quality, I'll definitely be interested to hear about it.)

[BernardLanguillier]

Capture One v.4 has done some good conversions for me, but as I have yet to become really familiar with Capture NX2 I haven't yet done a good comparison between the two. One thing I have seen with CaptureOne since the v.3.x days: I don't know how they manage this, but it seems to provide more accurate rendition of very fine image detail than the other converters I've worked with extensively so far -- ACR, Lightroom, and SilkyPix (but no opinion yet about NX and image detail).
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225055\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The absolute champion for detail is probably Raw Developper (Mac only), but Capture one is indeed very good. Raw Developper is IMHO clearly the best converter, but the lack of navigation capability makes it a pain to use.

I believe that version 2.0 will include a re-designed workflow with navigation. This could make it my only raw converter for years to come. It was one of the reasons that pushed me over the PC to Mac border.

IMO the CaptureOne user interface is generally much better than Capture NX's weird user interface. Just about everyone else's user interface is better than NX's, which to me has a "clear-as-mud" workflow. But as I say, if you're familiar with Capture NX now and are doing good work with it, you might just want to stick with it. (All of the above kvetching aside, if there's some distinct advantage to C1 in terms of raw-conversion quality, I'll definitely be interested to hear about it.)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225055\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I feel that capture NX 2.1 is now pretty good in terms of interface. If they could improve a bit in terms of detail rendition, and fix a few annoying bugs, they could become the best converter out there for Nikon files. Frankly speaking, there isn't that much need for Photoshop anymore once you have understood the power of the U point technology. It can really be much faster.

Overall, I use Capture one a lot, Raw Developper for critical images and sometimes DxO as well. I end up not using NX2 very often, although I like it too.

Overall I feel very happy to be a Nikon user on Mac.

Cheers,
Bernard

[craig16229]

Mike and Bernard,

Thanks for your thoroughness and time you put into your replies.

I am definitely not in love with the interface of CNX (I am currently on 1.3.x since I did not see much in 2.x I could not live without).  Like most, I find it clunky.  I take advantage of a library of .set files I have developed for batch processing, and that avoids much of the aggravation many experience with having one change undo previous changes, and other oddities.  I do take advantage of the U-point at times when I have something that I feel is portfolio-worthy, and find that a very powerful and nice tool.

My primary interest in comparing C1 vs. CNX is to see if C1 clearly delivers more detail.  I have not been able to prove that to myself yet.  But, like I said, maybe I simply don't know what I'm doing yet in C1.  I'll give myself a little more time and see what I can learn about it's best workflow.

I can't say I have heard of Raw Developer, so I have some homework to do there as well.

Thanks again,

Craig

http://www.craigwasselphotoart.com

[Chris_Brown]

I can't say I have heard of Raw Developer, so I have some homework to do there as well.

You can download the demo here.

The absolute champion for detail is probably Raw Developper (Mac only), but Capture one is indeed very good. Raw Developper is IMHO clearly the best converter, but the lack of navigation capability makes it a pain to use.

I believe that version 2.0 will include a re-designed workflow with navigation. This could make it my only raw converter for years to come. It was one of the reasons that pushed me over the PC to Mac border.

I agree that the program feels weak when working on a large quantity of files. Finding, sorting and labeling is much easier and more intuitive in Capture One.

I've been using the program pretty heavily for the past 4 months and think the latest version, v1.8.1, is a huge improvement over the previous version. When combined with a quality ICC camera profile I'm getting fantastic results.

[Mike Arst]

I feel that capture NX 2.1 is now pretty good in terms of interface.

I wish I could become accustomed to it! Every time I use it, I find the approach so weirdly different from that of other raw converters, that it's as if I were trying to speak in a language I only barely know.

Frankly speaking, there isn't that much need for Photoshop anymore once you have understood the power of the U point technology. It can really be much faster.

At first I thought that the U-point technology was just some kind of marketing gimmick. Wrong! It's very powerful. (Though I downloaded Nik's u-point plug-in for Photoshop and found it so sluggish as to be unusable. And as with so many other programs, that UI really needs work. Too much to pay for a program with that badly flawed a UI. These companies really need to spend more money on "usability" testing! Programmer-geeks just do not seem to know how to design good user interfaces!

How converters render fine image detail didn't much concern me until I'd made a comparison among a few converters. I picked a shot taken with an "underwhelming" Canon lens (the 17-40 -- acceptable results on a non-FF camera, and for me a disappointment on a FF camera). The shot I picked had, in its center, a metallic object occupying only a small percentage of the frame. I decided to concentrate on that part of the image.

One of the converters in the test was Canon's DPP, a program I rarely used because I'd found it downright unpleasant in several respects. But I was amazed by how good a job its sharpening algorithm did. How could this be? A single slider (the one in the RGB panel, not the RAW panel), producing near-instant results -- surely it must be some simple-minded algorithm. If it were doing "heavy math," the results couldn't possibly be rendered so quickly, right? That aside, until I saw DPP's rendition of the scene at "actual pixels" view, I had no idea how much detail the 17-40 could resolve, at least in the center of the frame. Tiny hairline scratches in the metal were crystal-clear in the DPP conversion. Those details looked vague and "artifact-y" via the other converters; they couldn't even come close to the DPP results. (But if DPP has some relatively simple sharpening algorithm, how does it produce this result? Is there some "secret sauce" within a Canon .CR2 file that only DPP can find when it applies sharpening?)

I found that CaptureOne isn't quite as good for fine image detail -- but it comes closer than others I've tried (and so did the now-discontinued program RSP). The other raw converters used in the test were a bit disappointing by comparison (SilkyPix most disappointing of all, which of itself is disappointing because it does such a fine job with color most of the time).

To all of which I say: Damn! Oh, for a raw converter in which the best features of various brands of converter are combined. Well, I haven't yet tried DxO. Maybe I should...

[The View]

One of the converters in the test was Canon's DPP, a program I rarely used because I'd found it downright unpleasant in several respects. But I was amazed by how good a job its sharpening algorithm did. How could this be? A single slider (the one in the RGB panel, not the RAW panel), producing near-instant results -- surely it must be some simple-minded algorithm. If it were doing "heavy math," the results couldn't possibly be rendered so quickly, right? That aside, until I saw DPP's rendition of the scene at "actual pixels" view, I had no idea how much detail the 17-40 could resolve, at least in the center of the frame. Tiny hairline scratches in the metal were crystal-clear in the DPP conversion. Those details looked vague and "artifact-y" via the other converters; they couldn't even come close to the DPP results. (But if DPP has some relatively simple sharpening algorithm, how does it produce this result? Is there some "secret sauce" within a Canon .CR2 file that only DPP can find when it applies sharpening?)

[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225092\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There is a distinct advantage in using a camera manufacturer's RAW converter. Not only Canon and Nikon have their own, also Hasselblad, for example.

Canon, for example, doesn't disclose details to their RAW files, which gives their own RAW processor a distinct advantage.

I use DPP myself, and I found it to give excellent conversions. It's not only extremely good in detail, but also crystal clear, and the colors are excellent. It's also very quick to work with, once you got used to the user interface (PS: the sharpening sliders in the RGB tab and the RAW tab do the same thing, and equally are the sliders for brightness in both tabs)

But still, I don't think Photoshop is obsolete. Layers, blending modes, selections, and painting with light (and add the superiority of the retouching tools) will keep it a indispensable tool for now.

Bibble, so I heard, is experimenting with layers, but I don't know if those rumors have any factual core.

I guess we'll see a lot happening in RAW converters and non-destructive editing in the years to come, and Capture One Pro will definitely be a very important software for this.

[Mike Arst]

There is a distinct advantage in using a camera manufacturer's RAW converter. Not only Canon and Nikon have their own, also Hasselblad, for example.

Every now and then I exchange mail with a professional photographer who sometimes shoots digital with a Hasselblad. He has been through the same agonies with raw conversions that the rest of us have experienced -- but he said that he was astonished by the high quality of the raw conversions he gets with the Hasselblad software. This is someone who is surely not easy to impress. Hearing his description of the night-and-day difference in conversion quality -- well, it made me downright jealous (but not jealous enough to think I could afford a Hasselblad).

Canon, for example, doesn't disclose details to their RAW files, which gives their own RAW processor a distinct advantage.

With the exception -- rare, so far -- of cameras that can provide DNG files "natively," they're all proprietary formats, no? (I keep wondering why. What would these manufacturers be giving up (or otherwise risking) by providing RAW files for which the specs and standards are published? And why change the RAW format with every new camera model? What advantage does this confer -- and upon whom?)

Some days I think it's remarkable that there can be third-party converters at all. Surely this requires some kind of reverse-engineering, which I had thought was not legal in the software business -- and certainly, proprietary data within RAW files must meet some definition for "software". But I'm not complaining. If we were stuck forever with the manufacturers' software alone, we'd be cryin'. Well, I would. :-)

(PS: the sharpening sliders in the RGB tab and the RAW tab do the same thing

In the DPP versions I used, the sharpening slider in the RAW panel seemed crude. The sharpening slider in the RGB panel provided much finer increments of change. So I stuck with doing it via the RGB panel.

[The View]

Every now and then I exchange mail with a professional photographer who sometimes shoots digital with a Hasselblad. He has been through the same agonies with raw conversions that the rest of us have experienced -- but he said that he was astonished by the high quality of the raw conversions he gets with the Hasselblad software. This is someone who is surely not easy to impress. Hearing his description of the night-and-day difference in conversion quality -- well, it made me downright jealous (but not jealous enough to think I could afford a Hasselblad).

There are people around that dream of a Hasselblad every night, and wake up to a Nikon or Canon. Just like marriage...

With the exception -- rare, so far -- of cameras that can provide DNG files "natively," they're all proprietary formats, no? (I keep wondering why. What would these manufacturers be giving up (or otherwise risking) by providing RAW files for which the specs and standards are published? And why change the RAW format with every new camera model? What advantage does this confer -- and upon whom?)

I know only of the Pentax K20 that shoots DNG. Regarding the others, it's not always a new RAW format.  It's more like one proprietary RAW format like Canon's CR.2, and then a different profile for every camera. Even DNG has to have a particular profile for each camera model - which is why you need to upgrade regularly on those RAW converters that do DNG.

Some days I think it's remarkable that there can be third-party converters at all. Surely this requires some kind of reverse-engineering, which I had thought was not legal in the software business -- and certainly, proprietary data within RAW files must meet some definition for "software". But I'm not complaining. If we were stuck forever with the manufacturers' software alone, we'd be cryin'. Well, I would. :-)
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225114\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

We're not stuck. DxO and Capture One Pro have many, very satisfied users. Many photographers use more than one RAW converter. I currently use DPP and RPP (the latter is a free, but very good RAW converter for the Mac. Like many dedicated applications, it doesn't bow to the mandate of ease-of-use, but delivers very satisfying results).

[BernardLanguillier]

But still, I don't think Photoshop is obsolete. Layers, blending modes, selections, and painting with light (and add the superiority of the retouching tools) will keep it a indispensable tool for now.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225100\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I do also still use CS3 a lot, and am so used to playing with adustement layers, masks and LAB corrections that it is hard to get used to something else.

But... I have gotten impressive results with NX2. The U-point technology is an amazingly fast and easy way to generate automatically live masks.

Surprisingly, few peole seem to understand that, but they have the facto done 2 very useful things at once with U-points:

1. Most importantly, they have made mask creation super easy. Just pick an area of the image, a radius, and the software will automatically create masks by trying to identify areas of the image within the radius that match the characteristics of the selected point (color, texture,...). The algo they have come up mostly just works.

2. They have made masks live. U-Points are to masks what Adjustement layers are to photoshop image corrections. They are non destructive and parametric.

Now with NX2, these masks can be applied to any correction layer, and these layers can also be stacked with various transparency modes.

If Adobe had invented them, U-Points would have been marketed as the largest revolution in image edition since layers, and rightfully so.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Mike Arst]

There are people around that dream of a Hasselblad every night, and wake up to a Nikon or Canon. Just like marriage...

:-) The photographer with the Hasselblad mentioned in one of his e-mail messages that he often finds himself reaching for his Canon dSLR. The digital back on the Hasselblad can produce images of very high quality, but that system certainly isn't suitable for everything. And he's entirely pleased with the quality of the dSLR's output. *

I know only of the Pentax K20 that shoots DNG.

I was under the impression that one of the Leica digitals supports DNG "natively," but perhaps I heard wrong.

* Argh. Geek talk, referring to a photograph as "output." Shame on me. :-)

[Mike Arst]

If Adobe had invented them, U-Points would have been marketed as the largest revolution in image edition since layers, and rightfully so.

Is there not a selective-adjustments brush of some kind in the latest version of ACR (or perhaps an upcoming version) that is (or will be) similar in some way to the u-point technology -- at least to the extent that it can be used for localized correction during raw conversion?

[kers]

I am using a Nikon D3 and tried some Raw converters-( iso 200-Apple computer OSX5)

Apple OSX5- DXO5.2  RAW DEVELOPER 1.81 - CAPTURE NX1.4 - ADOBE 4.5

 Apple gives an other pixelsize to the image than do the other converters (?)

fine detail -   best are NX and Raw Developer (I use  sharpening Hybrid 0-6)

DXO - I only use for distortion correction- the program gives strange colours and does not seem foolproof/reliable-the distortion correction is OK ( architecture)

Adobe clearly less fine detail but good in under and over exposed images better than NX ( have to  look into that in more detail)

have to look into the best converter for high iso's

colours  
I like the nikon colours and the raw developer colours but think they are a bit too saturated for every purpose.( easely corrected)
Interface-  NX too slow for me and don't like it- like Raw developer better and straightforward.

[Mike Arst]

have to look into the best converter for high iso's

I am also using a D3 and had some difficulty converting high-ISO shots with CaptureOne (v.4). I think there's a display bug in the program. I would set noise reduction completely off and I would see huge "grains" of noise in the image, on-screen. With only the tiniest change in the noise-reduction slider, suddenly the noise would be gone. I'd switch NR off again and once again the "golf ball" noise artifacts would appear. That just isn't right. That small a change shouldn't be making that big a difference. I had to conclude they aren't displaying information correctly on-screen, at least with the D3 files. So for high-ISO shots I switched to using Lightroom. It did a reasonable job (and the D3's remarkably high-ISO capabilities shone through). It might be possible to do this just as well using CaptureOne -- given the screen-display problems it would require making a few prints to see just what it was doing (as opposed to displaying). But ... too irritating. LR worked well for that purpose. I suspect NX would also.

SilkyPix was a serious disappointment for the D3 high-ISO noise. It couldn't cope with the noise at all -- talk about golf-ball noise. (Other kinds of files, no problem.)

[The View]

I do also still use CS3 a lot, and am so used to playing with adustement layers, masks and LAB corrections that it is hard to get used to something else.

But... I have gotten impressive results with NX2. The U-point technology is an amazingly fast and easy way to generate automatically live masks.

Surprisingly, few peole seem to understand that, but they have the facto done 2 very useful things at once with U-points:

1. Most importantly, they have made mask creation super easy. Just pick an area of the image, a radius, and the software will automatically create masks by trying to identify areas of the image within the radius that match the characteristics of the selected point (color, texture,...). The algo they have come up mostly just works.

2. They have made masks live. U-Points are to masks what Adjustement layers are to photoshop image corrections. They are non destructive and parametric.

Now with NX2, these masks can be applied to any correction layer, and these layers can also be stacked with various transparency modes.

If Adobe had invented them, U-Points would have been marketed as the largest revolution in image edition since layers, and rightfully so.

Cheers,
Bernard
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225132\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I don't own a Nikon, so this was new for me. But it sounds terrific.

And, yes, marketing power, as always, distorts the perception of quality.

I hope Canon will incorporate something similar in their own RAW processor.

I have the distinct feeling we'll get some magnificent pieces of software in the years to come.

[The View]

:-) The photographer with the Hasselblad mentioned in one of his e-mail messages that he often finds himself reaching for his Canon dSLR. The digital back on the Hasselblad can produce images of very high quality, but that system certainly isn't suitable for everything. And he's entirely pleased with the quality of the dSLR's
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=225147\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Of course.

Just liked the line about marriage.