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.)