Capture One v6: What's the Most Significant Change/Feature

Perspective Correction

4 (12.1%)

Local Adjustments

15 (45.5%)

Black & White Tools

1 (3%)

Video Import/Rename/Organizing

0 (0%)

Printing

1 (3%)

Speed / GPU Acceleration / 64-Bit

7 (21.2%)

Something Else

5 (15.2%)

Total Members Voted: 32

[Doug Peterson]

There are several major features as well as some important minor tweaks and performance enhancements in Capture One Version 6 Released today.

Read more about some of the new features in Capture One 6 and vote for which feature matters most to your workflow.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________

Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One Partner of the Year
Leaf, Leica, Cambo, Arca Swiss, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Broncolor, Eizo & More

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[Nick-T]

Is this thread an advertisement for Phase one?

[Doug Peterson]

Is this thread an advertisement for Phase one?

Up to the mods of course, but I don't think so.

It's hard to gauge from press releases what features people actually care about. Some are flashy but get very little real world use and others are subtle but make a big difference to every day work.

I'd be just as interested in a poll on which of the H4 versus H3 features (battery option in the works for for the H4D-60, true focus, etc) people actually use.

[bcooter]

Is this thread an advertisement for Phase one?

Actually Nick, I think the other thread listing "buy me" is the ad.  This thread is just the market research.

Anyway if they really wanted to add a favorite feature usable in the real world,  it would be the color correction of video, (instead of just sorting) especially pro rez 422, and/or h264 in 12 bit.

IMO

BC

P.S.

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[Doug Peterson]

Actually Nick, I think the other thread listing "buy me" is the ad.  This thread is just the market research.

Anyway if they really wanted to add a favorite feature usable in the real world,  it would be the color correction of video, (instead of just sorting) especially pro rez 422, and/or h264 in 12 bit.

There's a lot of discussion about this. My question is would you really want to use a program, the entire UI of which is geared towards photography, to do sophisticated color editing of motion imagery?

Seems to me like it would impossible/futile for Phase One to try to cram that functionality into Capture One when they would then be competing against Apple's Color or similar.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________

Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One Partner of the Year
Leaf, Leica, Cambo, Arca Swiss, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Broncolor, Eizo & More

National: 877.217.9870  |  Cell: 740.707.2183
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[bcooter]

My question is would you really want to use a program, the entire UI of which is geared towards photography, to do sophisticated color editing of motion imagery?

As a huge volume of still photographers have migrated to some extent to video, it's probably a great time to have a program that mimics the interfaces they are accustom to.

Apple's color is ok, not great, not really bad, (I would NOT call is sophisticated, but requires a whole different learning curve that few still photographers and their assistants will take the time to master.

RED has a good interface for base corrections and since it is proprietary to their systems, works well.

My point is more times than not, we shoot some video with a still session and obviously we want to get as close to the same look as possible from the video to the stills, at least in first view in web galleries.

When I go outside for grading, I make stills of the video, work them in photoshop, print and take those to the colorists to match.  It saves thousands of dollars in time for the colorists to know from the start where we are going.

For video finish, there are outside systems a whole lot more robust and in 12 bit that work much better than Apple's color.

We do a great deal of video correction in CS5 and 6 as we are use to the interface.

Anyway this isn't a deal maker or breaker for me, but if phase wants to gain market share over adobe, this would be a way to do it, though as we know Phase will do what they want.

Always have.


IMO

BC

[Nill Toulme]

Does this mean the NR has not been improved?  

That would certainly qualify as the most needed change IMO.  v5's NR seems like a step backwards from v3.7.x to me, and it's certainly blown away by LR3/ACR6.

Nill

[Christopher]

Any real samples ? I haven't really seen any ACR/LR images with noise which looks better than C1.

[Doug Peterson]

Currently, can't access Phase site for "Maintenance notice".

So is version 6 a major upgrade as a paid upgrade? Version 5 was my last included upgrade so not sure I would pay for a new version.

Progress is good, but if it just matches Lightroom 3 for the most part then not enough for me. Major leap frogging is a must to get these apps to make "any itch in daddy's pants".

EDIT: Found the upgrade info. Poor timing for the Phase site to have maintenance, maybe better it was done yesterday, pre-announcement and not during. I'll never understand them.

Yes it's a major version - paid upgrade. Check out the features. If it's not worth $99 (minus 10%) to you then don't get it. But honestly if local adjustments, full screen mode, keystone correction, smart albums, GPU acceleration for image adjustments, loupe and the other half dozen significant features are not enough to justify $99 then you probably aren't using Capture One Pro much as it is.

The maintenance was to place all the Capture One 6 info up on the website. You can't launch before you launch. There was a problem however that took them a bit longer than they had targeted (press releases were all embargoe'd until 2pm EST and they planned to have the website up right at 2pm but there was a technical glitch that took them a couple of hours to fix. Perfectly understandable and nothing to get worried about - it's up and running now.

[Doug Peterson]

Anyway this isn't a deal maker or breaker for me, but if phase wants to gain market share over adobe, this would be a way to do it, though as we know Phase will do what they want.

I think it's fair to say that most of the changes in this version came directly from user and dealer suggestions. So they do definitely listen. I keep a running list of suggestions going all the way back to the initial release of Capture One 4.0 and 90% of them have been implemented (I'm not arrogantly saying that they were implemented purely because of me).

But you are right that in the end it is their call. As I think it should be - getting user feedback on software is essential but creation by committee is rarely as good as creation by commander. :-) Getting a bit off topic...

Video is definitely something all camera companies and photo software makers are looking at and Phase is no exception (as exhibited by a good first addition of functionality in 6.0). I can't imagine a scenario in which Phase One doesn't continue to work on bettering the video/photo hybrid workflow - I was only saying that I doubt you're going to see Capture One taking on more complete video-only software head-to-head anytime soon.

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________

Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One Partner of the Year
Leaf, Leica, Cambo, Arca Swiss, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Broncolor, Eizo & More

National: 877.217.9870  |  Cell: 740.707.2183
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Buy Capture One 6 at 10% off

[Doug Peterson]

Does this mean the NR has not been improved?  

That would certainly qualify as the most needed change IMO.  v5's NR seems like a step backwards from v3.7.x to me, and it's certainly blown away by LR3/ACR6.

Color NR improvements are specifically listed in the release notes. Discussions with the lead engineer for this area of the program encouraged me to test color noise reduction on ultra-high ISOs such as the 5D Mark 2 at e.g. ISO 2560 (or was it 25,600 - i.e. hi2?).

That said, I have very few real world experiences in which v5 is outperformed by LR and even fewer examples where it is outperformed v3.7 when it comes to noise. HOWEVER, noise vs. detail retention and the way in which a software shows the noise vs. detail has a pure technical element (snr, lppm etc) and a larger aesthetic quality and I'd be the first to say that C1 errors on the side of allowing a grain structure and retaining image detail when compared to some other noise reduction methods (I'm thinking here more of some of the LR plugins than LR itself) where favoring a smoothed look at the loss of image detail is targeted.

Also C1 has more total sliders/controls for noise reduction which is nice in that you have more control over how the noise will be reduced, but bad in that it requires a bit more user knowledge/action to establish their preferred look (which can then be saved as a style so you don't have to do it for each image).

Anyway the point is if C1's noise reduction look is not your favorite then that's a perfectly valid opinion - but I must say that I get far more positive feedback about noise reduction in C1 than negative feedback (from users with a wide variety of experience in other developers).

Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________

Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One Partner of the Year
Leaf, Leica, Cambo, Arca Swiss, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Broncolor, Eizo & More

National: 877.217.9870  |  Cell: 740.707.2183
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Buy Capture One 6 at 10% off

[Nill Toulme]

That's good news.  And I must admit that my real quarrel with v5 is more the way it applies NR by default to high ISO images, and especially those where exposure is boosted even a little bit.  It wipes out detail to an apalling degree, and I haven't found a way to change the default behavior (whereas I usually found v3.7.x's default NR pretty much on the mark).  But I've also found it to produce a lot more in the way of chunky artifacting than any of those other choices.

So, I'm really looking forward to seeing that particular improvement in v6.

Thanks,

Nill

[gss]

Local adjustments, specifically local moiré adjustments, is enough for me to be quite happy plunking down the $99 $89.10 for an upgrade.

[Doug Peterson]

That's good news.  And I must admit that my real quarrel with v5 is more the way it applies NR by default to high ISO images, and especially those where exposure is boosted even a little bit.  It wipes out detail to an apalling degree, and I haven't found a way to change the default behavior (whereas I usually found v3.7.x's default NR pretty much on the mark).  But I've also found it to produce a lot more in the way of chunky artifacting than any of those other choices.

Ah! Yes, couldn't agree more. Really the defaults in version 5 were absolutely awful for most cameras at very high ISO. I don't know if those defaults have changed - haven't looked yet, but it's kind of a moot point for me as I recommend every one establish their own presets/defaults. In the noise reduction tab just select the down arrow and select "save as defaults". You can also create different presets as styles. Now that you can apply styles to images upon CF card import or while tethering you can easily/quickly access exactly the settings you prefer. Very fast for the workflow and very good for image quality.

[tho_mas]

Actually all the new features are very good and very welcomed.
Then again for me personally there's nothing I am particularly thrilled about… I would have loved to see other improvements, namely customizable brightness of the user interface and advanced color management options (black point compensation for the translation to the monitor profile / switachable CMM).
So for me personally the best of the new features is the option to stack presets and the local adjustments (in particular for local moiré correction).

As to the perspective correction… I'd consider this feature as (almost) useless unless the lens tools allow the correction of complex distortions. Distortion correction is still one of C1's weak points.
So I will continue to process without any cropping and without any rotation and run my images through Alpa Lens Corrector and first then apply further perspective corrections (if needed). Besides, Photoshop's perspective correction (and rotation) still provides a slightly "sharper" result (i.e. little less image degradation due to interpolation than C1).

I've noticed that V6 created a folder for plug-ins (in ~/library/application support/capture one/plug-ins). Promising!

[tho_mas]

At first attempt, video playback is not working. A folder of 5DII original clips H.264 videos only shows less than half as visible thumbs and those won't play. Will try again tomorrow.

just tried a 1min full HD video in AppleProRes (HQ) codec. No trouble at all here...
Just don't know why I would watch a video in C1 (which requires to import it first...).

[EricWHiss]

Any real samples ? I haven't really seen any ACR/LR images with noise which looks better than C1.

IMHO LR3 NR really is better than C1 v5 (who knows about v6?) - at least for the P20 I shoot and also its better than Phocus' NR for my ixpress 528c images.  I have a memory that the NR in C1 v3.7 could achieve a nicer film like quality for high ISO P20 images but it might be the same.   Curious to see what C1 6 will do.  

[hubell]

At the top of my Wish List would be a version of Capture One that did not use Sessions. It is the one thing I hate about the software. I can't get my head around it, and I really don't want to. I have been told that I can use Capture One and "ignore" Sessions, but the damn thing keeps cropping up.  It seems that the functionality of the whole program is built on top of Sessions, and I am constantly trying to operate as if Sessions do not exist, but they still do under the hood somewhere.

[Alex MacPherson]

I really like the new smart albums feature. I really like being able to sort images quickly for selects. This helps a lot!

[eleanorbrown]

I would love to have a local adjustment for clarity...or ideally of all the other adjustment tools too! Eleanor