I'm a relatively new photographer with some technical background investigating both Lightroom and Capture One. I have a LR subscription and am about to download the C1 demo. For my purposes, both are probably "good enough," but I am curious about the following issues. I've read a few comparisons that are 2-3 years old and I wonder if they are still valid today. My understanding is despite a small update to the Lightroom process version this year, the underlying algorithms (e.g. sharpening, denoising, demosaicing) in LR are as they were about 6 years ago. On the other hand, C1 has been updated a lot since then, so possibly it has gained ground on LR.
First, it seems clear that C1 produces better images on its default settings than LR does. Less clear to me is whether it has an image quality advantage after basic edits have been performed in each, since some accuse C1 of "juicing" their default settings to appear superior. Also important to me is the level of effort required. Maybe it is possible that LR can produce results as good as C1 after serious work, but if I can do that by default in C1, then that's anadvantage in favor in C1.
So, do you consider C1 to have an image quality, or at least effort, advantage on LR in its 2018 incarnation?
Second, how does C1's current highlight recovery algorithm compare to LR? My focus on comparing these two is mostly on image quality, and this was the only place where I found consistent claims -- backed with visual comparisons -- that LR was superior to C1, at least a few years ago. It seemed that the LR highlights and shadows sliders were just better. Is this still the case?
Thanks for your help.