Looking for:
- Lightroom 6 vs capture one pro 11 free downloadCapture One vs Lightroom (Which is Really Better?) - About Thomas Fitzgerald
As I mentioned in the previous section, there are a some features missing, and its mostly a Raw converter and asset manager. But these key areas actually pack a lot of functionality and are very powerful, especially the processing side.
The options and controls for editing colours in Capture One is very powerful. First there is the Colour Balance tool. This is a three way colour corrector, which is similar to the toolset used for colour grading video. It allows you to control the colour and brightness of the shadows, mid tones and highlights separately. You can actually do a surprising amount of your colour editing in this tool alone. Second is the Colour Editor. This is like Lightroom HSL colour controls only much more powerful.
You can control the range of a particular shade, and you can add as many individual colour keys as you want and adjust those separately. And then you can save all of these as a custom colour profile if you want.
You can also use the keyed colours to generate a layer mask and use that for further manipulation. This is especially true for Sony cameras for some reason. This is more a weakness of Lightroom mind you. This is a fairly recent addition to the software, but it has become extremely powerful. Layers can contain most of the adjustments in the software although not all and you get a clear visual interface for the layers and you can rename them and reorder them.
You can also control the opacity of layers, so you can use this to blend two different styles for example. Layers can also be cloning or healing layers, and you can use these for removing objects etc.
You can also generate a luma-mask for layers or use the colour editors keyed to generate a mask. This can be useful to do things like, apply more noise reduction in the shadows for example. As I mentioned earlier, the export functionality of Capture One can be a bit confusing with its multitude of options, but it has one really powerful and useful feature. However, you can turn multiple process recipes at once and have Capture One export multiple versions of your image simultaneously.
For example, you can have it export a full res Tiff for your archives, a scaled version with a watermark for your website, and an even smaller version for social media, all at the same time. These tokens are basically variables taken from the metadata of the image being exported, so you can have it generate sub folders based on camera name for example, or any other metadata - including keywords and so on.
This makes the export system very powerful. Presets are used to store settings for individual adjustment panels. They appear int he drop down menu of each panel, and you can save settings for most panels and they will appear here. As I keep saying on this blog, the only person that can decide that is you.
There is a trial version of Capture One available, and the best way to figure out if its for you or not, is to give it a go. If you do fid the software confusing, I do have an overview video. As I mentioned in the article, this only really scratches the surface. A few years ago, Adobe shocked the creative world by introducing a monthly subscription plan for all its Creative Cloud apps.
Many photographers accepted the change and paid for the upgrade, happy to have the convenient cloud storage and cross-device photo editing capabilities of Lightroom CC.
This guide features our summarised recommendations of the best photo editing software in , which can be bought for a one-time fee. Luminar came onto the scene a few years ago as an affordable and simple image processing and editing software for users looking for a way to get their images looking great with minimal fuss. It arrived at the perfect time when photographers of all levels were starting to look for a viable Lightroom alternative — see our full review.
The most recent release of Luminar 4. I write about it more in my full review, but in a nutshell, version 4 is a viable Lightroom alternative that offers some truly incredible features. If you want to dive deeper, you should check Luminar 4 vs Lightroom comparison that will help you understand the differences in both the editors. Headline artificial-intelligence A. Another new feature to Luminar 4 is the AI Portrait Enhancer, which helps you to do the work of a portrait photo retoucher in seconds — removing blemishes from the face of your subject, whitening their eyes and teeth, or even making their faces slimmer, can all be done in a few mouse clicks.
Adobe Lightroom, by contrast, offers very few A. Lightroom, on the other hand, will apply its edits to the entire image, requiring you to manually mask things out. Luminar 4 makes it simple for a non-professional photographer to turn a bland photo into something a pro would be proud of. Getting images into Luminar is simple — just drag and drop. Aside from all the great features, the main benefit of Luminar over Lightroom and all the other image editors available in is its simplicity.
For those familiar with Lightroom, the editing panels in Luminar look almost identical — all the main adjustments for RAW files are there, including more advanced features like Curves and LUT Mapping. Performance depends heavily on the size of the original file, and your computer hardware. Finally, there were complaints about crashes and performance issues with the initial release, but thankfully, with the v4.
While the aforementioned Luminar 4 is, without doubt, a fantastic alternative to Lightroom, it does fall short of being a complete replacement, lacking certain file management features that professional photographers rely on. Thankfully, it works well in conjunction with Lightroom as a plugin , but what about those of us who want something to replace Lr completely? The answer lies in a popular product by Exposure Software review , now in its 6th iteration.
Exposure X6 is an advanced image editing app that rivals Lightroom Classic, with powerful features, intuitive controls and ease of use, all for one affordable fee i.
As a fully-featured RAW image editing software, Exposure X6 offers all the photo manipulation and file-management tools for advanced photographers, while still being simple enough for beginners to start using right away. It can also be used as a plugin for Lightroom , but we recommend ditching Adobe completely in favour of X6, to save on those monthly fees. Those transitioning from Lr will find the Exposure workspace very similar, with an additional benefit — panels and editing tools can be completely customized to suit your needs.
Photo management in Exposure is impressively fast. Incidentally, migrating images from an existing Lightroom catalogue is simple, with all existing edits, stars, flags, keywords and other metadata included with the files. Filtering in Exposure is a breeze, with the ability to quickly find your images based on all the usual variables. One handy feature is the ability to collaborate on image editing, via a cloud-based service such as Dropbox.
This allows you to access your edits on multiple computers, or give access to your team if you shoot as part of a studio. The ability to customise your tools and workspace is a great feature. Another useful feature is the 3D Colour Masking tool, which allows you to create and control a mask based on hue, saturation and vibrance.
Performance-wise, Exposure is fast to import and export images, and suffers from very little lag while editing, even on heavy RAW files. Best of all, perhaps, is its price. All in all, Exposure is an impressive piece of software that should fulfil all your needs as a photographer seeking a way to interact with your images, and produce stunning results.
ON1 Photo RAW is another of our favorite alternatives, and the version brings in a number of new features see review. Like Luminar, it combines an image organizer, Raw processor, layered editor, and effects app all in one. The develop module is structured much like Lightroom, and as mentioned before will seem a bit more complex to those new to photo editing.
That being said, ON1 has all the photo adjustments you would expect from a Lightroom replacement, including excellent AI auto options for tone. Used well, it can save quite a bit of time when making multiple selections. These work much the same as Photoshop and inPixio , with masks, blend modes, and an easy way to merge layers.
Not everyone uses these features, but if you do and want an all-in-one editor, ON1 has an edge up on the competition here. As far as portrait editing is concerned, ON1 has long been at the top of the field for its price point. From there you can adjust the skin, eyes, and mouth of each individually. ON1 also has several quality built-in presets. Also, the latest version added over new looks, as well as a number of new backgrounds, textures, and skies. It comes with a number of templates, including various options for individual prints, contact sheets, and tiled package prints.
It also lets you add watermarks before you print. Here are the top 3 benefits from working with Sessions:. However, this is what I would recommend: Apply your styles as new layers if you want to combine with another layer. For example, you can apply a Style as a layer with one specific adjustment, i.
As mentioned before, you can adjust the opacity of those layers so that you can make the Style match to your image without changing the Style itself. It was so incredibly slow, so I preferred to use live view on my phone. However, identifying mistakes on such a small screen and getting the sharpness right was difficult, or even impossible, to achieve. This was the first feature from Capture One Pro to become critical to my workflow: Tethering.
But I use it every time I do a product or recipe shot for a client to make sure I get sharpness and composition on point. Export a high res file from Lightroom into your desired Capture One Pro Session and try to recreate the look. The sliders in Capture One Pro work differently from the ones in Lightroom — you have to get used to them. For example, when using the HSL tool in Lightroom, you will need to use the color editor in Capture One Pro to achieve similar results.
When it comes to the clarity, you will find the biggest difference to Lightroom. Capture One Pro offers you 4 varieties of clarity. It gives you a subtle contrast of the mid tones, in combination with structure you get a crisp and sharpened result without the artificial look of the clarity tool in Lightroom. Almost every food photographer relies on the clarity slider in Lightroom, resulting in a very specific look.
Give it a go and edit some of your favorite images in Capture One Pro. You will need to go through a few images until you like the result of the edit. The Capture One Blog and webinars found on Youtube are really helpful when starting out. In particular, the resources which focus on color grading tools like the Advanced Color Editor, the Skin Tone Tool and the Color Balance are highly valuable.
You will be surprised by the possibilities! Michaela Hartwig trained as a fashion designer and worked as an accessory designer for a few years, but always had a passion for baking and decorating deserts. Encouraged by friends to create a cookbook, Michaela started a food blog in and dove into the field of photography as a result. Since then, she has practiced every minute to become a better stylist and photographer.
- Capture One photo editing software
You can write and draw notes right on top of your images for other photographers or even for yourself to follow up on. Building these tools into a bigger Capture One workflow has been a game-changer for some photographers. For more on tethered photography, check out our guide on what tethering can do for you. Unlike Lightroom, which just offers adjustment points for brushes and gradients, Capture One recently rolled out a layers-based editing system.
In addition to offering a slew of adjustment options, the layers function allows you to adjust the opacity of your effects, mask them, or toggle them off and on at will. You can define a specific color range a handy eyedropper-based tool helps with this , narrow or widen that range, and then adjust for hue, saturation, or lightness, all without affecting any of the other hues in the image.
Settings for image editing software. While Capture One also gets good marks from photographers for its organizational capabilities, Lightroom offers a few cool bells and whistles that give it an edge here. Lightroom features an AI-based search tool that lets you search your image catalog for photos of specific things without having to add any keywords; you can also search your images using metadata, edit status, and many more options.
Currently, Capture One has no mobile option for image editing. Landscape and nature photographers: pay attention, because this might be enough to sway you when choosing between Capture One or Lightroom. Lightroom has been praised for its smooth and natural-looking HDR functionalities, as well as its simple panorama-merging feature. Lightroom even combines the two with HDR Panorama , which lets you merge several exposure-bracketed photos to make a panorama in one fell swoop.
Thanks to the Publishing Manager feature in Lightroom , you can export a photo directly from the program onto Facebook, Instagram, Behance, Flickr, and a number of other social media or portfolio platforms. But Capture One has stuck almost entirely to making their own styles and releasing them via their online store in the form of downloadable packs, only opening the door to third-party add-ons in the fall of Since then, some options for third-party extras have surfaced—but compared to the enormous range of Lightroom add-ons on the market, your choices are pretty slim.
So, is Capture One better than Lightroom for your editing needs, or does Adobe come out on top once again? Those with a more fast-paced shooting style might want to choose Lightroom. Fujifilm and Sony users enjoy a nice price break on Capture One, thanks to special proprietary versions of the software geared toward those cameras. Photographers working on multi-person teams or with a heavy amount of client involvement will likely make good use of the annotation feature and Capture Pilot app.
No matter your goals or needs as a photographer, a great photography portfolio is a simple and stylish way to show off your work to the world. Choose a portfolio builder with beautiful, responsive templates and easy customization that will let you display your shots exactly as you want them. No matter where you come down in the great Lightroom vs. Capture One debate, you can directly integrate your Format portfolio with Lightroom or Capture One using downloadable plugins, allowing you to sync images from both programs straight to your site.
Good luck and happy editing! Header photograph credit: Jye Beckett. Want to learn more about image editing? Your instructions might be too vague. Capture One makes this very easy. You can highlight specific areas of an image using the Annotations tool. You can then send these annotated images to other members of your team.
This can save you a lot of time and stress. Capture One and Lightroom both offer a variety of extensions. These can make your editing process smoother. They can also let you get creative with your work. Lightroom goes hand in hand with presets. You can download pre-made presets, which are basically colour styles. You can use these colour styles to give your photos a specific look. For example, you can make a simple photo look like a vintage picture with one click.
You can also make your own custom presets in Lightroom. Many photographers have turned this into a photography business. As a result, there are millions of presets for all kinds of looks, styles, and photography genres. Lightroom also offers bulk editing. You can apply one preset to thousands of photos with one click. Wedding photographers use this very often to edit thousands of photos within minutes.
Capture One has presets, too. Besides presets, Lightroom offers a wide variety of extensions. These are some of the most efficient tools in the editing industry. You can transform your photos into seamless HDR photos or panoramas.
If you have Photoshop, you can merge your photos in it without exporting them from Lightroom. You can also download external extensions made by other companies. Lightroom is compatible with all kinds of advanced programs. For example, you can download a plugin like Luminar. Capture One offers a few extensions, but most of them are related to organising and resizing pictures.
The latest version of Lightroom is made for photographers of all kinds. This has its pros and cons. You might find it easier to colour correct or retouch your images because of these tools. Capture One has tethering features which lets you connect your camera to it.
Studio photographers often use this to see their images immediately. This saves them a lot of time. You can adjust your camera settings from Capture One in Live Mode.
All you need is a compatible camera. This is particularly handy for studio photographers who work with teams. Lightroom Classic tends to crash very often. Every upgrade seems to be slower than the last. This can be very frustrating for photographers who have thousands of images that they need to edit quickly. The older versions of Lightroom seem to be much more robust.
The program handles a lot of information very well. It also responds quickly to adjustment changes. Price is, of course, one of the most important things to keep in mind. Your budget, preferences, and future goals can have a huge impact on your decisions. Adobe now offers a subscription plan. The other option is a monthly subscription, which, while more expensive over the course of a year, is less expensive upfront and may make it more manageable to get to use Capture One than otherwise.
Furthermore, if you only shoot with one camera, you have the option of one of the manufacturer-specific versions, if you shoot Nikon, Sony, Canon or Fujifilm. The bigger issue here is how this compares to Lightroom. This gives you access to all versions of Lightroom Classic, Desktop, and Mobile as well as the full version of Photoshop.
On the face of it, this would seem like better value overall. Capture One still has many features that Lightroom lacks, and for many, depending on your shooting style and type of camera you use, you may get better results with Capture One.
But in my opinion, while Capture One has made strides not eh features it lacked, Lightroom has also continues to improve, perhaps spurred on by the competition with Capture One, and has closed the gap on some of the functionality too. At the end of the day, it all comes down to choice, and the best way to choose is to try it yourself. I still use Capture One and will continue to use it and support it, although I continue to use and write about Lightroom too.
I do think that Capture One, the company, needs to make some choices, though. At some point, though, they need to decide if they want to continue to only target it at high-end users, or reduce the price to make it more competitive with Lightroom. Time will tell how this plays out. If you want to help support our blog, you can do so if you buy anything from our affiliate partners:. Note that this post contains paid affiliate links.
We get a small commission for purchases made through these links, which helps run this site. Photo Journal. Fuji X Series. Capture One. Street Photography. Buy Lightroom Prests. Buy eBooks. Subscribe to RSS. About Thomas Fitzgerald Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
Dec Thomas Fitzgerald.
No comments:
Post a Comment