[ehrwien]

Here's an example of what I am talking about. this is with my Pentax Q7, But I've seen it happend with other cameras.

It says the camera is the problem, because it is not supported. But you say that happens with certain lenses, on all cameras, for all the pictures?

[Craigbob]

It says the camera is the problem, because it is not supported. But you say that happens with certain lenses, on all cameras, for all the pictures?

My error, I meant Camera not lens. I was on my work laptop and didn't have access to my main system with images and DxO.

[BruceBanner]

I get a full office suite, operating system, two RAW editors, lens correction database, a pixel-level editor, panorama stitching application, video editor, and photo downloading utility for $0/month. All free, all open source. I even build my favorite RAW editor from source code so it's specifically tailored and optimized for my particular hardware. I can't imagine a situation where I'd return to the Microsoft/Adobe/etc. model.

Yeah, I mean I too am a fan of Linux and other free RAW editors (RawTherapee gets a fair amount of use for example), but for the professional (and I mean that, like as in event togs that do weddings and such), using such software is just unrealistic for big jobs. LR has syncing which greatly improves the speed of workflow as well as being supported by various 3rd party industry preset, LUT and Plugins. This is the area that LR (and to a degree PS) has all the power. If other free open software (or even reasonably priced cheaper ones) were to support synchronisation (and implemented well) as well as the same industry preset, LUT and plugin support entities... they'd be in trouble.

But... I also get this from my subscription; Eddy Summers (Adobe Portfolio, free with the Adobe subscription) which in turn gets me more paid work and I have as of yet not needed to actually buy a website. I've said it before, the actual price of the Adobe plan for this, LR and PS is actually very reasonable and affordable in the grand scheme of things, you just have to make sure you're squeezing every last drop out of the product. I know a few professionals who hate Adobe, yet they only use LR, don't take advantage of Portfolio nor do they know how to use PS (or what it can do for them). So yeah... from that perspective I can see why they're cross paying that much for LR (and probably also not exploiting LR to its fullest!).

[MetteHHH]

I know this thread is a bit old, and reviving ancient threads is generally a bad idea - but I REALLY did benefit from all the advise in this thread, and I would like to share some feedback. By using this existing thread, previous contributors get notifications, so here we go:

I picked my summer holidays for switching, and after carefully reading and considering the advice in the thread above and watching a few youtube videos on top, I went for Capture One.

Switching during the holidays meant that for once I actually watched and read some tutorials rather than just diving blindly into the editing process, but I have to say, I am VERY happy with the switch!

Three huge pros:
1) The default preview of my raw files is simply better: Better colours, better contrast. Like some of the comments above point out, Capture One does not prioritize Pentax, so a lot of the specific lens presets are missing. In my case particularly the DA* 300mm, my favourite lens. But the default settings work very well.
2) Being able to edit in masked layers is simply a revolution to me. I have never had Photoshop, so when I used Lightroom I did any layered work in GIMP, but mostly did my detailed editing with the Topaz plugins. They do have a "local adjustment" feature, but with real layers and great masking options I have SO much more creative control now.
3) Colour editing is absolutely stunning. The advanced colour editor lets me focus on specific areas, fine tune brightness and saturation when I lift shadows a bit, and for instance get rid of weirdly tinted shadowed areas, tone down distracting artifacts or details etc. I have to police myself really hard to keep me from going overboard with this - there are SO many options!

And a con:
Capture One is NOT a tool for cataloguing, tagging or editing exif data. This is a drawback for me particularly since I often mess up the exif time stamps (yes, I know, it's not hard, but I mess it up anyway!) Also, I had a lot of tags and keywords. Apparently, there are options for importing tags and keywords from Lightroom - those are the tutorials I did NOT find time for yet - but even so, the interface is obviously not intended for this. I think I can learn to do it in Faststone.

All in all, I am very happy with the switch. I'ts fun to play with. I still have a lot to learn, but personally I find the workflow mostly intuitive. The million short cuts are annoying, because I keep hitting them by mistake, but they will probably prove useful as I move out of the newbie-zone. I think my workflow improved overall, and I am very much sure that the quality of my editing improved. My photos look better!

Once again, thanks a million for your help and recommendations!

---

Last edited by MetteHHH; 08-12-2020 at 03:13 AM.

[MikeMcE]

I shoot only in raw/DNG so everything is pp. I’ve used Photoshop since PS7 and it has been a great program. As a result I’ve always used Bridge to transfer and organize. Now I am fed up with the Money Cloud$$$$$$


So I started with Affinity, with my trusty Bridge doing everything but Post. Masking and layers are easier than PS, use many of the same hot keys also. Best of I own it, like CS5.5, but this is current.
You can get the full version as a 10 day trial, I got hooked.


Hang up and DRIVE!

[normhead]

MY problem being as an Apple Aperture user, my demands for usability are off the charts compared to what ever I see out there. I want everything I use available off the sidebar. I use the drop down menus once or twice, but I won't use software that requires constant accessing menu bar functions. To date, my solution is to just declining accept new OS updates so I can continue using Aperture. It would be nice to find something newer especially since Apple doesn't have profiles for my two newest lenses, the DFA 28-105 and DA 55-300, but, everything I've tried to date is ridiculous in the implementation and unnecessary complexity. There's a difference between software developed that had to meet Steve Jobs approval and those that didn't. The guy who wrote Aperture came out with his own software, and I'm sure he felt the folks at Apple were too demanding, but he learned nothing, his independently produced software is crap. Some folks just have to be badgered to do it right. people who own their own companies, have to be the worst. They have this "I don't care if it's easy to use, if there's no clear design philosophy, where if you learn how to do one thing you have step up on learning to do everything else.' Too many companies have a my way or the highway attitude. It's sad, but 10 year old discontinued Apple software is better, at least from my perspective.

So far Tess and I have paid for three different programs when we see something we might try on sale. Over $150 wasted to date. The state of the PP market is thoroughly depressing. I've not found anything I like more than the $35 Pixelmator, and that because it's cheap and easy to use, but it's a Photoshop replacement with no built in data base. More of an addition to Aperture with support of layers, which Aperture doesn't have than a replacement for Aperture, and in the years I've owned it, I've needed it less than 5 times.

[Serkevan]

MY problem being as an Apple Aperture user, my demands for usability are off the charts compared to what ever I see out there. I want everything I use available off the sidebar. I use the drop down menus once or twice, but I won't use software that requires constant accessing menu bar functions. To date, my solution is to just declining accept new OS updates so I can continue using Aperture. It would be nice to find something newer especially since Apple doesn't have profiles for my two newest lenses, the DFA 28-105 and DA 55-300, but, everything I've tried to date is ridiculous in the implementation and unnecessary complexity. There's a difference between software developed that had to meet Steve Jobs approval and those that didn't. The guy who wrote Aperture came out with his own software, and I'm sure he felt the folks at Apple were too demanding, but he learned nothing, his independently produced software is crap. Some folks just have to be badgered to do it right. people who own their own companies, have to be the worst. They have this "I don't care if it's easy to use, if there's no clear design philosophy, where if you learn how to do one thing you have step up on learning to do everything else.' Too many companies have a my way or the highway attitude. It's sad, but 10 year old discontinued Apple software is better, at least from my perspective.

So far Tess and I have paid for three different programs when we see something we might try on sale. Over $150 wasted to date. The state of the PP market is thoroughly depressing. I've not found anything I like more than the $35 Pixelmator, and that because it's cheap and easy to use, but it's a Photoshop replacement with no built in data base. More of an addition to Aperture with support of layers, which Aperture doesn't have than a replacement for Aperture, and in the years I've owned it, I've needed it less than 5 times.

Lightroom's interface is top notch and it takes only a handful of clicks to edit photos so it might be right up your alley, it's super easy to pick up (at least one thing Adobe did well ).

However, in my experience it's a pain in the butt to get good colors out of the K-1, RawTherapee smokes it there... but it has a very clunky interface. I haven't managed to unhook myself from Lightroom because all the other alternatives are either a pain to use, don't have as much usability or want you to open photos one by one.

I really need to get to learning RT...

---------- Post added 08-22-20 at 02:23 AM ----------

I shoot only in raw/DNG so everything is pp. I’ve used Photoshop since PS7 and it has been a great program. As a result I’ve always used Bridge to transfer and organize. Now I am fed up with the Money Cloud$$$$$$


So I started with Affinity, with my trusty Bridge doing everything but Post. Masking and layers are easier than PS, use many of the same hot keys also. Best of I own it, like CS5.5, but this is current.
You can get the full version as a 10 day trial, I got hooked.


Hang up and DRIVE!

I tried Affinity but I'm more of a Raw Converter guy, so I don't quite need a Photoshop alternative... I need a Bridge one!
The program looks great for what it does, though...

[ThorSanchez]

Lightroom's interface is top notch and it takes only a handful of clicks to edit photos so it might be right up your alley, it's super easy to pick up (at least one thing Adobe did well ).

However, in my experience it's a pain in the butt to get good colors out of the K-1, RawTherapee smokes it there... but it has a very clunky interface. I haven't managed to unhook myself from Lightroom because all the other alternatives are either a pain to use, don't have as much usability or want you to open photos one by one.

I really need to get to learning RT...

I used nothing but Lightroom for about five or six years. But made the decision to go to RawTherapee for several reasons, including wanting to go to Linux for may home machine, and the Adobe subscription requirement. It took a few months, but I now think I get better results than I used to with Lightroom, and have a solid workflow. One thing to do is set up a favorites tab so your go-to top 6-8 modules are always right there every time you go to edit. Also, use Squirrel Mafia's pp3 files. You basically don't have to figure out the complexities of RT's noise reduction, just pick (for example) Squirrel Mafia's ISO 3200 pp3 as a starting point.

[Serkevan]

I used nothing but Lightroom for about five or six years. But made the decision to go to RawTherapee for several reasons, including wanting to go to Linux for may home machine, and the Adobe subscription requirement. It took a few months, but I now think I get better results than I used to with Lightroom, and have a solid workflow. One thing to do is set up a favorites tab so your go-to top 6-8 modules are always right there every time you go to edit. Also, use Squirrel Mafia's pp3 files. You basically don't have to figure out the complexities of RT's noise reduction, just pick (for example) Squirrel Mafia's ISO 3200 pp3 as a starting point.

Yeah, I skimmed the thread but I need a solid weekend to sit and set up everything - the demosaicing and the colour profiles are IMO much richer than what LR gets but the Adobe software is idiot (read: me ) proof

[MikeMcE]

Never heard of Raw Therapee......Thank You!

[normhead]

For my last software, I paid $350 for over 10 years use. Adobe product is simply not competitive if you aren't making money from it.

[Class A]

I read the thread here about the new version of CaptureOne, googled around and found some very reassuring pages about switching from LR to CaptureOne

I used to recommend Capture One but I don't anymore, at least not for the time being.

The reason is that they don't really know what they are doing with respect to the user interface (and in terms of creating a robust). This may or may not have to do with the fact that Capture One has separated from Phase One. In the past, one received the great combined support but nowadays Capture One operates as a separate entity with far worse support and bad development decisions.

Capture One had a great brush system: One brush for every layer type. Same keyboard shortcut, no matter whether one needed to paint a mask in an adjustment layer or a heal layer. By associating the eraser brush with the same shortcut key but a modifier (such as "Alt"), one could easily change between brushing and erasing, using just one button on a controller (or keyboard).

In version 13.1.0 (Capture One 20), they not only introduced the ability to use an arbitrary number of source points on heal layers, but also changed how one needs to use brushes. Now there are four shortcuts to contend with. This decreased usability dramatically, as it then required the conscious use of one of four buttons on a controller or keys on the keyboard, plus there were forced changes to the layer selection which were so confusing to users that the problems had to be at least partially addressed in the next release. The whole design was poorly thought out and should never have made it past beta testing. The fact that it did and that they at least partially corrected it in the very next release, tells you something about quality control at Capture One.

In version 13.1.1 they partially fixed the huge step backwards in usability, by reducing the number of forced layer selections (a problem that required David Grover to intervene when Joe McNally was demonstrating the software). However, it is just a partial fix, usability problems remain and in the latest 13.1.2 release, the issue has still not been addressed (I'm just talking about making it as good as it was before, not making it better).

This tells me that in the future, more is likely to go wrong. If they listen to a limited number of focus group users but are deaf to objectively sound arguments -- anyone having done a HCI 101 course would agree to them without thinking -- then that doesn't bode well for the future. It's the same kind of dumbing down of the interface, but making it harder for users who know what they are doing, that Adobe started when they made everything in LR "smart". That was the time I left Adobe/LR and, very unfortunately, the signs for C1 don't look good, AFAIC.

If you add to that there are the kind of bugs I left Lightroom for; the latest release notes state "Importing a catalog can result in the last picture not getting imported.", relocating folders on storage is bound to leave an inconsistent state behind, independently of whether you move images within Capture One or ask it to relocate them afterwards, the keystone correction does not work properly, etc. then, given the high price tag, it isn't that attractive as I once thought it was (before they heavily messed with the brush interaction design).

The is a bug, even in the most current release, which causes layer masks to be lost that hasn't been fixed for three whole months (and counting).

Lightroom users should know that while importing LR catalogues is technically possible, almost none of the adjustments are transferred. Crops seem to be the one adjustment one can rely on making it into a C1 catalogue (a bit more is supported, but that's a statement I recently read from an LR looking at C1). Users also frequently complain about C1 being poor regarding DAM. I never missed this, but heard this argument many times.

LR users should also know that there are no image histories in C1, so among other downsides, "before/after" comparisons are pointless.

There are no proper "virtual copies" either. C1 has "image variants" but they are forced to stick together so it is, e.g., not possible to have one album with B&W versions of colour images in another album. One can work around this limitation by using "smart albums" and manually assigning metadata to one subset of the variants, but this clearly a workaround for missing flexibility. Think of C1 variants as "LR stacks" and realise that there are no proper "virtual copies".

LR users should also know that C1 previews can be rather mushy sometimes, depending on image properties. For the sake of efficiency, some image operations like noise reduction are not performed properly at low magnification levels (e.g., when the image just fills the screen and one does not zoom in). Sometimes you'll think that the image is out of focus, only to find that it is completely fine after zooming in. The same issue (cutting corners for the sake of efficiency) can dramatically affect colour rendition as well. The problem has been known for a long time and while previews are more often than not tolerable, users should have been given a better option a long time ago already.

There are other annoying things like the inability of being able to overwrite files in an export folder. Either you have to manually delete existing previously exported images or C1 will create duplicates and then duplicates of duplicates, etc. by automatically renaming the new files (if it at least renamed the old files...). Things like that are a real productivity brake and could be implemented with almost no effort, but despite being requested for years and years, are still not available.

That's what kills me about the worse brush interaction design: They could leave it as it as, I don't care, all they would have to do is add one additional (universal) brush type (the one they had before), and everyone would be happy. Everyone. Implementing this additional brush type (that automatically adapts to the selected layer type) could be done with a trivial amount of implementation effort. But no, they only did a half-hearted fix to the completely inefficient and confusing design they debuted in 13.1.0.

There are many more no-brainer improvements which would be trivial to implement but help users quite a bit. For instance, one can use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out of viewed images. Inexplicably, the same approach is not available to resize the thumbnails in a browser window. Instead one either has to use a scrollbar (that is best hidden most of the time and would have to be unhidden whenever required) or keyboard shortcuts. To add insult to injury, some of these keyboard shortcuts don't work properly. I reported this and many more issues but more often than not the same issues persist from release to release.

There have, of course, been many great additions to the functionality over the years and many of my feature suggestions ended up being implemented. Still, that small easily fixable but nevertheless productivity impacting issues persist for so long is anything but optimal.

Capture One does not prioritize Pentax, so a lot of the specific lens presets are missing.

You won't get any special colour profiles from them either.
They sometimes used plain wrong colour profiles (for the K-5 and K-3) instead of the "custom-designed profile process" they claim in the marketing literature. The K-1 profile is not good, in my view, I'd recommend using one from another camera or making one your own (which is not as easy as it is in LR).

Nor will you see the lens name of a Pentax lens in the metadata panel. They cannot be bothered to pull the information from the right location (LR does it). No PixelShift support either, BTW, not even the limited support LR provides.

No tethering support for Pentax either. Again, LR does it.

Being able to edit in masked layers is simply a revolution to me.

The so-called "layers" in Capture One are not comparable to regular PS layers at all.
You get the same local adjustments with LR -- instead of layers you get adjustment pins -- and LR users had access to radial mask and proper linear gradient masks much, much earlier than C1 users.

Having said that, C1 is really great in practically supporting all kinds of adjustments when using local adjustments. To the best of my knowledge, LR still only offers a subset of the adjustments.

Colour editing is absolutely stunning.

I agree. That is really a highlight of C1.
However, I want to look at Darktable to see what the colour editing support is like.

Regarding retouching, for instance, Darktable is superior by offering a very sophisticated frequency separation approach.

I'm sorry for the rant, I don't want to dampen the joy you will no doubt have with Capture One. I'm just utterly disappointed that they didn't manage to completely fix a major usability problem in the last two releases; a problem that I find so aggravating that I won't consider any future upgrades anymore unless the problem has been fixed.

I'll probably keep using my old C1 13.0.4 version (it is a "Capture One 20" version, just not broken yet) for a while but will certainly not update to the version with the worse brush selection design and by implication never spend money on an upgrade again. This means, I'm forced to miss out on the improved healing support (healing and clone layers actually lost functionality in the 13.1.0 revamp, but the added multiple source point functionality would be really nice to have), i.e., have rather bad support for retouching, but at least I'm not forced to waste buttons on my controller and stupidly make multiple key/button presses and unnecessarily, when revisiting adjustment layers.

C1 was great and had great potential but I lost trust in their product design.