3 Reasons I Switched From Lightroom to Capture 1 in 2020

right now you might be asking yourself why is gary wearing that ridiculous shirt well because it's 84 degrees outside in january that's like 29 degrees celsius bud that's right here in florida the winter time never really comes but for more than one or two days a year but that won't stop me from giving you a great video today all about the three main reasons why i use capture one in my daily workflow before we get started let me remind you that i have a very fun photography-ish podcast called photobomb i co-host it with my friend boo ray perry and i'll put a link to that in the description it's also available anywhere podcasts can be found imagine like a drive time morning radio show where both of the hosts just happen to be photographers so do me a favor hit the like button subscribe to this video so you get more and hit the notification bell so you know when new stuff comes out i promise it'll all be good and totally bearable to watch for just a few minutes at a time now let's get going capture one is something i came to in the last year or so after using many different types of software the big ones most especially and i feel like it's a good balance for me and it does all the things that i wanted to do the way that i want it done so i'm gonna give you my reasons why i use capture one and back that up with a little bit of information for you and i will also give you a cool trick for if you switch over from lightroom to capture one that will help you out a lot and a couple of things that i wish were a little better about capture one okay here we go the first reason i switched to capture one is the raw processing besides the software that comes with the camera which i guarantee you no matter what platform you're on it will look the best besides that capture one renders raw files with the best color accuracy and clarity that i've seen in any software now i've gone from everything from using digital photo professional with canon which looks great but it's really slow workflow to lightroom which has a great workflow but the image color just doesn't work now you can create custom color profiles for every potential scenario in your studio and every camera and and go way deep into it but me i just really like it when a software works right out of the box and those generic color profiles in capture one are awesome and they just look good i use them in combination with an x right color checker target to do a custom white balance in camera in every single shoot but when i do that i pull the images in capture one and with a very small amount of adjustment they just look great the second reason i switch to capture one is the flexibility in file organization now originally in my photography career i used adobe bridge and camera raw and i loved it that you could just browse to any folder organize your files however you want move them around wherever and all you got to do is point bridge at a folder but you have to use bridge in conjunction with camera raw to do what lightroom just does and so i moved to lightroom but i found myself consistently frustrated by having to import everything into a catalog and it just got more bloated and more bloated or create a new catalog every six months or a year or a new catalog for every shoot and it became kind of a lot to keep track of and so it really just wasn't perfect for the way that my brain is organized there's nothing wrong with it it's just not a good fit for the way that i think and the way that i organize my files so capture one gives you the ability to create individual sessions and organize your files kind of however you want and it works really really well for me but for lightroom users if you like that cataloging feature it'll do that too and you can organize multiple sessions inside a catalog and it's just more flexible and it just works the third reason i switched to capture one from lightroom is the tethering now i tethered with lightroom for years and i always made it work but too many drop connections too many problems too much starting stopping and restarting the computer and restarting the software and to be fair adobe has made some big improvements in that regard but it still doesn't even carry capture one's lunch as far as tethering is concerned you plug it in it works it's easy to organize and export files and if i'm shooting on location i'm pretty much tethering anything commercial group headshots i absolutely rely on tethering and capture one is just the best all around now there are other solutions and other ways to tether that are good and reliable none though that work with the software that i already use in my day-to-day editing without having to employ another piece of software into the chain i just find it to be the best most reliable solution if you shoot tether now here's a bonus one for you one of the things that a lot of people like about capture one is that it's subscription based or you can buy the whole thing so if you don't quite have the money to throw down and spend a few hundred bucks on this piece of software you can also subscribe for a monthly fee which is a lot more affordable when you're getting started so that gives people the flexibility on how they want to spend their money and not only that but they make versions of the software that are specific to your camera system so that you don't necessarily have to pay for the entire suite if you're only a fuji shooter or a sony shooter so that's pretty great that they are making things a little more flexible and a little easier for photographers if you've looked at your bank statement recently you know that the monthly payments for all the things you have to pay for are eating you alive and so it's great that you have the option to do it this way and that's that's a big win for a lot of people so here are the ugly parts the downside now capture one is a great piece of software and i think all around if you encompass everything that i need to do on a daily basis it works the best for me and the problem is is that adobe is a huge company and they're just faster putting out updates they're faster at new camera updates and new raw file conversions and you're going to get served a lot faster in that adobe ecosystem than you are with capture one so you might have to wait a little bit longer but i typically find that it has been worth the wait the other thing is that adobe ecosystem if you are bought into the adobe suite of software they all work together really really well and although capture one has the ability to edit in photoshop and then save and keep it in your catalog it's not as fluid as it would be if you were working with bridge or if you're working with lightroom and not to mention if you travel a lot and you work on the road lightroom has that really killer mobile system that you can just upload to your ipad edit and you get home to your computer and it's right there waiting for you and that's pretty rad and capture one doesn't really have anything like that and finally probably the biggest problem with capture one the biggest hurdle is learning a new piece of software if you're watching this there's a good chance you're pretty familiar with adobe products and maybe you've looked at capture one or even downloaded the trial to capture one and when you open it up and you just get that like feeling like i learned a new piece of software that's a terrible feeling and that's the one i had when i first downloaded the trial and opened it now a good friend of mine who is a capture one user who actually converted me to capture one gave me this one tip that really gave me a leg up in getting a hold of it if you go into capture one and you change the workspace around to what's called migration now this is a sneaky setup that rearranges all the tools and palettes in capture one to make it look and feel a little more like an adobe product specifically it's laid out a lot more like the default in lightroom so if you switch that over it's going to feel more familiar and learning it is going to be a lot easier now i'm going to be coming up with some more videos that are going to go in depth into my capture one workflow and into some of the things that will help you get a better handle on it more quickly so do me a favor like this video subscribe and hit the notification bell so that you can get notified as soon as those videos come out thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Gary Hughes

Views: 4,027

Keywords: switching to capture 1, lightroom v capture 1, capture1, capture one, phaseone, best photo editing software, best program for editing photos, lightroom or capture1, lightroom alternative, alternatives to lightroom

Id: BxKZC0FjASI

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 08 2021