(upbeat music) - Today school's in session. You're gonna be working hard, roll up your sleeves, prepare to take notes and you're gonna get
a homework assignment. That's right. So I figured I'd show
you a Shetland Sheepdog running in the beginning to kind of calm everybody down. All right, let's get
started, intro please. (upbeat music) Hi, everyone, welcome to "pal2tech." And of course, welcome to the very first in a new series designed
to teach you Capture One. I do think that Capture One
is starting to go places and, I think this is the best time
to take another look at it and this time get past that
very different user interface and really see if this software is worth making a permanent switch to, or not. Now, before we get started there's some things that you need to know. First, I'm not getting into the whole Lightroom versus Capture One debate. My sole focus is on teaching Capture One for those photographers interested in exploring alternatives to Lightroom. Second, these videos are not
sponsored by Capture One. I purchased and paid
for Capture One myself. They have no idea I'm even
making these tutorials. Finally, this training
will really be aimed at current Lightroom users trying to learn Capture
One for the first time. A lot of the comparisons I'll be making and the concepts I'll be teaching will be under the
assumption that many people who are watching this video right now are familiar with and
have been using Lightroom. Let's get started with lesson one. (upbeat music) Capture One makes four
versions of the software. There's Capture One Pro, which basically will support all cameras and allows you to install and use it on up to three devices. And then there's either Capture One Sony, Capture One Fujifilm or Capture One Nikon which are camera specific versions and will only work on their
respective camera brand. Now these three specific camera versions allow for installation
for up to two devices, not three, like the Capture One pro does. All of these versions of
Capture One are equal. It's just the camera brands and the number of devices
that you can install them on that are different. Obviously, assuming that
you are a Fujifilm shooter, you're going to want to consider
Capture One for Fujifilm. But wait, there's more, now, each of these four
different versions of Capture One is split apart into two
different package options. The first package option is just to get the Capture
One software itself. The second option is to
get Capture One software plus a bunch of included
built-in preset styles. To be clear, you do not need this option in order to have the
Fujifilm film simulations. You get the Fujifilm film sims if you just get only the basic Capture One without the style pack. Once you choose your package option, then you can decide on
how you wanna pay for it. You could either feel right at home with how you do with Adobe
and rent the software for a monthly payment in perpetuity, or you can purchase the software outright. Renting the software will allow you to always upgrade to a newer major version as long as you continue
paying your monthly fee. If you purchase the software outright, you'll get minor software
updates for free, plus a discount price
on any major software release in the future. So, to sum up, there's
four major versions, one regular and three camera
specific model versions. Once you choose one of those, then you need to decide if you want just the editing software or the editing software and all those fancy little prebuilt one click image styles. And finally, once you choose that, then you need to decide if you're gonna rent the
software or purchase it. But wait, there's one more thing. In addition to everything I just told you, Capture One also offers a product called Capture One Express. They have Capture One Express for Sony and a Capture One express for Fujifilm. Capture One Express is completely free with no time limit restrictions. Capture One Express definitely has fewer features than regular Capture One. Most notably it doesn't have layers, advanced color correction, levels or even curves channels. However, it does give you the same quality RAW processing for Fujifilm files as the paid version does. So if you're unsure, this is a great way to
try out the software and see how it handles your RAW files. It costs absolutely nothing. And finally, if these aren't
enough options for you, you can download a full
version of Capture One for free as a trial version to use for 30 days and that would include all the features. Now that you've chosen your version and you have downloaded and
installed it on your computer, it is now time to open it up and have a brief tour of the interface. (upbeat music) (laughs) Dorothy, you are
not in Lightroom anymore. Okay, so the first thing
you're gonna notice is this looks vastly
different from Lightroom. There are however some
main sections in it. Right over here you have what
are called the Tool Tabs. We'll get to those in just a second. Up here is called the ToolBar. This has a number of things where if you click on the little arrow, you have additional choices for each tool. Over here there are some larger icons, and this is what really tripped me up when I first opened it 'cause it is kind of confusing and we'll get to this as well. Over on the right hand
side are your images. I can't stand having the images kind of going down
vertically on the right side. So the very first setting
you may wanna consider doing if you want this to be more like Lightroom is go up to where it says View, Customize Browser, Place Below. (sighs) A little bit more like Lightroom. But these are your images. And when you click on it,
it appears in the viewer. And, if you want to, here's
another setting you can make. If this looks a little too weird for you, you can go up to where it says Window, choose Workspace, Migration. That's another word for, I really miss Lightroom look and layout, please bring some of that here. Already now everything is on this side just like it is here in Lightroom, okay? I'm not so sure you should be actually trying to be just like Lightroom. And the reason for that is, this is a completely
different type of software with a totally different menu structure and way of working. And if you're gonna learn Capture One, my strong suggestion to
you is, start out right. Learn the way Capture One is set up and not the way that you
wanna try and make Capture One be like Lightroom. So I'm gonna put the Workspace
back to default for this and the rest of my tutorial lessons. We're gonna have the workspace
as Capture One recommends it. The only difference though is, I have to put those
pictures across the bottom, I can't stand having them vertically. So, let's just do that right now. Once again, View, Customized
Browser, Place Below. You can customize so much of Capture One. The entire program can
be completely fine tuned to exactly how you want it. So Capture One's workflow
is basically laid out using icon representation based on what it thinks would be a logical flow of shoot to import to edit to export, whereas kind of Lightroom
is all over the place and there really isn't a flow to it. with Capture One, you're generally gonna wanna start to the leftmost icon and work
your way toward the right. So for example, on the left icon right here, you have all of the file import and catalog management functions. Then, the next icon
over is one of a camera. And that really confused
me because I thought, "Oh, that's the lens settings
and things like that." No, it's not. That's purely for tethering and we're not gonna get
into tethering right now during this particular video. Just know that that icon is for tethering as we are moving our way
toward the right of the icons. The next one looks like
a little camera lens and that works great because that tells me this
is lens correction stuff. Distortion and lens profiles and rotation and that kind of thing. So the next two icons for me are really confusing for what they are, but the good news is we
can totally customize them and make them clear. The first icon right here is
technically your color icon. All of your color settings. So you have your color
editor, your white balance, that kind of thing. Then the next one over from
that is your exposure icon. And you have all of your
various exposure thing. Now, here is where the
confusion cranks up to 11, okay? Your white balance settings. You have one located
in your exposure icon, but if you click over on your color, whoop, there it is there also. It's in both places. So it's kind of confusing because they have duplicates of the same thing under different categories. So, what you're going to
need to do, first of all, is look at this for a little
while, get used to it, and then you can customize it and only have for example, the white balance in the color area. So for example, I will go over to exposure right here where white balances is, right click that and select
Remove Tool, White Balance. There, now it's gone. Now the white balance is
only in the color heading. As we continue moving toward the right, we now have our navigator. We have Sharpening, Noise
Reduction, Film Grain. Then we have our styles and presets. And then we have informational section which tells you all of the XF and other data about the image. And finally we have a
little gear right here. This area's where we handle our exports and you can certainly add all kinds of new export recipes they're called, and you can have things
exported in any way you want. You can change things like
the output destination, the Process Recipes and
all of that kind of thing is done right here. There are additional
categories that you can add. If you hover your mouse right
over here, you Add Tool Tab. The ones that are in bright
white have not been added yet. The ones that are dimmed
out are already there. So for example, there is a
whole Local Adjustments tab. If I click on that, okay,
have a look at that. You see what just appeared. Then you can add Local Adjustment layers. So what I suggest you
do right off the bat is, don't import images and just
start editing right now. That's the problem. A lot of people immediately
wanna get to the fun stuff. They wanna bring their RAW files in and they wanna see what it
looks like in Capture One, and then they get frustrated and confused because they didn't learn the basics of how to use this user interface. Guilty as charged. So what you wanna do here is you wanna reduce the clutter
and move stuff around. And you can also reorder these by clicking and dragging them
up or dragging them down. Also, very important, pay attention to these three
little dots that appear because they give you all kinds of additional options that
sometimes you could miss and you're looking for if
you're not paying attention. Now, for example, my styles and presets, I don't wanna have those
toward the end of my workflow, I would have them toward the
beginning of my workflow. So a tip that you can do, if you're on a Mac, hold
down Command, click on it, and drag it and you can reorder it. You see that there? Same thing with this adjustment layers. I've got adjustment layers
appearing after my export. I don't want that. Why would I export a photo and then have adjustment layers kind of in the flow after that? Confusing, right? So just hold down Command, Option if you're on windows, and click and move it and I can move adjustment layers to say right after my color one. You can also delete these, right? Remove Tool, you can take these out, you can consolidate 'em, you can even just have
one toolbar category with all the things below
it if you want it to. Up here you have things like cropping or zooming in and out. And, you have, as you can see right here, the various keyboard
shortcuts for each command that you might wanna use. Speaking of keyboard shortcuts, you can certainly assign
keyboard shortcuts to anything. Go to Edit, Edit Keyboard Shortcuts, and you'll see this window right here. And you can add and change around all kinds of keyboard
shortcuts to whatever it is that you wanna use. And of course, save your own personal
set of keyboard shortcuts. Put some thought into
how your workflow is, and then you wanna
customize the user interface to how you work. (upbeat music) Now we come to the single most important
decision you need to make when you start using Capture One. Are you going to utilize
a catalog based workflow? Or are you going to utilize
a session based workflow? With Lightroom Classic,
whether you like it or not, you are required to use
a catalog based workflow. A catalog is a proprietary database that manages all of your images and keeps track of all
of your adjustments, and basically requires
you to go through it to do anything with
regard to post-processing and exporting of your photographs. And there are advantages
to using a catalog. A catalog will allow you to
search back over many years to see all of the photos say you took at a specific location,
or with a specific lens and allow you to perform offline edits of your photos that are
stored on external hard drives that get disconnected. However, there are problems
with using a catalog. The catalog file itself could get corrupt. Everything has to be done within the confines of the software and you can't use your operating system to manipulate your files or browse through and make changes. Now, while you can set up
a catalog in Capture One just like you do in Lightroom, Capture One also offers the option of using what is called
a session based workflow. Think of a session based workflow as similar to Adobe Bridge
if you've used that, but much more flexible and
gives you many more options. Sessions are used for the kind of workflow where you generally are
processing photos, shoot by shoot. And then you're kind of done with it. So for example, you may have a wedding shoot
for John and Kathy Smith. So you spin up a new
session for John and Kathy. You do all of your editing in there, and then everything pertaining to that John and Kathy wedding shoot project is contained within the session. That would include all of
the original RAW files, all of your edits and
selects and adjustments, as well as all of your
post-process output files such as JPEGs and deliverables
that go back to the clients. Now, with sessions, you don't
need to import images at all. Everything is self-contained
right in whatever folder you specified and you
told the program to use as your session. Sessions are much more portable and you can share a
session with someone else who can then open it up in Capture One and see exactly all of the edits and everything that you were doing. Then, they can even make edits to it and then hand you back the session and you can pick it up right from there. You don't need to worry
about database corruption. You're not using a database
to manage your session, rather you're using your
computer's operating system with a file and folder
format like you're used to. Sessions also work well with
external solid state drives because you don't need to worry about storing a large and
ever-growing catalog file on your computer's internal hard drive. (lips reverberating) Ugh! I realized that this
can be quite confusing, and this was the point at which
I stopped, quit Capture One, and I didn't pick it up again for a year. I want you to start off by using a session based workflow. The reason I say that is because I think it will be much easier to work with if you're first learning Capture One. But, there are two other huge reasons why I think you should choose sessions when you first get started. The first is that you can always later on import your sessions into
a Capture One catalog. So, if you don't like using sessions and you decide to spin up
that Capture One catalog, you can import your
sessions directly into that and then start using your
catalog based workflow. Secondly, sessions also allow
you to reference other files and directories outside
of the session folder and create what are called
session albums and favorites which sort of allow
the best of both worlds of using a catalog and a session. To create a new session in Capture One all you need to do is
go File, New Session, then give it a name. I like to name it beginning with a date and then the name of what I was shooting. Now we have to find the location of it. So this is where you browse
your computer's hard drive. So, you'd probably connect
your Fujifilm camera, get the images off of that, put it into a folder wherever it is you store, manage and organize your photos, and that's where you're going
to tell the session to look. So in this case just for simplicity, I stored it on my computer's desktop. So I'm gonna go to desktop, here it is right here, and I'm gonna click choose. That's it. Now, every session in Capture One creates four separate folders
which serve a purpose. There's the capture folder, the selects folder, the output folder and the trash folder. The capture folder is
the folder where you will dump your camera's files. That's where you put your RAW files right when you get back from the shoot. Once they're in the Capture folder, Capture One will see that
and immediately bring them into your active session. Watch this. Okay, so as you can see, this is the session folder that I created. I have capture, output, selects and trash. Those are my four sub folders. I'm gonna go ahead and move these pictures right into my capture folder. So that's real simple, drag and drop them right in there. Now watch what happens when I do that and I go back into Capture One. There they are. They just appeared, okay. See that? Now another way I could have
brought images into Capture One would it simply be to go
right to my Capture folder, right click it and select Import, Import From Selected Folder. You don't have to bring them
into the Capture folder, but I recommend always
using the Capture folder as the place where you first
put your captured files before you start editing them. Frankly, I find it easier to just drag all of my
files right from my SD card, straight into my Capture
folder of the new session that I've created. Now, besides the Capture folder, there are three other
folders that get created every time you make a new session. That would be the selects folder, the output folder and the trash folder. The selects folder, I don't really use. The idea behind it is
that's gonna be the folder where you will put your selects, your best images. So right here, if I happen to think that
this is the best image, I could simply right click it and say Move To Selects Folder, boom. There it is right in my selects folder. Or you could drag and drop
it right just like that. Now, when it comes to deleting images, there is that other folder called trash and I love the way
Capture One handles this. For example, I'm gonna go ahead and delete this one right here. Boom, it's gone. It's no longer in my Capture folder and instead it's in the trash. You see that right there? So if I go into my session, there's the trash folder, and there's the image right there. It's a layer of protection
that I really like. And what you can do periodically is, you can go up to File,
Empty Session Trash. And once you go ahead and do this, it will delete from the trash, those images that you had
previously sent to trash in that section. (upbeat music) How do you deal with JPEGs and RAW files if you shoot both? If you look in my Capture folder, you'll see that I have JPEGs
and RAW images in that folder. Here's what you need to do, go up to View, Global Filters,
Always Hide JPEG Files. Now you will only see
and work with RAW files. (upbeat music) Capture One also allows
you to send your photos to third party applications. For example, you can round
trip them to Photoshop. Let me show you how you do that. For example, this image right here, I'm gonna right click on it, Edit With, Adobe Photoshop. This is just like in Lightroom. That's gonna open up Photoshop. Okay, so here it is in Photoshop. Image, Mode, let's go Adjustments. How about saturation? Let's turn up the saturation. There we go. That's perfect. That'll stand out. So we just made some
changes right here, okay? Now, if I go File,
Save, closing Photoshop, have a look at that this. You see that? It brought it back into Capture One. Now, for those of you
that use Photo Mechanic to cull through your photos quickly before bringing them into Lightroom, check this out. If I open up Photo Mechanic, I'm gonna go ahead and work
with a new file right here, a different photo shoot on a different day is just pick a photo, it doesn't matter which one. Here's one. And I'm gonna give this one five stars. You see that? And again, I use Photo Mechanic
to cull through my photos. It is absolutely the fastest way to do it. Now, I'm closing Photo
Mechanic completely. Now that I've done that, I am going to bring these
photos into my session by dragging and dropping them into there. I could have also gone in
and imported them as well, there is an import feature. And as you can see, look, there it goes, it's bringing them in,
bringing them all in. As it's bringing them in, there are my photos, have a look at this. You see that? Look at that, five stars. It brought that right
in from Photo Mechanic. So what I did in Photo Mechanic
will bring into Capture One. This has been a really long training video and you've been an awesome student. I'm gonna show you where in this program, the Fujifilm film simulations are located. You gotta find Base Characteristics. Now, if you don't see it, what you wanna do is hover
your mouse right up here, right click, Add Tool, and then
choose Base Characteristics. When you find Base Characteristics, you will see under where it says Curve, I shot this image on a Fujifilm X-T2. If you select Curve, there they all are. Have a look at that. See that? Isn't that great? Now, if I go to an image that's shot on a different camera model like an X-T4 for example, I'll click on that. If I go to Base Characteristics, I can choose Bleach Bypass
because it knows that camera. Now, it is very tempting for me to get into the really fun stuff, right? The color adjustments, the tonality, all of the really cool
features that Capture One has. I'm not gonna do that right now. We need to take our time with this. We have to get the
fundamentals down first. You need to be familiar with catalogs versus sessions and playing around with
importing and moving them around. You need to understand how
to roundtrip to Photoshop. I think that's an important one. And most importantly, you need to understand the layout, the various tools where things are and how to customize it to
best suit your workflow. In other words, sort of an overview 35,000
foot view of the program. That's what you need to
do first and foremost before you start playing
around with all the fun stuff. I have some homework for you. Yes, there is homework on this channel. Isn't that great? All right, what I would like
you to do, install Capture One. Number two, create a new session. Add some photos to that session using the technique I showed
you, or use an import, then examine and play
around with the tool tabs and the toolbar and
create your own workspace. You can do that by going up to Window, Workspace, Save Workspace. So in other words, get it all set up how you like it, and then save the workspace as something that you can call your own. I know you've been putting this off. Some of you have opened
up Capture One before, but there was a point at which you stopped because it wasn't like Lightroom, it was confusing, and I get that. Same thing happened to me. So do your homework assignment. There will be a lesson number two coming. And in that lesson, we are gonna through a workflow of editing and adjusting an image using the various tools in Capture One and then exporting it for something like Instagram or to deliver to a client. I didn't get too much into
catalogs in this video. You could certainly set up
a catalog if you want to and try that out. But I recommend using a session. I know this software can
be daunting and confusing. It is definitely different than Lightroom. Try it out, take your time with it, roll up your sleeves and really try and play around with and understand what sessions do and kind of where everything is located and then we will pick it up from there right where we left off next time, okay? Thank you so much for watching. If you found this video helpful, please don't hesitate to give
it the like and subscribe and I'll see you next time. Take care. I will go over the various
software options you have. (dog barking) I will go over the various soft... (dog barking) (beep) dog, come on Piper. (dog barking) (sighs loudly) (upbeat music)
