Summary
Highlights
The video opens by addressing common photography myths and how certain software, like Capture One, gets excessively hyped. The presenter notes that Capture One has a long history, predating Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom, and has been popular with professional photographers. However, recent claims of its superiority over Lightroom for all types of photography are challenged, leading to an in-depth review of its strengths and weaknesses.
The speaker points out that much of Capture One's hype originates from professional portrait and studio photographers. For this specific niche, Capture One is considered a decent application, valued for its reliability in high-stakes shoots. However, the presenter argues that this focus makes it a 'niche application' with a 'primitive tool set' for general photography, including genres like real estate, landscape, or astro photography.
From an asset management perspective, Capture One is deemed slightly better than some editors but 'nowhere near as capable as Lightroom'. Features like automatic group view are primarily useful for studio work, and its support for location-based searches is basic. While it has smart albums and metadata filters, they lack the granularity of Lightroom. Capture One also lacks Lightroom's plugin architecture, limiting its extensibility.
The video delves into raw editing, specifically demosaicing, the process of combining image data. The presenter found Capture One's raw engine to be 'more aggressive' and images 'over sharp' in testing. This aggressive approach is believed to be tuned for portrait photography, which can be detrimental for subjects like clouds in landscape shots. The speaker concludes that Capture One's raw rendering is not superior to Lightroom's, and sometimes the opposite.
Contrary to common claims, the presenter found Capture One to be significantly slower than Lightroom. Specific examples include noticeable lag when using HDR sliders (highlights and shadows) and dehaze sliders. Across various tests, including import, editing updates, zooming, and searching, Lightroom consistently outperformed Capture One, often 'staggeringly so'.
Masking is highlighted as one of Capture One's biggest shortcomings. The presenter calls its masking capabilities 'the worst' of any raw editor tested, describing it as 'slow, primitive, and excruciatingly awkward'. It lacks AI masking tools, and its 'Magic Brush' is criticized for misidentifying areas. In contrast, Lightroom's AI masking, including automatic selection of people and body parts, is far more advanced and efficient, a feature notably absent in Capture One, despite its target audience of studio photographers.
While many initially switched to Capture One due to Adobe's subscription model, the video argues that Adobe's photography bundle is 'considerably cheaper' even with a subscription. Examples from Australia show Adobe's package being much more affordable than Capture One's annual subscription or outright purchase. Furthermore, Capture One's recent licensing changes require upgrade fees for subsequent point releases, making it more expensive to keep current.
The presenter concludes that Capture One is 'the most overrated raw editor on the market'. Its demosaicing algorithm is not great, it lacks many useful features, its masking is outdated, it's slow, and it's more expensive than comparable Adobe software. While acknowledging that Capture One might have been a viable alternative in 2011, Lightroom has 'changed, evolved, and improved massively' since then, whereas Capture One has 'pretty much stood still'. For an industry-leading raw editor, DXO PhotoLab is recommended, and for flexibility and modern AI features, the Adobe Photography Suite.