Capture One is an all-in-one image capture (tethered shooting), cataloguing and editing application first launched by Danish company Phase One but now operating as a standalone software publisher. Born out of its medium format studio camera products, Capture One is now a professional RAW conversion tool for DSLR and mirrorless camera owners too. It’s a premium Lightroom rival that concentrates on image quality, fast and efficient editing and a choice of workflows aimed at busy professionals.
Could Capture One be the new Aperture? Like Aperture, it can create fully managed catalogs, which means all your images are stored within a single, monolithic catalog file. It sounds like madness… but is it?
Almost all the software applications reviewed and described on Life after Photoshop are available as a free trial, and here are the links. I always recommend using the trial version before making your mind up.
Masking complex outlines can be a slow and fiddly business, but there are tools to help, and once you’ve got your mask, there’s a lot you can do with it.
Lightroom is probably the automatic go-to program for enthusiasts and experts looking for an all-in-one photo organising and editing program, but it’s not necessarily the best and it’s not popular with everyone, so many will be looking for Lightroom alternatives.
I met my donkey friend while I was out testing a Leica M10 Monochrom and 28mm f/2 Summicron lens. For those who don’t know, this is a rangefinder camera with manual focusing, so getting my friend’s eye sharp was a special challenge as he was getting restless because I didn’t have any carrots. The Leica…
Histograms just show you what’s happening in your images, they’re not there to tell you what to do. But there’s an old adage from the days of film photography that you should still be able to see some detail in the darkest and brightest parts of your pictures, and that’s carried through into digital photography….
What is the mood you’re trying to capture? For his image of an Elizabethan country house, I wanted and sombre and forbidding look, and this required black and white, some dodging and burning and subtle toning.
Levels and curves can both be used to adjust the contrast in photos, but how are they different, which should you use and is one better than the other?
Preset Picks: The SN-04 Style from Capture One’s Seasonal Style pack (sold separately) has a very rich, warm look. Here’s how the Style is created.
Capture One vs Lightroom: how do choose between these two programs? Here are they key differences, broken down section by section.