How painful is the switch from LR to Capture One?

Did anybody do this switch and how painful is it? Especially:
* How well does the import of the LR raw edits into Capture One work?
* How steep is the learning curve for an experienced LR user?

I am thinking of doing that for quite a while now and adobe switching more and more into the cloud is a good motivator for me. Please don't turn this into a LR vs CC discussion - there is way too much of that already.

I don't have an answer for you, but I also am thinking the same. I just finished d/l the trial and will see. There are videos, one being specifically for migrating from LR / ACR to C1.

FWIW, I have Affinity which may work as a PS replacement, and On1. I'm not continuing with On1 since it seems that even if you have the 2017 version, you only have until the 30th to get the "special upgrade pricing", and that is a "Pre-Order", based off their Beta versions.

I'm still using the C1 trial, but I've seen enough that I'll be using C1 as my main processor going forward. I think the answer to the "how much pain" question is going to depend heavily on how you currently use LR. With that in mind I'll describe how I use LR (v6), then note the areas in C1 that I've found the most awkward.

My goal with LR is to go from RAW to finished shot, preferably without doing additional processing in an external app. I cull my images in LR, make global and local adjustments in LR, and use LR for final image output. Unfortunately I often find that I have to dump the raw to a tiff and do some preliminary editing (skin touch up usually) in PS, before returning to LR; this is one thing I'd like to eliminate or at least reduce. I make only the most minimal use of LR's catalog system; I import into a default catalog, do my editing, use the "export folder as catalog" to produce a folder for archiving, then clear out the default catalog.

So now looking at C1 (and bare in mind I'm a C1 newb):

1) It took me a little while, but I found that I could sidestep their catalog system completely by using a default session and just browsing directly to my folder of fresh raw images. No more importing!

2) Blemish removal is different from LR, and it took me a while to adjust my thinking. On the one hand there's the spot heal tool. This is a fast, global tool that is aimed primarily at fixing sensor dust spots and acne (which it does very well) though it can and does work on other things. There's no control over the "source" of the area used as the replacement, and it's not a brush; you just target one circular area after another and C1 does a content-aware fill. You only get 100 of these spot-heals. A more flexible and powerful method is to add a clone/heal layer. This is kind of a hybrid of Photoshop cloning and the LR healing brush; you indicate a "source" area then brush over the area to be fixed. If the layer is designated as the "clone" type, well it's just like PS. If the layer is a "heal" type, then its action more closely resembles LR. However, note that you can only designate a single "source" area in each layer, so the amount you can fix in a layer is limited, and you only get 16 layers (whether heal/clone or adjustment) in total.

3) Local adjustments are also very different. In C1 you create an adjustment layer then draw a mask using a brush and/or PS-like gradient tool that indicates what areas will be affected and (to an extent) how heavily they will be changed. Then you go to the extensive local adjustment panels and dial-in your changes. Again, remember that you only get 16 layers in total.

4) Skin smoothing. After touching up blemishes, you can create a layer to adjust the skin tone explicitly, and make it more uniform (watch the C1 tutorial vid for this). Combine this with a negative clarity adjustment.

5) Undo / history. There is NO edit history panel. However, the step-by-step undo is deep, so you can roll back changes one at a time. You can also toggle any of your local adjustment layers on/off, and within each layer you can go to a specific panel and eliminate all changes made through that panel in that layer, or see what the image looks like with those changes temporarily removed.

6) Before/After. There is NO simple button to compare your current image with how it started out. However, you CAN create a virtual copy ("variant" in C1 terms) that matches the RAW in its unaltered state, and then view them side-by-side.

7) Panel/tool navigation. I find that navigating C1's panels and tools is a bit of a pain (no "solo" mode, and they self-close unpredictably to preserve screen space), so I am now actively learning all the keyboard shortcuts I can find. I never bothered doing this in LR, as I found the environment very intuitive.

That's about it. Obviously I'm taking longer over edits than I would in LR6, but that's because I'm still finding my feet. I do prefer the results I'm getting however - I believe it's going to be worth the effort.

One more thing: if you're using Win 10 be aware that there's an issue with C1 and the fall creators update: http://forum.phaseone.​com/En/viewtopic.php?f​=69&t=26863

GammyKnee wrote in post #18483348
One more thing: if you're using Win 10 be aware that there's an issue with C1 and the fall creators update: http://forum.phaseone.​com/En/viewtopic.php?f​=69&t=26863

Thank you very much for your detailed description of your experience. Very helpful and I am very glad about this 'Win10 fall creator issue warning' as I just installed this update.
It seems that you are not regretting your switch. Very encouraging. I am using local adjustments quite a bit and your description sounds like I will need quite some time to rethink/relearn my workflow.

I did not switch, (edit: never really used Lr) but am not confident in having super large C1 catalog. Had a big corruption issue with an older version. I make one catalog per project, but that works great for me as a commercial photog, once the job is delivered I don't need to see the images or even have them in one place.

Consider their Media 1 product for larger (10k+ images) catalogs.

I think that is the name of their DAM.

From a long time LR user.

I gave Capture a good test. One thing I found and I read this on Captures site is it does a lot for you. I agree. The colours looked good out of the box, NR auto applied and looked good too. There are 3 levels of sharpening - Capture which includes lens corrections, detail and export. For export it offers media type but unlike LR it it offers an amount instead of Low, Standard and High. All of those had been preset as well but I experimented with them. Export was the hardest to find. I think getting to those settings is called deviants. Can't remember.

I think it would take little time to get going and get nice results. The rest like colour, brushes, masks, etc I figured will take some time. The only thing I did not like where the colour wheels. I have never liked those. I had it in the cart and kept opening it for a few weeks but decided to stick with Adobe.

drmaxx wrote in post #18483007
Did anybody do this switch and how painful is it? Especially:
* How well does the import of the LR raw edits into Capture One work?
* How steep is the learning curve for an experienced LR user?

I am thinking of doing that for quite a while now and adobe switching more and more into the cloud is a good motivator for me. Please don't turn this into a LR vs CC discussion - there is way too much of that already.

I originally downloaded the trial of C1 6. I just couldn't get the feel for it and so I gave up. Recently however I've had a few instances where I just couldn't get my colors right in Lr relative to what I saw straight out of camera. I decided to try C1 again and saw my colors looked great right out of the gate. Still, it's only been the past week or so that I've really been leaning hard on C1, to the point where I'm importing right off the card to C1 rather than using Lr for importing.

As far as local adjustments. I usually do those in Ps so I haven't spent too much time figuring it out in C1.

The panels are infinitely configurable. You can group the tools however you like to aid your workflow, including having the same tool in multiple panels. It would behoove you to simply right click on the adjustment panel and see all the tools available in the drop down menu.

Sharpening, clarity, and structure. No real comparison in Lr for Structure. I love the structure adjustment. It's sort of like a high pass overlay layer in Ps. Clarity and sharpening in C1 are better. More subtle and refined. I find I can push the sharpening more in C1 without artifacts.

Thing to remember. If you want to export to Ps, you have to be using the "hand" tool, then right click outside of the image in the editing panel. You'll get a dropdown menu with an "edit with" option. I don't know if they've fixed it in C1 10, but there are some things that you can't do if you are "using" a tool such as the loupe. For example, In C1 9 I can't rate an image in the edit panel while I have the loupe tool selected. I can't right click to export an image to Ps either. It seems stupid to me, but that's what it is.

Ultimately, you really just have to spend time with it. Coming from Lr it will be very frustrating. After a while though it will start to make sense. I think what holds C1 back right now is it's UI. Certain aspects of the software just seem needlessly difficult to navigate. Overall though, it's still worth it.

How does C1 work with high res screens? I have the Dell 5K monitor, and some programs just don't deal with it well. Someone asked me about GIMP and I downloaded it. It's not quite as bad as Lr 4 was, with no support, but it seems to be set up with a small font aimed at a 168 PPI display, so the 219 PPI of my Dell makes for small text and icons. It is annoying that both Adobe and GIMP seem to do their own screen rendering, meaning you need Hi res support in the program. I'm able to run Office 2007 still without any rendering issues, apart from the obviously bitmapped splash screens. Since for me the Win 10 screen scaling seems to work really well.

Alan

Scatterbrained wrote in post #18484429
I originally downloaded the trial of C1 6. I just couldn't get the feel for it and so I gave up. Recently however I've had a few instances where I just couldn't get my colors right in Lr relative to what I saw straight out of camera. I decided to try C1 again and saw my colors looked great right out of the gate. Still, it's only been the past week or so that I've really been leaning hard on C1, to the point where I'm importing right off the card to C1 rather than using Lr for importing.

As far as local adjustments. I usually do those in Ps so I haven't spent too much time figuring it out in C1.

The panels are infinitely configurable. You can group the tools however you like to aid your workflow, including having the same tool in multiple panels. It would behoove you to simply right click on the adjustment panel and see all the tools available in the drop down menu.

Sharpening, clarity, and structure. No real comparison in Lr for Structure. I love the structure adjustment. It's sort of like a high pass overlay layer in Ps. Clarity and sharpening in C1 are better. More subtle and refined. I find I can push the sharpening more in C1 without artifacts.

Thing to remember. If you want to export to Ps, you have to be using the "hand" tool, then right click outside of the image in the editing panel. You'll get a dropdown menu with an "edit with" option. I don't know if they've fixed it in C1 10, but there are some things that you can't do if you are "using" a tool such as the loupe. For example, In C1 9 I can't rate an image in the edit panel while I have the loupe tool selected. I can't right click to export an image to Ps either. It seems stupid to me, but that's what it is.

Ultimately, you really just have to spend time with it. Coming from Lr it will be very frustrating. After a while though it will start to make sense. I think what holds C1 back right now is it's UI. Certain aspects of the software just seem needlessly difficult to navigate. Overall though, it's still worth it.

I invested some time learning how to work the Detail palette in LR. In all honesty I believe I could just as good as Capture. Sharpening and clarity are the most important things to me that I look for. If Capture had of blown my socks off I would have purchased it. I posted some back to back tests on other sites and it was hard to tell the difference. I explored Capture pretty carefully in that regard. If need to go further in export than LR's High I use PS but often that can lead to a little over sharpening because you can only push so much and that goes for Capture as well.

All your input is very much appreciated. Sounds very encouraging right now. All I read is "it's different - but once you mastered it then the results are good".

digital paradise wrote in post #18484541
I invested some time learning how to work the Detail palette in LR. In all honesty I believe I could just as good as Capture. Sharpening and clarity are the most important things to me that I look for. If Capture had of blown my socks off I would have purchased it. I posted some back to back tests on other sites and it was hard to tell the difference. I explored Capture pretty carefully in that regard. If need to go further in export than LR's High I use PS but often that can lead to a little over sharpening because you can only push so much and that goes for Capture as well.

It's a lot easier to over sharpen in Lr than in C1. Meanwhile, the Structure function is very similar to a high pass overlay layer in Ps, and really ought to be part of the sharpening toolset. Using sharpening + structure in C1 tends to render a crisper image than what you can get from Lr. Granted, I find that the default setting for sharpening in C1 is pretty close to right on for both of my primary cameras, vs. Lr that always called for a bit more work in the sharpening panel.

drmaxx wrote in post #18484873
All your input is very much appreciated. Sounds very encouraging right now. All I read is "it's different - but once you mastered it then the results are good".

That pretty much sums it up.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #18484902
It's a lot easier to over sharpen in Lr than in C1. Meanwhile, the Structure function is very similar to a high pass overlay layer in Ps, and really ought to be part of the sharpening toolset. Using sharpening + structure in C1 tends to render a crisper image than what you can get from Lr. Granted, I find that the default setting for sharpening in C1 is pretty close to right on for both of my primary cameras, vs. Lr that always called for a bit more work in the sharpening panel.

That was what I noticed. Lots done for you. I have set my defaults in LR so I have to do little now. I only tried Capture for a few weeks so I'm not an expert. If need that extra push I edit in PS.

I have downloaded the trial version of C1 10 yesterday and am playing with it. It has a more professional feel than Lightroom but it also feels rather bloated with a workspace that is filled to the brim. I find all those different panels and duplicate tools rather confusing at the moment; it's not exactly intuitive.

Exporting to PS is going well. I can just click anywhere and the contextual menu pops up, I choose "Edit with" and it opens in ACR. Is that suppose to happen, by the way? I mean, C1 is a RAW converter & editor, why does it still think I need ACR? Does it have tools that C1 doesn't have? But okay, fine. Problem is it is opening my files as 8 bit instead of 16 bit, despite choosing 16 bit in C1. I haven't found what I'm missing here.

Having said that, I like how smooth and quick editing is. Colours look good too. I don't know if I'll switch to it, but I am warming up to it. It's just a real nuisance to have to learn another application. And the lingo is just weird. I mean, "recipes" and "variants"? Makes the help pages pretty much unintelligible right now...

Yeah the variants took a bit of getting used to. Scatterbrained said structure that I assume is the sharpening between capture and export. I called it detail. I found clarity in there. I worked it and then worked LR to match. LR you can do it in the detail tab because for export you get 3 choices. For what it is worth I got these. i did not touch the colour with either and my LR defaults were applied. I did like Capture quite a bit.

For what it is worth. First one is Capture, second is LR.