Switching from Lightroom to Capture One

For proper perspective, I'll start by stating what is probably obvious to many: I'm no great photographer nor am I the best user of photo editing software. I've been using Lightroom 3.x for a long time (2012?) and didn't want to upgrade when they went to a subscription model originally and then never got around to upgrading once they offered perpetual licenses again. I was going to upgrade to Lightroom 6 because I purchased a 5D Mark IV and v3 doesn't support the raw files produced by the MK IV. I started chatting with an Adobe representative to get some questions answered & she started putting the hard sell on to such a degree that it was like I was at a used car lot from 40 years ago. It was so annoying that I decided that now might be a good time to try something different. so I downloaded Capture One. So far, I like it better than Lightroom & think I'll keep it.

It would be interesting to hear from those who switched and if you stayed with it or ended up going back to Lightroom.

I tried it. I did not like not having luminosity/tone range masking. To me it is a firm basis for doing noise reduction and other techniques. They have color range masking so I don't know why they have not bothered to do luminosity masking.

Their DAM is likely the most flexible on the market as you do Sessions or Managed Catalog or Referenced Catalog and move images between them.

I gave it a few tries. C1 does a lot of adjustments like color, NR, sharpening, etc that LR does not do. Gives you a finished out of the box look where you have to work at LR to get it. Once you do presets or using Default settings so all your adjustments apply at import is the ticket. I felt I could match C1 where it was important to me.

Maybe that is what you are seeing and there have been a lot of changes to LR since V3. You are comparing an old and new product. Perhaps compare LR7 to C1. Trial is free.

Tough to ask who went back. Once you commit to $300 you are going to stay. This may help.

https://www.youtube.co​m …ntinue=2174&v=A​mIpZ3vWB8M

Also it looks like you don't upgrade very often. I'd look into C1's policies about that and new cameras.

If you don't want to spend any money you can convert your files to DNG.

Good look with your choice.

jdnan wrote in post #18585567
....so I downloaded Capture One. So far, I like it better than Lightroom & think I'll keep it.

You are comparing a piece of software from 2010 with one from 2016/7. That is a lifetime in software development terms. LR has had two complete process rewrites since then and a bunch of new features added. Even if you only go with LR 6 perpetual it is still miles better than LR3.

Might be an idea to trial LR6 so you can compare the current state of both programs.

Switched to C1P when Arsobe came out with their Crappy Cloud shenanigans, even though at the time LR was still offered as a perpetual licence. Never looked back. The C1P engine runs circles around LR's.

Wouldn't it be nice if Canon invested in their own DAM "Catalog"?
This way us Canon users have a RAW converter to their specs and having the ideal "in house" system.
Camera, lenses, sensor, uploaded and "developed" and then printed on printer with ink all under one Canon workflow?
Just thinking out loud?

Dan Marchant wrote in post #18586813
You are comparing a piece of software from 2010 with one from 2016/7. That is a lifetime in software development terms. LR has had two complete process rewrites since then and a bunch of new features added. Even if you only go with LR 6 perpetual it is still miles better than LR3.

Might be an idea to trial LR6 so you can compare the current state of both programs.

Actually Capture One Pro 11 was just released at the very end of 2017 so its even a bit newer than you suggest. Definitely not a good comparison between LR 3 and Capture One Pro 11.

I have one topical question for people who switch from one RAW processor to another. Is it possible to hand off all of your old edits? Or what else do you do? Just keep the old editor around forever for whenever you want a new jpeg from your existing (older photos)?

I have some 14,000 RAW files sitting on my computer, all of which have adjusted metadata files from Lightroom. As Adobe has moved to their subscription model and abandoned my L6 forever license I grow nervous. If I ever want to buy a newer camera again, I'll have to eventually get LR Cloud or go to a different editor.

As far as I can imagine, this means all of my RAWs will exist in two separate groups - those that I edited with LR and those that I edited post-LR.

JeffreyG wrote in post #18589600
I have one topical question for people who switch from one RAW processor to another. Is it possible to hand off all of your old edits? Or what else do you do? Just keep the old editor around forever for whenever you want a new jpeg from your existing (older photos)?

I have some 14,000 RAW files sitting on my computer, all of which have adjusted metadata files from Lightroom. As Adobe has moved to their subscription model and abandoned my L6 forever license I grow nervous. If I ever want to buy a newer camera again, I'll have to eventually get LR Cloud or go to a different editor.

As far as I can imagine, this means all of my RAWs will exist in two separate groups - those that I edited with LR and those that I edited post-LR.

Actually you can also have a third group where you edit the same raw file in more than one editor. I have over 50,000 images . perhaps 20-25 percent were edited to some degree in Lightroom. I don't use the metadata feature so that aspect is not a problem to me. Although I now use DXO PhotoLab almost exclusively, I still go back to Lightroom 6 when needed. Most of the files I really like have already been exported to high resolution jpegs so I have rarely been revisiting raw files I edited with Lightroom...until now. I have been going back to older raw files and editing them in DXO Photolab in a fraction of the time and with better results in my opinion. I think you would enjoy using an editor like Capture One Pro 11 and will likely want to re-edit important older files anyway. I found Capture One to also be much quicker than LR and got superior output to boot. I played with the trial version for almost a month and was extremely impressed. I passed on it mostly because I already owned both LR 6 and DXO PhotoLab, and occasionally use Canpn's DPP. I think three raw processors is enough!

As far as metadata is concerned, can't you export it? IDK, but I remember this being asked in a LR - C1 forum or seeing it in a tutorial. I know C1 has all sorts of tutorials for LR migration.

My old RAW engines won't even run on W10, so yes, if my machine dies, I will probably need to reprocess anything that I want to change. I have always kept both raw files and a full size .jpeg (and actually a mini-jpeg for my DAM/keyword/search organizer which is even older).

Definitely one advantage of staying with LR - although I was never with them to start with, but it is a disadvantage of using something that may either go away or get bought by someone else and changed or 'destroyed'.

But as mentioned, anything that I am motivated to re-edit, I can usually do a better job with the newer software and my increased experience (or change of taste), so then it is worth re-doing. For me changing editors is not too hard. Mostly it is about how to organize the changeover within my filesystem, but I've done it 3 times now, so I have a method.

I still have LR6, so can still go back to old edits if I need to. I could also export my edits for use in my new editor - - DXO Photo Lab in my case - - if I desired, but I have not found the need to do that.

I am not very worried about this, though. I rarely go back and re-edit old files. For those occasions where I need to do this, it wouldn't be a big deal to begin the edit from scratch with the new processing software.

I switched to Capture One from Lightroom 6 starting this last January. You can export a Lightroom catalog and import it into C1. C1 will import most of the DAM information such as metadata, keywords, star and color ratings (but not pick or delete flags), and collections. Capture One also imports some of the develop settings such as crop and rotation, so there is a reasonable representation of previous edits. I am still using Lightroom for exporting last year's images but in the future will just re-edit with C1 any images I want to export.

The only issue I had was C1 did not import most Lightroom-generated DNG files (HDR or panoramic) and I had to export the Lightroom catalogs (I did one year at a time) without the DNG's. If the LR catalog had a DNG in it, sometimes C1 would successfully import it but often it would only import a handful of files without further explanation.

1. None of the RAW development packages are compatible with each other. This is not a Lightroom issue - they all use different/unique systems to do edits and these can't be read by other packages (LR and ACR don't count as different packages).

2. If you are using LR6 and you buy a new camera you don't have to swap to a different RAW processor. You can use Adobe's free DNG converter. Yes it adds an additional step to your workflow, but you don't have to buy new software.

3. LRs speed issues have been addressed in the latest versions. Obviously those who are using older versions of LR (6 and earlier) don't have access to those updates.