Capture One Pro 9 Released & C1 Discussion Thread

https://www.phaseone.com/en/Products/So ... tures.aspx

New price is $299
Upgrade from C1 Pro 8 is $99
There is a 30 day free trial

Some highlights include..

- New Processing Engine[/font][/color]
- New Color Editor Interface with the ability to create masks from Color selections
- LUMA Curves - i.e Luminance adjustment only with the power of the curve tool
- New brushing tools with Flow and Airbrush and easy straight line brushing.
- Curves now included as a Local Adjustments
- Keyword Library Manager and new Keyword tool 
- Vastly improved rescaling engine
- Capture One Colors for DNG files

The Capture One license now gives you three installs!  Phase One says that this is so that you can have it installed on your home system, your laptop and your work system without having to get an additional license.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yCkUtV ... e=youtu.be

BTW, my post is not intended as an endorsement of C1 Pro 9, just a reporting of it's availability.  While I am a fan of C1 Pro and, of late, a heavy user of C1 Pro 8, I would never recommend a switch to any new software on it's first day, or even in its first month of release.

I have been using C1pro since v 3.x and have preferred it for detail and color rendition over LR  which IMO has been more convenient and straight forward for organizing and labelling the files until now. That said, I have not yet tested ver 9. So just a note for Canon users: There's obviously a memory leak with Canon raw files while Nikon's NEFs obviously are not affected. So referring to E.J's recommendation it probably is smart to wait some time for the fix to be released rather than trashing ver 8 immediately

http://forum.phaseone.com/En/viewtopic. ... 738afac944

Wolfgang

Yup, exactly what I mean.  This from Phase One:
"We have found a (memory) leak when using Canon raw files. We are looking into it, and can hopefully include a fix in a not too distant service release."

One thing (among many) that I have learned from EJ over the years is to wait before installing new updated software

Primus wrote: 1. Does C1 (v9) truly make a discernible difference in RAW processing, i.e. are the native profiles for the A7R2 indeed better?

2. Is the Cataloging system improved? Because this is a big one for me.

3. Is the program faster than it used to be? How are the local adjustment options?

4. Previously round tripping from third party filters was a pain - I use MacPhun and OnOne mainly - is that easier now?

Thanks much.

Pradeep

1. Even in C1 8, the native profiles far exceed anything that Adobe does for any camera.  P1 does extensive camera work for every body before supporting it and use a suite of 750 photographs to generate the camera profiles.  Also P1 has an exclusive relationship with Sony which means they have earlier access to Sony stuff than Adobe does and even builds Sony's own lens profiles into the software (the correction profiles used by the camera but in the camera they are only applied to JPEGs so RAW shooters never see the benefits of them) rather than having to reverse engineer them.
2. Without knowing what your catalogue issue was it is difficult to answer but the biggest criticism of 8 and earlier was cumbersome keywording.  This has been completely revamped and is now a strength.
3. Local adjustments are awesome and were in v.8, you can have up to 10 mask layers as well to keep track of adjustments and to do different things.  They can be turned on or off so you can export with any number of options.  As for speed, it really depends on your processor, memory, and graphics card.  Without knowing what speed issues you were having in earlier versions of C1, I can't answer the question.  On my machine it is much faster than LR but again your results will vary.
4. The one thing I wish was direct support of some third party things like Nik or others but that is unchanged in v. 9.  P1 will tell you that anything those filters do, you can do in the program itself.  Well sure, so can LR/PS but it's a heck of a lot faster if you can just call on a third party filter.

archfotos wrote:Curious if anyone has comments on Wolfcrow's Exposing to the Right video where he thoroughly tests ACR and C1 showing how C1 compresses colors in extreme cases? It's part of his A7rii tutorial guide.

C1 v. 9 now allows levels and curves adjustments in the luminosity (luma) spectrum only and that eliminates that problem.

Mark Walrod wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:As Dick said, you get the same out of Sony files with LR/ACR as you do any other camera.  But, C1 gets more out of them and this is true for Nikon, Canon and any other brand you can think of too but it's a much steeper learning curve and has way more capability.  But if you are comfortable with LR then by all means, use it and you will get excellent results.  until recently all of my Sony stuff was being done by ACR which is the same thing as LR froma  RAW conversion standpoint.

EJ,

I have no experience with C1, but curious to know if you are you using C1 as a basic raw image converter and then exporting to Photoshop (or using luminosity masks, etc) for additional editing?  Also, are you forced to use C1's cataloging system or can you continue using a different means of managing your images? 

Now that I'm shooting primarily with the A7Rii, I'm considering a switch to C1 and trying to understand what this would entail.

Thanks,
Mark

I'm doing as much as possible in C1 and then export to PS CS6.  There is usually little that needs to be done on single images but if I'm doing HDR or panos or other things I will use external apps like Photomatix or PTGUI first.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Primus wrote: 1. Does C1 (v9) truly make a discernible difference in RAW processing, i.e. are the native profiles for the A7R2 indeed better?

2. Is the Cataloging system improved? Because this is a big one for me.

3. Is the program faster than it used to be? How are the local adjustment options?

4. Previously round tripping from third party filters was a pain - I use MacPhun and OnOne mainly - is that easier now?

Thanks much.

Pradeep

1. Even in C1 8, the native profiles far exceed anything that Adobe does for any camera.  P1 does extensive camera work for every body before supporting it and use a suite of 750 photographs to generate the camera profiles.  Also P1 has an exclusive relationship with Sony which means they have earlier access to Sony stuff than Adobe does and even builds Sony's own lens profiles into the software (the correction profiles used by the camera but in the camera they are only applied to JPEGs so RAW shooters never see the benefits of them) rather than having to reverse engineer them.
2. Without knowing what your catalogue issue was it is difficult to answer but the biggest criticism of 8 and earlier was cumbersome keywording.  This has been completely revamped and is now a strength.
3. Local adjustments are awesome and were in v.8, you can have up to 10 mask layers as well to keep track of adjustments and to do different things.  They can be turned on or off so you can export with any number of options.  As for speed, it really depends on your processor, memory, and graphics card.  Without knowing what speed issues you were having in earlier versions of C1, I can't answer the question.  On my machine it is much faster than LR but again your results will vary.
4. The one thing I wish was direct support of some third party things like Nik or others but that is unchanged in v. 9.  P1 will tell you that anything those filters do, you can do in the program itself.  Well sure, so can LR/PS but it's a heck of a lot faster if you can just call on a third party filter.

EJ, thanks so much. 

My problem with the cataloging in C1 was the same as I have in LR, which is there is only one way to do it, as referenced files, overall the Aperture system was the most flexible as  a DAM program. Anyway, as long as C1 is no worse than LR, I can live with it.

On another forum I had read that even though Sony has a special relationship with P1, their profiles are not as great as those for the Phase backs, but that may not be true.

I have a 2013 Mac Pro with six cores,  64G RAM, dual graphic cards (AMD 700) and a 1TB SSD Apple drive which is the main 'scratch' drive also. On this system, LR is agonizingly slow at times with local adjustments, to the point that sometimes even if the Wacom pen is lifted off the tablet (or the mouse button is no longer pressed), the brush continues to draw a line across the image. I am hoping C1 would be faster, significantly so because otherwise there is no reason for me to switch, since LR seems OK for my needs otherwise. I actually do use third party filters, MacPhun and OnOne for other local adjustments  but then that means an additional PSD or tif file.

Yes, one can do pretty much everything in PS too, but having filters sure makes the job that much easier and round tripping via export/import is so frustrating and archaic an approach.

Pradeep

C1 has three ways to manage your images:
1. Traditional Folder style like Bridge
2. Sessions
3. Catalog like LR

You choose which way to do it. and you can even embed the other styles within catalogues.

This is the old style MacPro right? If so those are very slow computers, even at max spec, compared to even basic consumer grade i5 systems today and several times slower than an i7 system of the same clock rate. The processor generation in those, even the 2013 is from late 2008/early 2009.

The Phase backs are a completely different animal and they control everythig about those. The Sony profiles (and Nikon and Canon) are still MUCH better than Adobe's.

Pradeep; My guess is that the people making the comments that "The MF backs have better profiles than the Sony cameras" is because a MF back by the nature of the pixel size, inherently is a superior sensor. I would also want to know if these people are saying this about the a7R2 sensor or just Sony sensors in general or the a7R sensor. These older technologies are clearly not as capable as the BSI sensor in the a7R2 and so their profiles would appear lacking compared to a MF back. While the a7R2 senor is close to a MF back in performance it is still a full frame 35 mm sensor at about half the size of the smaller MF backs; so expecting it to have the same qualities as a MF back is a bit unrealistic in my book. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what these people are saying.

LR bogs down when you make too many local adjustments, particularly when you do lots of cloning or make lots of local brush adjustments. After it reaches a certain number of adjustments the only way to increase performance is to shut LR down and restart it. This helps but is not a cure - sort of like a juggler with too many balls in the air. I have found in my limited experience with C1 that it doesn't seem to slow down like LR does; but like I said this is based on limited use.

I do like the local adjustments in C1 as they leave few if any artifacts on boundaries between adjusted and non-adjusted areas. You are also able to apply multiple layers of the same adjustment giving you much greater control over the amount of adjustment being applied. I believe that the the Layers in the local adjustments is what allows CI to handle a greater number of adjustments as it only has to keep track of the adjusts made to one specific layer at a time. In LR all adjustment are on the same layer so after it reaches its over load point response time slows to a crawl. When it comes to color adjustment, C1 has way more abilities than LR and now you can apply these color adjustments as a local adjustment.

E.J. Peiker wrote:C1 has three ways to manage your images:
1. Traditional Folder style like Bridge
2. Sessions
3. Catalog like LR

You choose which way to do it. and you can even embed the other styles within catalogues.

This is the old style MacPro right?  If so those are very slow computers, even at max spec, compared to even basic consumer grade i5 systems today and several times slower than an i7 system of the same clock rate.  The processor generation in those, even the 2013 is from late 2008/early 2009.

The Phase backs are a completely different animal and they control everythig about those.  The Sony profiles (and Nikon and Canon) are still MUCH better than Adobe's.

EJ, I don't do any tethered shoots or the typical portrait sessions so the only way it works for me is to have folders. I loved the Aperture way of projects and albums. just don't like LR, but can live with it. I guess C1 is similar and believe me, I did try it for several months after I bought my IQ180 back.

The Mac Pro is the new 'Trash Can' black cylinder, with a 3.5GHZ six-core processor. It is (or was) just about the fastest machine one could buy without building a system  yourself (I gave up doing that when I moved to the Mac many years ago). The SSD drive within reads and writes at just about 1GB/second, which is the fastest I have ever come across. So in theory, the programs should fly, but sadly, as I said, Adobe does not utilize all its potential.

I don't know if anybody here has used MacPhun (Thanks Chas for that one), but it illustrates what can be done with good coding. It allows you to create up to five layers of effects (like OnOne or the old Nik CE Pro) and you can mask anything in or out. The brush works as fast as I can move it, even on a stitched pano of 500MB or more. I wish it did more and then I wouldn't need any other filter. But it is just about the fastest such program out there. 

So the problem is not the hardware, but the fact that major software houses just do not support the latest processors and capabilities of the new computers.

Pradeep

signgrap wrote:Pradeep; My guess is that the people making the comments that "The MF backs have better profiles than the Sony cameras" is because a MF back by the nature of the pixel size, inherently is a superior sensor. I would also want to know if these people are saying this about the a7R2 sensor or just Sony sensors in general or the a7R sensor. These older technologies are clearly not as capable as the BSI sensor in the a7R2 and so their profiles would appear lacking compared to a MF back. While the a7R2 senor is close to a MF back in performance it is still a full frame 35 mm sensor at about half the size of the smaller MF backs; so expecting it to have the same qualities as a MF back is a bit unrealistic in my book. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what these people are saying.

LR bogs down when you make too many local adjustments, particularly when you do lots of cloning or make lots of local brush adjustments. After it reaches a certain number of adjustments the only way to increase performance is to shut LR down and restart it. This helps but is not a cure - sort of like a juggler with too many balls in the air. I have found in my limited experience with C1 that it doesn't seem to slow down like LR does; but like I said this is based on limited use.

I do like the local adjustments in C1 as they leave few if any artifacts on boundaries between adjusted and non-adjusted areas. You are also able to apply multiple layers of the same adjustment giving you much greater control over the amount of adjustment being applied. I believe that the the Layers in the local adjustments is what allows CI to handle a greater number of adjustments as it only has to keep track of the adjusts made to one specific layer at a time. In LR all adjustment are on the same layer so after it reaches its over load point response time slows to a crawl. When it comes to color adjustment, C1 has way more abilities than LR and now you can apply these color adjustments as a local adjustment.

Dick, thanks for the explanation. It makes sense. I think MF backs like Phase are matched with great care and precision to C1 because the company is banking on getting the best out of their products. I doubt if the same diligence is applied to their profiles for other MF backs or 35mm cameras. For example C1 does not support Pentax 645z at all because that would be shooting itself in the foot. It is primarily a camera company and the software is not their main source of income (or so I believe). 

I too note that cloning (dust spotting) in LR is painfully slow and if I have more than a few spots I round trip to PS. The other thing I read was that one should do the lens corrections last, and all the other adjustments before that step since LR writes new lens corrections each time you adjust something elsewhere. I didn't notice much  of a difference with this approach though.

I am beginning to just move the files over to MacPhun or OnOne now, it is a much better way to make any adjustments other than color/tone/WB, although I love the fact that LR allows you to work on  a RAW file. I've not found the need for a 'better RAW conversion' or profiles since  I prefer to adjust the color and tone manually. I rarely shoot people or portraits - unless my wife insists on family events so perfect skin tones are not important. The only thing left is lens distortion which I believe LR does a fairly good job of correcting.

Pradeep

I can tell you that dust spotting is instantaneous on C1 with the spot removal tool.

As for lens correction, Adobe does add new lenses faster than C1 but the C1 corrections are more precise when lenses are added to the database. For Sony stuff, C1 actually has access to the Sony lens correction database which can be applied by the camera but only to JPEGs. C1 allows the corrections on RAW. When clicking on the lens correction button if the Manufacturer Profile is available, that means it has the data direct from the manufacturer. Those tend to be excellent.

Phase One has taken a lot of heat for not supporting Hasselblad or Pentax medium format cameras/backs in C1 but so far the heat shield has held up! I don't think that is the right decision if they are to be seen as a consumer centric company but it is what it is.

EJ, when I used C1 v8 with my Phase/Schneider 45mm lens, it did not even recognize it. I had to pick it manually each time and the distortion correction was far from satisfactory. That was very upsetting. It picked up the 85LS but not the 45 for some reason.

I hear that DXO is even better at RAW conversion and lens corrections although slow to update their database.

Fact is that there are way too many pieces of software to juggle to get to the end result. That can get frustrating very quickly. In the end I think the solution for me at least is to stick with what I know and am comfortable with.

Pradeep

Primus wrote: Fact is that there are way too many pieces of software to juggle to get to the end result. That can get frustrating very quickly. In the end I think the solution for me at least is to stick with what I know and am comfortable with.

Pradeep

Agree with that.  When Adobe went to the CC model, they basically broke the continuity of the work flow in my opinion because unless you want to send them money every month for the rest of your life, we are now getting to the point where CS6 no longer supports some gear and we have to look for multiple third party solutions.  For me, the solution is C1 but I still need Photomatix for HDR, PTGUI for panos, Portrait Pro for people shots, and of course PS CS6 for finishing and applying Nik or Topaz adjustments.  Image processing has become much more fragmented for those not willing to mainline money to Adobe for eternity.

But having said that, while not as convenient as an all Adobe flow, the capability of C1 is so far ahead of LR it's laughable but the learning curve is steeper.  I've basically done one or two training modules in C1 every day that I am home for two months utilizing both Phase One material and third party materials.

E.J. Peiker wrote: But having said that, while not as convenient as an all Adobe flow, the capability of C1 is so far ahead of LR it's laughable but the learning curve is steeper.  I've basically done one or two training modules in C1 every day that I am home for two months utilizing both Phase One material and third party materials.

EJ, I did that quite religiously when I made a serious attempt to switch to C1 myself, watching the modules and youtube videos. What got to me was the lack of ability to use filters and other third party tools which were so easy to do with Aperture. I did manage to figure it out in the end but it was so painful as to be not worth it. 

And now it is a total deal breaker because I do not see them supporting Pentax MF at all. I wonder why because it is not as if that would make people switch to Phase gear. OTOH, it would improve their standing in the community of photographers.

Pradeep

Primus wrote:And now it is a total deal breaker because I do not see them supporting Pentax MF at all. I wonder why because it is not as if that would make people switch to Phase gear. OTOH, it would improve their standing in the community of photographers.

Pradeep

If I were Sony, I would bring pressure to bear on Phase One to support Pentax and Hasselblad since their cameras use Sony sensors.  I think that's our only hope....

C1 also doesn't support the Leica S2 line.  They simply don't want to support non Phase One medium format stuff and I think it is wrong headed.

E.J. Peiker wrote:

Primus wrote:And now it is a total deal breaker because I do not see them supporting Pentax MF at all. I wonder why because it is not as if that would make people switch to Phase gear. OTOH, it would improve their standing in the community of photographers.

Pradeep

If I were Sony, I would bring pressure to bear on Phase One to support Pentax and Hasselblad since their cameras use Sony sensors.  I think that's our only hope....

C1 also doesn't support the Leica S2 line.  They simply don't want to support non Phase One medium format stuff and I think it is wrong headed.

I think C1 is still living in the proprietary past when it was developed in house and now find themselves a major competitor to LR (many people switching because of the subscription service).  I think they will be coming around as an all around SW when they realize more money is to be made with C1 than with cameras.

Mike in O wrote:I think C1 is still living in the proprietary past when it was developed in house and now find themselves a major competitor to LR (many people switching because of the subscription service).  I think they will be coming around as an all around SW when they realize more money is to be made with C1 than with cameras.

That may depend on what they do with their recent 100% acquisition of Mamyia in addition to bulding XF cameras and lenses for S-K.