CaptureOne 4 Beta - First Impressions
With CaptureOne 4 Beta 1 PhaseOne announced the successor for the current light version of CaptureOne, which
was available as CaptureOne LE till now. PhaseOne has given a face-lifting to the popular RAW converter for
professional photographers following the trend of dark user interfaces for photography tools. But the changes
include more than the interface. With this new version PhaseOne not only keeps up with the current trends and
competitors, but also includes some neat new features - particular in the color adjustments section. In comparison
to the former LE version, PhaseOne has added more functionality in their entry-level product. Now not only
exposure correction is available, but also contrast, brightness and saturation corrections.
In general it is noticable that PhaseOne and CaptureOne 4 are focussed and built for professional studio photographers,
as the workflow is highly optimized for studio photography. But I found that the new version goes beyond that by stepping
aside from the studio workflow and now becoming more open and customizable for other types of photography and photography level.
The beta version is not totally bug free and 100% stable, but I had only one crash so far and only one bug that seems
to be related to that crash 1. Everything stated within this article is related to the
english Windows XP version.
When launching CaptureOne 4 the user is welcomed by a stylish dark gray working space, which reveals some similarities to
Apple's Aperture or Adobe's Lightroom. The working space is divided into three main areas (filmstrip, preview, editing tabs).
The filmstrip area can be positioned left, right or at the bottom of the screen (can be easily switch on/of with ctrl-b. the position can be switched with ctrl-shift-b). I felt very comfortable to put it on the left side, just as I was used to it from the previous version. There are five different sizes for thumbnail images, which either can be set with a slider just next to the thumbnails or in the menu. If many images are in a folder it is easy to reduce the thumbnail size to get a quick overview and then switch back to bigger thumbnails, which allow a better preview. Additionally small icons are placed over the thumbnails to indicate the edit status of a particular image. That helps a lot to see, which images still need to be edited.
Additionally to the thumbnail view CaptureOne offers a table view of all images, where the most important EXIF-information
(iso, aperture, shutter speed and focal length) are shown next to the image. I did not find this view very helpful. When the
thumbnails are big, then a lot of space is wasted because of the table layout. If you shrink the thumbnails to the smallest size the
table is more readable, but worthless as you sacrifice the option to recognize any of the images. Here it would be preferable if PhaseOne would switch back
to the old layout they had in former versions, where the EXIF information is displayed just next to image as a small block, which I find more
compact and more readable.
The preview area in the middle of the working space is where the selected image is displayed. If you select more images then all of them will be displayed in the preview area, which allows easy image comparisons. If only one image is selected it fills now the complete remaining working space depending on the displayed editing and filmstrip areas. This is a clear improvement to the current version, which allows a better image inspection - in particular if you are using a big monitor2. Additionally it can easily be switched between this preview and the full size (100%) view in original resolution. This can be done very comfortable with shortcuts (ctrl-0 = zoom to fit, ctrl-alt-0 = 100%) and is very helpful while inspecting sharpness and noise and much more pleasing then the small magnifier in the current version. For exceptionally critical inspection the preview can be zoomed up to a size of 400%.
The image editing area now includes nine tabs instead of the five of the current version (shot, exposure, white balance,
focus, process). The editing area can either be placed on the left or on the right side of the working space. I just placed
as known from the current version on the right side.
The Library/directory-tab could be found on the left side in the LE version next to the thumbnail view, which was a bit confusing and sometimes hard to find for beginners. Now it is positioned where all other editing tabs can be found, which is much clearer to me and makes a more organized impression, I think. The directory view lists every directory as known from the commons Windows explorer, which makes navigation easy. Additionally the typical CaptureOne folder can be found (output-folder, trash-folder).
The Quick-tab offers the three most important editing features from the other tabs (exposure correction, white balance, process) to have quick access to the most used tools in a common place and therefore to speed up the editing process.
The Exposure-tab offers the usual correction tools like exposure, contrast and saturation, but also a new brightness correction. A highlight is the HDR (High Dynamic Range) correction tool, which allow to edit the shadow and highlight areas separately to gain a higher dynamic range in the image. It's not true HDR, but gives some flexibility that RAW offers3. The histogram shows now all color channels separately, which was only available in the Pro version until now. Two additional sliders at the top of the histogram are now available with the level correction tool, which I couldn't figure how they specifically work. But I guess it is related to the HDR tool.
Also the curve tool is a bit improved. It is now possible to move a certain correction point
just within one axis (horizontal or vertical). This enables a more controlled change of the values.
Therefore the axis is highlighted in orange, when the mouse moves within the region of the correction
point on the axis.
The White Balance-tab hasn't changed so much. An interesting piece tough is the lens cast calibration, which is unfortunately disabled in the beta. This could be a very interesting tool for image improvement. Let's hope that PhaseOne will offer a comprehensive list of lens corrections.
Within the Composition-tab you find the crop- und rotation tools. It's now possible to add more custom aspect ratios. Finally the crop utility shows a grid and the final dimensions while using the crop tool, which helps a lot to find the perfect composition. The standard crop setting is now arbitrary cropping. It would be great if a shortcut could be added to use the default aspect ratio while cropping. With the rotation slider the images can be rotated easily, but I find the line tool much more efficient and precise.
In the Details-tab sharpness and noise reduction can be controlled, which happen to be very identical to the currrent CaptureOne version. A new tab is the Adjustments-tab. This tab shows all changes that have been applied to the images, which makes it a adjustment history. In the Metadaten-tab a concise overview of all availabel EXIF-informationen can be found. The Process-tab was split into two tabs now. In the Output-tab all settings (image format, resolution, color profile and location) necessary for the render process can be found and set. Within the Batch-tab a Queue- and History-View can be found.
Additionally some global functions (select, pan, crop, rotate, white balance picker, copy adjustment, process) are available to provide fast access.
The meta data management has become a central part on how CaptureOne 4 works now. All changes applied to an image are now stored
in an XML file. Therefore CaptureOne 4 creates a special folder called "CaptureOne" within the image folder you are working on. Within
this folder two other folders can be found. The first is the one where the xml files with the adjusment settings are stored and the
second is a cache folder for the preview images.
Until now all adjustments made in CaptureOne were lost when moving the RAW files between computers. With the help of the archive function this could be fixed, but this was a bit cumbersome somehow. It's a good step and improvement in the new version to store the adjustments in an XML file, which will maybe result in the development of third-party application, which can read that format. This way settings could maybe be converted from Aperture or Lightroom or vice versa. Unfortunately an import function for the old archive settings is still missing, but will be in the final version hopefully.
As mentioned above CaptureOne now stores the preview cache files within the image directory and not in a special folder anymore. This is not bad, but it should be kept in mind that each preview file can take up to 3MB disk space depending on the preview size. Therefore you will need additional space on your image drive respectively your image drive will fill up more easily. It would be great if it would be possible to set the name and maybe the location of these folders.
Because of the new Meta Data management an additional feature could be added - the variants. It is now possible to store different variants of the same image without processing each different version. CaptureOne just adds a new adjustments set to the image. This saves image space unless all variants are developed. For clarity reasons the variants can be pooled together. All adjustments like exposure corrections, white balance or sharpening applied to an image can be copied to another image or variant. This allows quick adjustments for a whole set of images at once.
2 I've tested on a Dell 24" LCD-monitor
3 It's not uncommon to develop two different versions (one over and one underexposed) from one RAW file and then use them in a HDR tool. I think something similar is done in the HDR function.
Hi Lars,
How does this compare to Lightroom in the "speed department?" I used to use Capture One 3.7 but recently migrated to Lightroom because of the better functionality. But it seems to me that Lightroom might be slower. It takes a long time to render the thumbnails and to render the full sized images when viewing at 1:1
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts if you've used both.
Cheers
James
That is/was one of my main concerns too, because Lightroom is to slow on my laptop. But CaptureOne is pretty fast with the thumbnails and with the full size preview. For the full size preview it only renders the part, which is shown in the preview area. You can see that if you move/pan the image around. CaptureOne is refocusing the image then, but this is quite fast and definitely faster then Lightroom.
But you should consider that CaptureOne has no built in library. So the products quite differ in their overall functionality. CaptureOne is focused on getting proper RAW conversions in a minimum time with the best possible result whereas Lightroom is focused on getting managed every bit of the digital life cycle, from downloading to editing, printing/publishing to archiving. At least that's how I see it.
/lars
Hi Lars!
About developing multiple versions (overexposed, underexposed and an average of the two) of a raw file: indeed, it is not uncommon and it certainly works better than modifying a TIFF or JPEG file's exposure, but still, the best practice is to actually use the bracketing function of the camera, as the results of HDR merging 3 versions of the same RAW file are of significantly lesser quality than the actual results of merging 3 bracketed stills.
So, I agree that it isn't unusual, but I wouldn't recommend it other than a last resort. Also, it would be best that the exposures differ with maximum 1/3 stops. The Tone Mapping should be adjusted to give a slight effect, too, otherwise, the final picture's quality would go downhill.
Congrats on the article and the best regards!
Andrew
Andrew you are completely right and it should be understand as you said it. If you are going to shoot or try to create a HDR image you should use the bracketing function or at least make three or more different exposures, which are merged into a single HDR image.
But the new tools offer a greater versatility in recovering shadow and highlight details then normal methods do in my opinion and therefore they are pretty good if you need to recover a shot, which wasn't intended as HDR shot, but benefits from the methods taken from HDR photography.
/lars
Hi there,
I am a mac user (Dual 2.5 G5,4 gigs Ram, running Tiger 10.4.10). I am currently using Capture One Pro 3.7 on this machine and have recently downloaded the Beta 4 version. I found that this latest incarnation runs so slow on this machine that I'm starting to suffer from regular nosebleeds. It feels only slightly faster than the resource hog also known as Aperture.
Does anyone else have this similar configuration? How does it run on yours?
I've also installed Lightroom from Adobe and find this app simply blazes past CO4 in speed and handling.
peace.
this software giving great user interface with compare to other capture editing one. i go through almost all the feature and like a lot. still looking for more information about license and usability of such software.looking forward to your reply.
thanks
