C1 Pro switching to Lightroom or Aperture?

[Edmond_Terakopian]

Alan,
Very wise words; competition is definitely of benefit!

Will,
You're naturally right as far as cross platform goes.
As far as resources, again, I agree. You'll need a newish Mac with around 2Gb RAM and a graphics card (i.e. not built in on board graphics) to make Aperture run smoothly. I think in this day and age of faster and cheaper computers, this is perhaps not the issue it once was. However, this is a price I'm willing to pay as it just makes working so much quicker and smoother. The fact that I can select a folder and batch caption 6Gb of images in around 3 seconds, do my edit smoothly and quickly and export what I need in a flash, just do it for me! I have yet to get a call from my picture editor complaining that I'm too slow, or the quality of my files isn't good enough!

Again, I don't think we can really have winners or losers; its about personal choice and what works for the individual. I know for some reason as photographers we're hell bent on pushing Canons or Nikons, Macs or PCs! I wonder if that happens in any other profession?!!

Edmond

[Alan_Ackoff]

Now that I've been using Capture One 4 a while I find I'm liking it more and more. It's simple and quick. Simple is good.

While the Lightroom team seems intent on adding more and more tweaks and adjustments, Capture One seems to be aiming for optimal image quality with just a few simple adjustments. Colors look natural to me on screen and in prints colors look rich and creamy without appearing over-saturated.

Capture One 4 proves that if you get the basics right you don't have to get fancy. I will be looking forward to the major upgrade of Capture One Pro. It may prove to be worth the wait.

-Alan

[curtd]

I'm a longtime Nikon shooter, most recently D2Xs. I just bought the 1Ds Mark III and it is a helluva camera. I am a firm LR user up to now, but have been told by the Canon aficionados that C1 is the only way to go.

I'm not yet sure about image quality, but the interface and logic of C1 is not working well for me. It seems like the typical crappy Windows UI! I'll keep comparing and learning while my trial of C1 4 lasts, then decide.

Thanks to all of you for the great comments and discussion.

Peace, Curt

[Alan_Ackoff]

I just photographed an elopement. I tried a different workflow from what I've been using and it wasn't too painful. FWIW here it is:

1. Made my picks and did my raw conversions in Capture One with no sharpening and no noise reduction. Output was full rez 8 bit TIFF files tagged as sRGB.

2. Wrote a Photoshop action to open each image, apply Noise Ninja, apply Pixel Genius capture sharpen, and save as full rez JPEGs. These will go on a disc which will be sent to the clients.

3. Loaded the JPEGs into Lightroom and built a web gallery using one of the Lightroom templates.

4. Used Lightroom to print digital contact sheets to go to the clients with their disk of pictures.

HERE is a link to the web gallery. I don't think it took any longer than doing everything in Lightroom. Possibly I saved time because the adjustments needed in Capture One are quite simple. Also saved time by batching the noise reduction and sharpening. The final quality looks better to me than my previous method of doing it all in Lightroom. The Noise Ninja and Pixel Genius plugins are without doubt superior in quality and ease of use to Lightroom for noise reduction and sharpening.

-Alan

PS. Curt there is a download from C1 which provides a pretty good video tutorial on Capture One 4. If you haven't watched it, I recommend it. I found it helpful.