DIGITAL CAMERA RAW CONVERTER COMPARISONS
with Canon 1Ds Mk II and 20D RAW images
Adobe's ACR
(Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom), Bibble Pro, BreezeBrowser Pro, Capture One,
Canon's Digital
Photo Pro, SilverFast DC Pro / DC VLT and Silkypix Developer Studio
Capture One Pro 3.7
overview
The Capture One DSLR GUI uses a single window with tabs for the different tools in the workflow order. Capture One's image browser supports viewing RAW and JPEG images as thumbnails. This application has every tool necessary to produce professional results with an easy and intuitive workflow. C1 is available in a PRO and LE version. All of the core conversion tools are the same in both editions. The PRO version does have extra features that enhance workflow. Below you can see the list of changes and enhancements from 3.6 to 3.7 Pro as listed on Phase One's web site: "Capture One 3.7 PRO/DB
highlights
Mac OSX 10.2.8 and later:
Windows 2000/XP:
The new 'individual image' noise and banding slider tools are on the 'Focus' tool tab. I like Capture One's sharpening tool. Capture One's sharpening tool is also located in 'Focus' tool tab. Besides the normal unsharp mask 'amount' and 'threshold' settings, it has two extra parameters for sharpening; 'standard look' and 'soft look'. The Focus tool set has it's own adjustable magnification real time preview. In my opinion tethered support is a underrated feature. Many pros will find this feature very useful. If you are on location and your Art Director is working with you there will be no need to shoot RAW + JPEG and then have to download the card contents to your PC. Work tethered to your laptop shooting RAW and Capture One. The AD can make suggestions concerning content, color or tone curve and you can immediately implement them. FYI, if you are working with a laptop that has a 4 pin FireWire port, buy a 4 pin to 4 pin FireWire cable. DO NOT use the Canon supplied 4 pin to 6 pin cable with a 6 pin to 4 pin adapter. There are many horror stories floating around concerning lost images due to loose connections between the original cable and an adapter. Slider adjustments are available for every image adjustment tool in Capture One's toolbox. Slider type adjustments provide seamless and continuous adjustment throughout the range of the tool. The flexibility of the tools and the adjustable magnification real time previews allow me to do RAW conversions with this application that look exactly as I want them to and do it relatively quickly in a fully color managed workflow. Capture one has infinitely adjustable image preview magnification from 'fit in window' to about 200% of actual image size. C1 lists their highest level of preview magnification as 800%. However, this is not correct when the percentage is related to the actual RAW image resolution. Capture One's image rotation tool provides for arbitrary rotation. You can rotate the image by 'drawing' an angled line across the image or by inputting a +/- degree rotation. Each Capture One tool tab has button that will apply that tool's current setting to other selected images or the entire folder being browsed. Capture One can output files to TIFF in 8 or 16 bit and JPEG in high, med or low quality. The Pro version can output up to three files per conversion. As an example, you could save a full resolution 16 bit TIFF, a sized medium quality JPEG and a low quality JPEG thumbnail from one conversion. You can add custom camera profiles (ICC) to Capture One. Capture One Pro has a tool that allows you to edit any exiting camera profile to suite your color balance tastes and save it with another name. Capture One's USA website offers aftermarket profiles for Canon DSLRs. You can read more about these profiles here. Wedding photographers and
professionals who work with large numbers of images may find Capture
One's 'archive setting' feature beneficial. Capture One saves all the
adjustment tool settings for each converted RAW image in a file. A
preview image representative of the image's last adjusted state is
also saved. Capture One's archive settings feature allows you to save
the adjustment settings file for each RAW file conversion to any folder
location that you want. If you save the settings files to the same
folder as the corresponding RAW files, you can archive the collection
by burning that folder to CDROM or DVD. If you ever need to produce
images from that collection in the future, you will have all the original
tool settings. If you don't do much post processing in Photoshop, you
don't really need to archive your final output files since you can
re-convert the RAW file with your saved original adjustment parameters.
In other words, the RAW images in each 'collection' open in Capture
One with all of the tool settings and preview image just as they were
before your last conversion of that image. Archiving only the 1kb settings
file and corresponding RAW file saves a lot of storage media
space over archiving your final output files at 20-90mb each. Capture
One does not support printing from its user interface. The saving of
preview images and settings is accomplished with a preview
image/settings cache. It took Capture One 1 minute and 45 seconds to
build a preview image and setting cache for a 50 image folder of 1Ds Mark II RAW files. The
resulting cache contained 269mb. The maximum cache size is user
configurable and you can empty the cache any time you wish. Capture One is slowest of all these RAW converters to do a conversion. It takes 40 seconds to convert and save an average Canon 1Ds Mark II RAW file to full resolution 16 bit TIFF and about 23 seconds for a Canon 20D RAW file. This application does a reasonable job of EXIF implementation. However, some of the original detailed camera specific embedded EXIF data is lost upon conversion. All of the tools and features in this application are intuitive and easy to use for anyone with intermediate digital imaging skills. I can live with the slow conversion times because I can make individualized adjustments for a bunch of images and then just walk away while the program crunches numbers and outputs files. You can also have the program apply default or a pre-determined set of corrections to all of the images in a batch. You can even have the program converting images in the background while you are setting up another batch of images. Capture One is the only RAW converter that lets you individually name the batched output files without renaming the original RAW file. For the person looking for the great image quality and efficient batch operation, Capture One would be a good choice. See the GUI below shown with the 'Exposure' tab selected. Capture One did very well in the image comparison sections of this article producing accurate color balance and exposure when using its default adjustment settings. Capture One has a very good searchable help file. Capture one is stable but not entirely bug free on my PC platform. The most tedious bug in my opinion is that Capture One seems to be unable to properly list my 1Ds Mk II or 10D by default when opening files from these cameras. When opening the color management dialog, it always lists Phase One LightPhase as the device. If I select my proper camera and then select an appropriate camera profile, the LightPhase device pops up again as soon as I've clicked the proper profile. So, it's a multi-step exercise in mouse clicking to get a proper device and profile each time I open a new folder of images. It is worth noting that Capture one LE in 3.7 has had the 20 image batch conversion limit removed. You now can do unlimited batch conversions in Capture One LE. There are some subtle differences in tool options and functionality in Capture One between Windows and Mac. To see a complete features comparison list for the different versions of Capture One for both Mac and Windows PC and a supported camera list, click here. |
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Capture One's GUI (Graphical User Interface) |
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LINKS: Introduction, comments on RAW and features comparison chart Adobe ACR 4 (Photoshop CS3 & Lightroom) overview Bibble Pro overview BreezeBrowser Pro overview Canon Digital Photo Pro overview Silky Pix Developer Studio overview SilverFast DC Pro / DC VLT overview comparison examples - color renditions comparison examples - landscapes comparison examples - artifacts & sharpening comparison examples - tungsten and florescent white balance at ISO 1600 comparison examples - studio lights and custom white balance comparison examples - studio lights with Kelvin white balance comparison examples - digital noise at ISO 1600 EXIF and IPTC information |
WEB SITE LINKS PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING INFORMATION LEGACY* EQUIPMENT REVIEWS
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