It all started with Apple Aperture for me. Back when Apple actually cared about photographers that didn’t shoot with an iPhone, they made a great software offering with that program. Unfortunately it was discontinued within a couple of years of me starting up photography.
So, I had to find something else. If I had a choice back then, I didn’t know it. The way I saw it, it was either Lightroom or nothing. So I started migrating to an entirely new platform. I didn’t think much about file-rendering as such back then, I wasn’t even interested in nor did I know about differences in handling RAW files among converters. I found my way within the functions of Lightroom, and I grew very fond of that software.
But over the years as my photographic knowledge and skill reached new levels, I really started noticing some shortcomings within the Lightroom system. Over the course of the last few years, as Fujifilm has gained a larger audience, and knowledge sharing has taken off, it has become apparent to many, including myself, that there is something in the way that Lightroom treats the RAF files that isn’t entirely optimal. It isn’t something that you can quick fix, since it is at the very core of decoding and treating the Fujifilm RAF files. With advices and reasons for switching coming in from left and right, I have always stood up for Lightroom, since I always had a feeling that it was “good enough for me” – But during the last 18 months, I really started having a little nagging voice in my head saying “What if it isn’t good enough anymore?” So I installed versions on trial basis. I really liked what I saw, but in the busy confines of my daily life I really didn’t give it that extra time needed to really switch over to the software.
I ran some images through it, and then I opted out because it was simply too different from my regular approach, and I couldn’t be bothered going through that entire switching-thing again, as I had years back with Aperture. I can not tell you why I suddenly felt that it was time to dive in to, because I simply don’t know. It certainly wasn’t because I suddenly had more time to do such a transition, this winter has been busier than ever. But, I think I just felt the need to scratch that itch. Free download pokemon for nokia n73 games software. To go down that road, and see if it really would make a difference to me, and finally shut down that voice in my head! So for the duration of the 30 day trial I really went all in.
I never loaded a single file into Lightroom. And I forced myself to really get into doing things in a different way, but still trying to achieve a look that I could call mine.
And you know what? I was completely smitten with the program. I had certainly developed into a Lightroom expert. I know that program better than I know my own back pocket! But from having used for about 5 months now, I know that I had probably reached the ceiling in Lightroom.
Before switching to Capture One, I did not know that I needed finer color controls, but having worked with CO10 makes me realise that I actually do. I did not think the skin colours of my ginger kids could get any better than what I got in Lightroom, but proved me wrong. I didn’t think that the orange color was more tame-able, but again I was wrong. Slowly came the point of me surrendering completely.
I now feel that I can achieve a much more balanced look to my images, that simply wasn’t possible for me in Lightroom. Not because it is bad software, but because I had reached the limit of my creative relationship with it. I knew it too well. What I get from Capture One 10 is subtlety. Subtlety in colors, subtlety in tonality, subtlety in adjustments. I have to work more on my images, but not in a bad way. It’s just a definite indication of finer control options.
Capture One just released the 10.1 update. And for Fujifilm shooters it brings some considerable improvements. I was given a chance to try out a beta-version of the program, and the improvements are minute, but important to us as Fujifilm shooters none the less. You now have full compressed RAW file support from Fujifilm cameras. Yes, it reads them all. Fast and perfect. The styles section has been completely redesigned.
How to check hard disk health in windows 8.1. No more complex menu structure that clutters over your image. It’s now located in the tools bar, where it belongs! There are other new features, but the above 2 are whats important to me. I’m going to highlight a couple of features which I think really makes Capture One Pro 10.1 stand out from the competition.
First of all, let me touch down on the default treatment of the RAF files. And let me stress right away, that this is not a stab at Adobe Lightroom. I liked that software, and I still do.
This is pixel peeping territory! – An area that I try to stay away from as much as I can.
None the less this serves to prove a point that the Capture One engine does an incredible job with the notoriously hard to treat RAF files. Capture One seems to do a lot better in regards to handling sharpness, detail and clarity at a default setting. This isn’t in any way indicative of the final result that you can achieve since all software lets you tweak these settings. This just means that straight out of the box, you get de facto better results without any additional tweaking of your RAF files. In the example above you can see a less than stellar exposure, that isn’t all that important.
What is important, however, is the 100% crops from the file. Lightroom CC (2015.10) – (6.10) It’s quite obvious, that there is something different going on in the CO software than in LR. This has been labeled “watercolor effect” – and it just doesn’t occur in Capture One. Whether or not this is important to your photography, is up to you. I’m just stating what I observe. And to me the results in Capture One is heaps better. A thing that has really struck a chord with me after Fujifilm introduced the Acros film simulation which has tonality differentiated grain control in-camera is the effect that proper grain simulation can have on an image.
I don’t need to mimic a film-look per se, but I really want to bring out some of the organics that comes from film. I know that digital will never be film-like, but I also know that there is a possibility of using some aids to achieve a softer look to an otherwise clinical digital file. Capture One has some incredible grain modes.
I like them all, but the one that really stand out to me is the “Silver Rich” type. The engineers behind it did an amazing job. It looks subtle, has great simulation of pure luminance grain with a very structured appearance. It feels right at home on a black and white image with low contrast and a dark-shadow pull. It is as close as you can get to the Acros grain straight out of camera. And if you have read my blog during the last year you’ll know that I think Acros is as close to perfection in the digital realm as you can get.
A tool within Capture One 10.1 that has my flying really high is the skin color correction tool. I have a couple of daughters with freckles and ginger hair. In the photographic landscape of 2017 I don’t think you’ll anything more “in” than that look – but! – The unfortunate side effect of that appearance is the ultra-pale magenta skintones that comes with it.
In any other piece of software I’ve used up until Capture One 10.1 I have never been able to get them to look right, hence I’ve always settled for “good enough” – But I don’t have to anymore! What you can do is, do a local adjustment to the skin area you want to correct.
You can then chose the skin color picker, pick the skin color that you think is just right, and then adjust “uniformity” sliders to pull the unwanted tones closer to your selected colorrange. This is genius. In 30 seconds you can do complete color retouching without ever touching the underlying textures.
The last thing I want to talk about here is the styles. Styles are the same as presets in Lightroom.
It’s basically a way for you to save everything from cropping to curve adjustments in a single style, that you can quickly apply across multiple files. In addition to the styles CO also has presets. These are more specific to one image tweak. As an example you can make a universal grain setting and save it as a preset. It will then only apply grain and not overwrite any other image tweaks. Styles and presets menu has been completely redesigned in Capture One 10.1. Prior to this version you had it as layered menus.
What happened was that if you had your styles sorted in folders you would have a big folder tree expanding out over your image editing area. Less than perfect to say the least! You now have them inline in your tools section. They expand locally, and they give you “live preview” in the main image area when hovering over them. Finally it works like it should. You can find some brilliant old film simulations as Capture One styles online.
I don’t miss anything from my previously used software in this regard. So here we are. – Another “switcher story”. I don’t care if you’re happy with your current software or not.
But if you, like I had, have that feeling of “what if it can be done differently and maybe even better” then I strongly suggest you to. It’s not a perfect software solution by any means, but to me it comes damn close! – And with these newest additions of a redesigned styles menu as well as COMPRESSED RAF support it really makes Capture One a great choice for the Fujifilm shooter. Below are some samples of images that I have processed from compressed RAF files in Capture One 10.1. All images shot using Fujifilm cameras.
Phase One just released a new 'Film Styles Pack' for those Capture One users who, in the company's words, 'long to create the feel and texture from the days of analog photography.' Translation: you can now get several sought after 'film looks' within Capture One thanks to a fancy new preset pack. The Film Styles Pack was launched this morning, and seeks to recreate the 'colors, contrast and grain' of analog photography through 15 different 'looks', each of which is available in three strengths for a total of 45 presets—33 in color and 12 in black & white. This intro video gives you a good overview of the Pack and how these presets work. New Capture One Film Styles Pack Captures that Old Analog Feeling COPENHAGEN, October 23, 2017 – Phase One today released The Film Styles Pack. This newest Styles Pack is designed for photographers who long to create the feel and texture from the days of analog photography. For artistic visions attracted to the colors, contrast and grain of these analog images, Capture One Film Styles help photographers get one step closer to creating this special atmosphere in their images.
This latest release delivers 15 different “looks,” each in three different strengths, from subtle to regular to strong, for a total of 45 different Styles. The pack includes 33 in color and 12 in black and white. The Capture One Film Styles may be the most versatile pack so far, given the wide variety of available options. Capture One Film Styles give photographers a head start in the editing process, providing a solid foundation of adjustments for a faster workflow. Styles function as inspiration, providing a quick view of images, with a variety of editing options.
The three-split-variation of each Film Style makes the pack easily applicable across various types of images and helps the photographer maintain full control of the editing process. For Styles examples and usage guidelines, please see: View promotion video: Pricing and Availability The Capture One Film Pack is available now for 69 USD / 69 EUR from the Phase One e-store: phaseone.com/styles-store.
The pack contains 15 different “looks” in three different strengths (normal, plus and minus) for Windows and Mac operating systems. A free sample pack composed of five Styles is also available, containing three versions of FL-07, one color style of FL-02, and one black and white style of FL-12.
Download sample pack: Capture One version 10.2 or newer is recommended for the best user experience. Version 10.1.2 is necessary for Capture One Express (for Sony) users.
The packs are simply installed with a double-click, importing via the new and improved Styles and Presets tool, or by dragging-and-dropping the Pack to the Capture One menu icon. Why do these nostalgic film filters always recreate either Polaroids, rubbish high street budget prints or whack up all the saturation and call it something like Kodachrome. Then of coarse you get to select the grain you want. I don't see any trying to create the tonality of colour neg film, I dont see any trying to generate those gorgeous thick colours that don't look over saturated.
I don't see any trying to capture the gentle roll off in highlights that you get with film.why? Because it isnt there to bring out. No, it won't recreate 'the old analogue feeling'. Part of that feeling is living with the constraints of film, the limited number of frames, the inherent imperfections, the personality of each film without the option of changing it by pushing a few buttons, getting to see the results days or even weeks after the photos were taken. After 12 years with digital, I missed all that so much that I'm back to film for a lot of my 'hobby' photography. Film cameras are so cheap now that I can buy more or less any camera that I could hardly dream of 20 years ago.
I love not having the plastic look of digital that is increasingly the same for every new camera on the market as they all aim for the same perfect target. @Davinator - I wasn't passing judgement on your choice of turntable. If you perceive pleasure from the 'warmth' of vinyl, all the power to you, brand pride notwithstanding. However, I highly suspect The Thievery Corporation recorded and/or mixed and/or mastered that album digitally before they sold it to you on a slab of vinyl to groove on. Thus the faux grain in the music introduced by the choice of medium. I'm quite certain (most) of the clicks, pops, snaps, wow and flutter you're hearing was not on the digital master, regardless of how beautifully warm your VPI turntable makes it sound.
I'm genuinely curious. Until proven wrong I call bung. B) Yes, they do. Your 5 figure stereo setup might do well to minimize the effect, but it's inherent in the format. C) In the voice of Reverend Lovejoy, 'That's super'. Would it matter if I said I had a mixed system of Yamaha, Denon and Fischer components?
No, of course not, because you're an audiophile, so you'd scoff if I didn't have a water-cooled pre-amp and rhodium plated power cables. To that, I'll share a favorite anecdote, (below). Years ago, the owner of a record label, (Vince Harrigan, Manifold Records), made the following confession to me: 'People would be appalled if they knew I owned such a crappy stereo.
I know I should probably have something better; afterall, I audition demo tapes. But I spend all my money on music. Anytime I consider a new set of speakers or a better amp, I just think, 'I could buy 20 albums with that money'. I'm paraphrasing from memory, but the gist of his statement is there. I've always cherished that confession, as it beautifully sums up the difference between an audiophile and a musicophile. Phaedra played on an AC Delco 8-track is still Phaedra.
Garth Brooks played on a Nakamichi Dragon is still Garth Brooks. You draw an interesting comparison in talking about music. No recording can truly be said to capture 100% of the live music - instead, it is better to think of e.g. Vinyl, DAT, CD or 7ips track to track as a 'performance' of the music.
In the same way as some speakers have deliberate 'roll off' above 12KHz, which is exactly what happens in many music halls during a live performance (but which is not, technically, accurate), both film and digital have deliberate sets of trade-offs in what they 'perform' or render. Thus a picture of e.g. Bryce Canyon, even based on a high resolution 'gigapixel' image, is only a 'performance' of what you see in real life. You wouldn't listen to even the best sound system and claim it was the same as being in the club with Thievery Corporation; and you wouldn't look at even the best photo and claim it was the same as being at Bryce Canyon at sunset, would you? Phase One used to be and to a large degree still is a great company with great products. But it appears to me that since recently they are trying to boost their revenue with these 'inovative' offerings rather than concentrating on improving their core C1 software.
I would much prefer to see more color profiles for supported cameras such as Tungsten, LED, Portrait, Lanscape etc. At the moment they offer just one generic for Canon 5DIV and it does not handle tungsten lit interiors all that well.I shoot interiors and architecture for living and would welcome more dedicated color profiles. I raised that with Phase One support but got brushed off kind of reply with only a vague promise which has never eventuated.
I think pro photographers would appreciate such specific profiles and welcome them more than these Styles. The problem is that RNI already released film styles for C1 a few months ago, and they are quite difficult to beat. I've downloaded the samples of this product and it's not even close to RNI. And miles away from real film. Generally these styles are quite simplistic - they just use colour balance to colorize the picture and shadows/highlights, and that's it.
No channel curves to model the colour separation of film, no color editor. For those after well-balanced film look in C1 – don't waste your time, go RNI. @cgarrard Exactly! Since the start of human evolution a sort of pleasure for handling and using objects must have developed on us.
Obviously early humans that felt the need or the pleasure of using stone tools were better in the art of surviving, so the natural selection brought this genetic trait through time up to us. The amount of satisfaction of the process of shooting a film camera, especially a fully mechanical one is not comparable to the one of using a modern digital camera, even if the latter is better in every possible way. People have a hard time telling the difference between film vs digital with well reputed film filters. The difference is the response to highlights but modern cameras have gotten much better. Even D850 is capable of more dynamic range than film. Every manufacturers dope their film chemicals to have a certain look. That's why you need to have a variety of film rolls to meet your 'taste.'
With digital images, they are free from those chemical constraints and lets you adjust white balance, color, luminance and so on thus allowing you to have your own 'taste' or use film filters that resemble the closest to the given film. @photoaddict Digital and film are two really different beasts, saying that digital nowadays has more dynamic range than film says nothing, like saying that a train is more powerful than a car. Film has most of their dynamic range on the highlights, whereas digital have plenty only on shadows. With film as you go up with iso you increase dynamic range, whereas with digital you decrease it. Given that, I would think that you can compare them only on some specific scenarios, and in those cases you can manipulate a digital file to look 99% like film. Anyway I see newer and newer cameras, vastly increasing their dynamic range, but only in the shadows: in the highlights if there is an increase it's negligible. 'Anyway I see newer and newer cameras, vastly increasing their dynamic range, but only in the shadows: in the highlights if there is an increase it's negligible.'
In the end, with digital it doesn't really matter. You simply expose to protect the highlights - and that might mean underexposing by 1, 2 or even 3 stops - and then pull up the shadows afterwards and set the black point.
It's a pretty straightforward process, and in doing so you can achieve practical dynamic range that dramatically exceeds colour negative film. And I say this as someone that really likes shooting film. @cgarrard - 'And you can't emulate the satisfaction of the process of shooting, developing, and reviewing film That's assuming that you actually find 'satisfaction' in the whole process. I shot a ton of film back in the day. I found satisfaction in shooting, but not necessarily in dealing with ziplock bags full of film (processed and unprocessed), loading it, rewinding it, unloading it after every 36 shots, etc. As for developing, that entailed driving to the lab to drop it off. A lot of drive time expended over the years.
As for reviewing film, I only reviewed slides. I didn't review negatives. I would review prints from negatives. But trying to correlate a print image with the exact frame on a negative strip was a pain in the butt. Then I started scanning my negatives, and that wasn't a joy either. So if I look back, I can honestly say that my joy was associated with shooting, not necessarily with dealing with film. @T3 That sums up my experience as well.
Film was just a means to an end. I had no particular interest in film itself. The essence of photography hasn't changed. It is still composition, lighting, timing, etc.
— same as it was from the beginning. I respect what film achieved, but removing the burdens and nuisances of film has been a wonderful thing. And instant preview via the screen has been a dream come true. The problem of digital looking too digital, or often to literal, is solved to a great extent via well-done presets & plugins (Mastin, DXO, Alienskin, SilverEfex and others). @The Davinator Probably it's because back when everyone used film the average camera were a lot worse than today, both in the light meter (if you were lucky to have one, and not a camera with only 1/60 or 1/125 of a second!) and in max iso department.
Capture One Styles Packs
So probably a lot of pictures taken were underexposed, with the exposure pumped up during printing. So normal people probably would expect this effect, like it was on the old pictures they have, taken by their moms or dads using a fully manual camera without knowing what an aperture or a shutter is!
Just released from Phase One, with a whole host of new features: Annotations This feature enables mark-up and annotation on an image for communication between photographer and retoucher when collaborating on projects. The annotations are stored as part of the settings files and so can be packed easily with EIP. A small pencil icon is used to indicate Annotated images in the Browser. The feature includes:. Drawing (in several colors). Erase.
Tool bar Show/hide button. Filters (by annotated state).
Include/exclude options when processing/exporting. Annotations in a separate Layer (see Export with Assets below) Export/Process with Assets Capture One 11 adds the ability to include elements of the Capture One workflow in the final file. The options to include can be configured in the recipe tabMeta data. When used as a PSD Export, the asset will be included in its own layer. Improved Back-up and Restore Mechanism for Catalogs Should the catalog need restoring from a back up, following crash or corruption the application can now assist the user in restoring the back up file from the back-ups folder automatically. Duplicate Checker for the Importer Designed to solve the problems of importing from reusing a partially full memory card, the importer can check the source against the document for files already imported. Using a super robust caching mechanism against the RAW data means importing the difference from the last import is easy, accurate and efficient.
Lab Readouts Due to popular request, the Lab readouts function has been added to the application, giving Lab values at the cursor point in the image. Enable Lab readouts from the View menu.
Levels as a Layer Adjustment Levels can now be used in conjunction with layers/masks. Color Balance as a Layer Adjustment Color balance can now be used in conjunction with layers/masks. Create New Filled Layer Click and hold the Create new “+” icon in the Layers tool to reveal the new option - Create new filled mask can be found here. This is useful for creating a quick filled layer for adding an overall master-grade to an image.
Free Capture One Styles
Presets for Layer Capable Tools The preset function (saving a tool setting for later use) is now available when working with Layers. Master Layer Opacity Once adjustments (or a Style as described above) are applied in a mask, the “impact” of the layer adjustment can be modified with the Opacity slider. Each layer has a percentage indicator giving an overview of blending when using multiple Layers. Feather Mask Once a Mask is drawn, the edges can be softened by Feathering the Mask. Click the “.” menu in the Layers tool Feather Mask to open the modal dialog.
Refine Mask Edge Used in combination with Auto Mask. Auto Mask the target area as normal, aiming to get a tight a mask as possible. Run “Refine Mask” from the “.” menu in the Layers tool to refine the selection. This is best used in combination with the Greyscale Mask preview (especially with fine selections like hair).
Greyscale Mask Preview Converts the preview to a Black and White image to aid masking and fine selections. Purchasers of Capture One Pro 10 from November 1st through 30th, 2017, are eligible for a free upgrade to Capture One Pro 11.
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