Capture One Pro 9 First Thoughts
Capture One Pro 9 First Thoughts - by David R Beebe
I finally upgraded to OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) and am happy to report that Aperture continues to work. No commitment on how long that will remain true.With support terminated on the app and with Photos seriously lacking in features, I started looking around for a suitable option. I found a good summary at:
http://www.photocritic.org/articles/apple-aperture-alternatives
Of the 10 alternatives, I decided to try Capture One Pro 9 as it can import existing Aperture libraries. It retains a fair amount of the changes made in Aperture (color/exposure adjustments, cropping, rating, keywords, etc) but not all (rotate is oddly missing, vignetting, spot sharpening) but not bad. A lot better than starting over. There is a free 30 day trial - today is day 1 for me. The interface is a bit different but it is not bad. There are lots of YouTube training videos posted.
https://www.phaseone.com/en.aspx
If you download version 9, immediately update it to version 9.0.1 as the base version has a serious memory leak. Importing images generates a new preview and version 9.0 would continue to consume memory until all application memory was consumed and the program locked up. At least when restarting the app, memory usage dropped to normal and the preview generation picked up where it left off.
Of the extended feature set, the results from just the Auto adjust is amazing. I imported the Aperture library from our Cuba trip and did a batch auto adjust. I exported those images and compared them to the set I very carefully created within Aperture. In nearly all cases, the Capture One version of the image was superior. I am impressed.
If you need to manually sort images before exporting them as I often do, you can accomplish this with Capture One but it isn't obvious. You have to go to the View menu and Hide Viewer. This leaves most of the screen for the Browser window and you can drag images around as needed.
A feature not found in Aperture is a lens correction filter. They have the old Canon 100-400 lens but not the newer Mark II yet. I am still evaluating but this seems to be a great substitute application.
Of course, nothing is perfect and I have already noticed an Aperture feature that I depend upon frequently. a big MIA feature is a bulk date/time adjustment. You may not need this but it is very helpful when merging images from multiple cameras when their clocks aren’t exactly the same. I also find it curious that when painting in an adjustment mask, there isn't an option for automatic edge detection as there is in Aperture.
Capture One is not cheep. Version 9 costs $300 or can be subscribed to at $15/month. I am not sure what their major release cycle is but the update for owners of version 8 to 9 is $99. I am thinking that a subscription might be the way to go. Well, 29 more trial days until I have to decide.
http://www.photocritic.org/articles/apple-aperture-alternatives
Of the 10 alternatives, I decided to try Capture One Pro 9 as it can import existing Aperture libraries. It retains a fair amount of the changes made in Aperture (color/exposure adjustments, cropping, rating, keywords, etc) but not all (rotate is oddly missing, vignetting, spot sharpening) but not bad. A lot better than starting over. There is a free 30 day trial - today is day 1 for me. The interface is a bit different but it is not bad. There are lots of YouTube training videos posted.
https://www.phaseone.com/en.aspx
If you download version 9, immediately update it to version 9.0.1 as the base version has a serious memory leak. Importing images generates a new preview and version 9.0 would continue to consume memory until all application memory was consumed and the program locked up. At least when restarting the app, memory usage dropped to normal and the preview generation picked up where it left off.
Of the extended feature set, the results from just the Auto adjust is amazing. I imported the Aperture library from our Cuba trip and did a batch auto adjust. I exported those images and compared them to the set I very carefully created within Aperture. In nearly all cases, the Capture One version of the image was superior. I am impressed.
If you need to manually sort images before exporting them as I often do, you can accomplish this with Capture One but it isn't obvious. You have to go to the View menu and Hide Viewer. This leaves most of the screen for the Browser window and you can drag images around as needed.
A feature not found in Aperture is a lens correction filter. They have the old Canon 100-400 lens but not the newer Mark II yet. I am still evaluating but this seems to be a great substitute application.
Of course, nothing is perfect and I have already noticed an Aperture feature that I depend upon frequently. a big MIA feature is a bulk date/time adjustment. You may not need this but it is very helpful when merging images from multiple cameras when their clocks aren’t exactly the same. I also find it curious that when painting in an adjustment mask, there isn't an option for automatic edge detection as there is in Aperture.
Capture One is not cheep. Version 9 costs $300 or can be subscribed to at $15/month. I am not sure what their major release cycle is but the update for owners of version 8 to 9 is $99. I am thinking that a subscription might be the way to go. Well, 29 more trial days until I have to decide.