I’m a regular user of Digital Photo Professional (DPP) v4.6.30 (development tasks) and Adobe Lightroom v6.12 (catalogue tasks and for highlight & lowlight exposure issues). During last period of time I have heard a lot of positive feedback about Capture One vs Lightroom and Digital Photo Professional and I decided to try the Capture One (v10.1.2) raw converter.
Below is 5D4 raw sample (available here for testing purposes only) developed with a default preset:
5D4 RAW default export
Comparing above, DPP photo looks bad but it’s a game with C1 preset parameters only. After loading in DPP the following parameters:
Picture Style: Neutral
Contrast: +1
Shadow: +3
Highlight: -2
Color Tone +2
Color Saturation: +2
Sharpness: Unsharp mask
Strength: 4
Fineness: 1
Threshold: 1
Reduce luminance noise: 5
Reduce chrominance noise: 3
I got very similar details level as in Capture One. Check below:
Capture One default and DPP with above parameters
To be clear, the default C1 5D4 raw settings include some preset parameters. Turning off them in C1, the details of default DPP photo are very close to C1.
The default 5D4 colors of Capture One are not what I like. With DPP (Picture Style: Faithful) I get better balanced colors between Canon camera models (I have tested 5D3, 5D4, 5DsR and 1DXII raw files).
Furthermore, after importing my catalogue (around 19000 photos, Win7, 64 bits, SSD HD) from Lightroom to Capture One I noticed C1 was working noticeable slower than Lightroom (for instance a search function by keywords is very slow, and yes, before that I did catalogue optimization). Furthermore, GPS and mapping support of Capture One is very basic and it doesn’t feel my needs. The missing functions like adding manually photo to the map or auto sync EXIF with imported gpx file are not acceptable for me.
Last but not least in my country Capure One price is almost x2 over Lightroom! And Digital Photo Professional is free. Despite Capture One editing features looks good, as a Canon user, I don’t have a feeling it can replace my DPP & Lightroom combo. Adding Photoshop processing in the workflow with DPP & Lightroom, I don’t see any reason for the Capture One. To conclude my experience with Capture One I would like to add the simple list of (+) and (-) :
(+) editing capabilities,
(-) default preloaded parameters makes the impression about superior details of C1 but it’s a fake,
(-) color balance of the same frame between 5D3, 5D4, 5DsR and 1DXII models should be better,
(-) slow catalogue search functions,
(-) missing functions like adding manually photo to the map location or auto sync EXIF with imported gpx file,
(-) very high price (based on EU prices).