Capture 1 vs Lightroom for Fuji

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Name
Ben
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I’ve just recently got my first Fuji camera (xpro1). I didn’t know that Lightroom didn’t handle the files very well having been a Sony user before hand. However after using enhance details in Lightroom I don’t see a massive difference between capture 1 and Lightroom side by side. There is less noise in the capture 1 file but it seems like there’s less sharpness. Im not sure if that’s because capture adds noise reduction on import or if the noise gives the appearance of sharpness like grain can do in film.
I’m bringing it up as seemingly every Fuji user loves capture 1 over Lightroom and I’m struggling to see why.
I much prefer the interface of capture 1 but as I have the Mastin labs preset Kodak everyday for all my colour photos in Lightroom I don’t really want to switch and have to get them again or lose them.

Is there something else I’m missing from capture 1?!
 
Take a look at Thomas Heatons video on different processes for his Fuji files.
 
Take a look at Thomas Heatons video on different processes for his Fuji files.
That’s what prompted me to post here. He says that the capture 1 looks crisper but to me it looks the other way round.
 
That’s what prompted me to post here. He says that the capture 1 looks crisper but to me it looks the other way round.
I cant comment on Lightroom but I find C1 to give me very good results. Thomas did another video earlier where he also was very surprised with the high quality Fuji/Capture1 files.
 
I'm a big fan of Thomas Heaton so will need to watch that video later. I have an X-T3 and use Lightroom predominately. I have tried Capture One but for my own work I didn't notice a substantial difference. That could be because I don't know Capture One to the same level of ability as Lightroom.
 
That’s what prompted me to post here. He says that the capture 1 looks crisper but to me it looks the other way round.
It may be irrelevant, because I'm not sure how you are viewing the images, but the C1 full-size view. ie fit to view is often a little fuzzy compared to the fit to view image in LR. You see a big improvement in C1 sharpness when you increase the magnification to 25% -33%.

How fuzzy seems to depend on individual computers, on mine, it's very fuzzy, while for others it's not fuzzy at all. I do final edits in Photoshop, and even though I have C1 switch off all sharpening before it transfers the file to PS, I notice an instant increase in sharpness once C1 has opened the file Photoshop, compared to the same "sharpened" file in C1.
 
Almost all of my files are processed in LR and whilst I had issues with the original T1 at first, I learned how to make the files better. Each upgrade of the Fuji processor have seen improvement in PP, to the point that I have no fears at all with my T3 files.

Also, bear in mind that with LR you can bring together multiple exposures to get a better dynamic range in the shot (no blown highlights, no loss of details in the shadows) which you can't do in C1. Nor can you stitch files together to make a pano. A couple of very useful tools, especially for landscape work, that C1 doesn't have.

I'd be lost without those two things alone.
 
I used lightroom and iridient for ages with my Fuji X-T2 and X-T3. Downloaded capture one in January with their 30% off offer and the difference was immediate.

I do still use lightroom and photoshop to do some stuff but its easy to transport the images accross. Just depends whether you can be bothering learning and paying for a new system.
 
I use C1 express for my raw T2 files, then final edit in PS. It`s only one extra click (y)
 
I don't think you can touch C1 for Fuji - but it's hard to make a level playing field comparison, because variable sharpening and denoising methods and strengths make so much difference to the final output, and aren't directly comparable. There's quite a lot of suck it and see.
 
I ditched lightroom for a whole load of other reasons.

Our view is that Capture One gives us better finished images.

We don't shoot Fuji, so can't comment there. It was a combination of IQ, colour editing, speed, tethering, file structure and customisation for us

If you are serious about getting your work flow just so, C1 is for you
 
It may be irrelevant, because I'm not sure how you are viewing the images, but the C1 full-size view. ie fit to view is often a little fuzzy compared to the fit to view image in LR. You see a big improvement in C1 sharpness when you increase the magnification to 25% -33%.

How fuzzy seems to depend on individual computers, on mine, it's very fuzzy, while for others it's not fuzzy at all. I do final edits in Photoshop, and even though I have C1 switch off all sharpening before it transfers the file to PS, I notice an instant increase in sharpness once C1 has opened the file Photoshop, compared to the same "sharpened" file in C1.
This is pretty much what I was thinking. Just to throw another curveball despite being very happy with C1 for the last year or so I recently (yesterday in fact so I haven’t had much time to play with it) downloaded the latest version of ON1 Photo Raw and found it very close to CP1 with Fuji RAF files for a lot less money. Time will tell though :)
 
downloaded the latest version of ON1 Photo Raw and found it very close to CP1 with Fuji RAF files for a lot less money. Time will tell though :)

There are a few people, who you might regard as "people who should know" saying good things about ON1, but it seemed to suffer in the beginning from lots of issues. I've been using C1 and LR for so long now (since V6 in C1 and V1 in LR) that I'm reluctant to try ON1. Although, I have tried several alternatives in the past, I've always come back to C1 and LR (and PS).
 
I ditched lightroom for a whole load of other reasons.

Our view is that Capture One gives us better finished images.

We don't shoot Fuji, so can't comment there. It was a combination of IQ, colour editing, speed, tethering, file structure and customisation for us

If you are serious about getting your work flow just so, C1 is for you

Richard, workflow is a very personal thing. I've tried C1, and a few others, but nothing (in my opinion) beats the Adobe workflow. Horses for courses maybe; it may be better for you, but just because others don't share your opinion does not mean they are not serious about workflow.
 
Richard, workflow is a very personal thing. I've tried C1, and a few others, but nothing (in my opinion) beats the Adobe workflow. Horses for courses maybe; it may be better for you, but just because others don't share your opinion does not mean they are not serious about workflow.
Agree.

For us we started looking elsewhere when the performance of lightroom was appalling. They may have sorted this now

However, we looked at the whole thing. Discussing everything including work flows, cost model, support, backups and image quality

This was at a time where Adobe had really screwed up a couple of releases of lightroom. We got to the point where a move was inevitable

We still have lightroom, we use it once last year to test something
 
The more images you push through the processor, the more important is workflow vs IQ. Speed, too: I haven't speed-tested RAW processors recently: it's instructive to put a stopwatch on the highest quality capture output from LR, C1 and DXO on the same machine. DXO's Prime denoise setting on HighRes RAWs from the G9 takes, on average, 4-5 minutes per image on an i7 Windows machine.
 
I’ve tested this a few times and while I do notice a difference once pictures have been initially imported, after I’ve made adjustments in LR there is no difference to the image exported from C1.
I also find the LR workflow to be much easier, for me.
 
Workflow and quality is a very personal thing (this is a long post)

I have used LR (since V1), C1 (since V6 or 7) and DXO (since a version I can't remember but for about 14 years), the latter hasn't been upgraded since Photolab 1. DXO hasn't improved the Prime Noise tool since then, and that is all I now use in DXO.

At fairly regular intervals I make comparison prints or make screen comparison between the programs (usually at C1 upgrade time, which is now much more expensive than it used to be and has now become an annual event)

I spend days on this, and so far have always come to the same conclusions:

a) Although subtle, I can get noticeably better quality with C1. This is difficult to describe, but it's related to a feeling of "depth" in both the colours and textures that I cannot match in LR. Years ago when I did some blind testing with 10 "members of the public" they preferred the prints from C1 over LR because they described them as being more "more real looking" and having a more "3d" look to them.

Strangely, even though the C1 results look crisper at a distance if you look closely, the LR results reveal more fine detail.

Whenever I make a comparison, I can always clearly see the C1 results look that bit better than the LR results, and I struggle with the idea of giving up C1.

b). As much as quality, and maybe even more so, it's the editing workflow that convinces me to stay with C1.

Everything can be customised in C1 so the editing tools can exactly match your personal workflow, plus I find the tools more intuitive to use, and generally more powerful and more subtle than the tools in LR. This makes C1 a joy to use for me and I can get things done faster and more easily in C1 than I can in LR.

BUT, the cataloguing tools in LR are vastly superior to C1s cataloguing tools, and I still use LR for cataloguing and rough proofing in conjunction with C1 "sessions" for final editing. I find the C1 catalogues to be slow, clunky and unreliable, not an issue with using C1 sessions. Final images are usually edited in a C1 session (sometimes in LR) and from there round-tripped to Photoshop, something C1 handles well.

Having said that, lots of people seem happy enough with C1 catalogues, and C1 does offer flexibility in file management that LR doesn't i.e. a choice of referenced or managed catalogues, sessions (where you still import images, but into a new session per project) and a browser option where you can work directly on files without importing them.

Ideally, I would like to drop C1, its a relatively high annual expense and, as its become more popular, technical support quality has seriously declined. In the past, I could measure the response time from technical support in hours. It was always excellent, and always from someone who was obviously an expert in C1. Today, based on comments on various C1 related forums, technical support takes weeks, and you need to go several rounds of being sent to irrelevant FAQs, and answering questions you had already answered in your original support request before you actually get any real support.

Overall, I think LR is a great overall tool, capable of high-quality results with coherent and effective workflow and management tools. Add in that get Photoshop, mobile versions, and a portfolio website for the same fee, it seems excellent value to me for the serious photographer. (i have not even looked at ON1, Luminar, etc, so I am only comparing LR vs C1).

For me, C1 gives slightly higher quality, and in terms of the actual "editing" part of the workflow, more efficient workflow and more effective editing tools. I have completed several photoshop editing/retouching courses recently as well as following some youtube tutorials and a C1 + Photoshop pairing seems to be the standard combination when looking for the "best" raw processor combined with the "best" pixel editor.

But its expensive, apart from coughing up £300 to buy it, you now have an annual upgrade costing more than the Adobe annual subscription, and although I would argue that C1 is a bit more powerful than LR, you are still going to need a pixel editor such as Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Plus if you don't get on with the C1 catalogue, and want a catalogue, some sort of cataloguing tool as well (I use Neofnder to catalogue my C1 sessions).

It certainly isn't for everyone, and in spite of being an enthusiastic C1 user, I usually end up advising people to go with Adobe, and then look at C1 once they have an "Adobe baseline" for comparison. Additionally, even though there are very good C1 learning resources, they come nowhere close to the learning resources available for Adobe. (The exception might be for Fuji, where it makes sense to start with the free C1 for fuji version)

To appreciate C1 workflow you need to take time to learn how C1 works, you need to realise it isn't Lightroom and doesn't work like Lightroom, and you need to take advantage of being able to customise pretty well every aspect of the interface.

To appreciate C1 quality, you need to take the time to learn the tools in LR and C1, appreciate that tools with the same name don't necessarily do the same thing and that each program needs different tools in different combinations to get the best out of them (I'm still working on this one).

And finally, after you are done with the pixel peeping comparisons and matched the images as best you can, you need to lean back and look at the entire print (or screen) and make a more holistic assessment of which images look better.

I don't think it's possible to make a fully rational decision between C1 and LR (at least not in terms of quality and workflow) in a 30 day trial. It's probably a daily occurrence to read a forum post which describes something that C1 can't do (which it can) as an argument for them not using C1, and indeed the other way round, where someone promotes a C1 feature that LR doesn't have (when it does).


As an aside, while Raw Therapee, doesn't offer the workflow tools that LR/C1 offer, and is rather clunky to use, it looks like it might be an outstanding Raw Processor with initial tests suggesting it can give me the detail I get from LR and the "depth" I get from C1, but the Jury is still out on this. And I am struggling to summon up the enthusiasm to spend the time properly learning Raw Therapee. I would rather spend my time working on "real" photographs with the programs I already have.

Sorry for how long this is (if anyone reaches this point) I got a bit carried away :-(
 
I’ve tested this a few times and while I do notice a difference once pictures have been initially imported, after I’ve made adjustments in LR there is no difference to the image exported from C1.
I also find the LR workflow to be much easier, for me.

Depends what camera you are using too I suppose. Fuji files are night and day different when compared between Lightroom and C1 (In favour of C1). I know others have done tests with Canon's EOS R and RP (Youtube these) and have found C1 produces crisper images and better colours
 
Best thing is to trial both and see what you think.

I use C1 but only because I can get my files to where I want them to be faster. I could probably get same results with both.
 
Depends what camera you are using too I suppose. Fuji files are night and day different when compared between Lightroom and C1 (In favour of C1). I know others have done tests with Canon's EOS R and RP (Youtube these) and have found C1 produces crisper images and better colours

I partly agree with you, I've taken test shots with XT1 and XT3, and when I put the files into C1 and LR the images look much better in C1.
Once I've been through and finished all my standard adjustments in LR the final image is pretty much identical to what comes out of C1.

When I was testing using my XT3 I used different lenses to, 8-16mm, 10-24mm, 50-140mm, 18-55mm and the 23mm f4 prime.
I found the same with all lenses, I could make adjustments in LR and have the final image the same as what comes out of C1.

This is all subjective of course and this is just my opinion. :)
 
I partly agree with you, I've taken test shots with XT1 and XT3, and when I put the files into C1 and LR the images look much better in C1.
Once I've been through and finished all my standard adjustments in LR the final image is pretty much identical to what comes out of C1.

When I was testing using my XT3 I used different lenses to, 8-16mm, 10-24mm, 50-140mm, 18-55mm and the 23mm f4 prime.
I found the same with all lenses, I could make adjustments in LR and have the final image the same as what comes out of C1.

This is all subjective of course and this is just my opinion. :)

Same with me......
 
I can't tell the difference with my Fuji files.

I'm very happy with the output, and I just couldn't give up Adobe for the stitching & blending of images.
 
Okay so after reading other comments on this thread I decided to re-visit C1 and repeat my testing.
Last time I did this it was with an older version of C1, I have downloaded C1 20 to do another comparison with LR.

So, I set up my Fuji XT3 on a tripod in the garden and I have taken a test shot, using the Fuji 10-24mm f4.
Metadata of the shot is 10mm, f/4, ISO 160 and 1/500 second.

So the initial import of the RAF file does show that C1 seems to interpret the raw data much better than LR and presents a better image.

Capture 1
No edits and exported at 100% quality

Lightroom
No edits and exported at 100% quality

The results are quite obvious.

So now on to the edits, I will do the type of editing that I generally do and I don't tend to spend too much time on this.

Capture 1
Auto adjustment on Exposure, Contrast & Brightness, High Dynamic Range and Levels.

Lightroom
I used Lightroom's auto feature. Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Sahdows, Whites, Blacks, Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation

Capture 1 comes out the outright winner for me, the images look far better.

I'd be interested to get your thoughts.

I just wish C1 had a better cataloguing option.
 
I'd be interested to get your thoughts.

I just wish C1 had a better cataloguing option.

You kind of already know my thoughts on this, but I think it's difficult to judge on Flikr. Using the defaults isn't really being fair to either program, but if you find the defaults in C1 get you closer to where you want to go, and you don't want to spend much time editing, then this could be a worthwhile plus for C1.

Have you tried the C1 catalogue and found it wanting, or are you basing your views on comments from other people. As I said in my long post, many people seem perfectly happy with the C1 catalogue, including people with close to half a million images in it

Would you be looking at buying C1 or using the free fuji version.

If you switched to C1 would you still have LR, this is relevant to the previous question as there are ways of keeping the LR catalogue but work in C1.

And as an aside, have you seen the features in the C1 update coming later this month: unlimited heal and clone points in the same layer, and a new before and after option which uses a slider or a single click.
 
You kind of already know my thoughts on this, but I think it's difficult to judge on Flikr. Using the defaults isn't really being fair to either program, but if you find the defaults in C1 get you closer to where you want to go, and you don't want to spend much time editing, then this could be a worthwhile plus for C1.

Have you tried the C1 catalogue and found it wanting, or are you basing your views on comments from other people. As I said in my long post, many people seem perfectly happy with the C1 catalogue, including people with close to half a million images in it

Would you be looking at buying C1 or using the free fuji version.

If you switched to C1 would you still have LR, this is relevant to the previous question as there are ways of keeping the LR catalogue but work in C1.

And as an aside, have you seen the features in the C1 update coming later this month: unlimited heal and clone points in the same layer, and a new before and after option which uses a slider or a single click.

To be fair to C1 I haven't used the catalogue feature enough to judge it one way or the other. I would probably look to try the free Express version as my other camera bodies are Canon.
If I switched to C1 for editing the Fuji files then I would still look to use the cataloguing features of LR.
 
First question, why is the Lightroom Image Wider and Taller than teh C1 one, yet they both claim to be the same size? 6240x4160 - maybe the lens correction algorithms are different???
They are, but you can turn off or turn down, the corrections to suit your requirements with C1.

Most lenses have custom corrections generated by the C1 tech people, Mirrorless camera lenses have the lens corrections stored with the raw and C1 uses these manufacturers corrections except where they feel they can do better and in those instances, you can choose which corrections you want to use.

Or you can create your own corrections.

Are corrections on by default with Lightroom ?
 
They are, but you can turn off or turn down, the corrections to suit your requirements with C1.

Most lenses have custom corrections generated by the C1 tech people, Mirrorless camera lenses have the lens corrections stored with the raw and C1 uses these manufacturers corrections except where they feel they can do better and in those instances, you can choose which corrections you want to use.

Or you can create your own corrections.

Are corrections on by default with Lightroom ?

You can't apply lens corrections for Fuji cameras in LR, they're applied automatically from the raw data.
 
To be fair to C1 I haven't used the catalogue feature enough to judge it one way or the other. I would probably look to try the free Express version as my other camera bodies are Canon.
If I switched to C1 for editing the Fuji files then I would still look to use the cataloguing features of LR.

You can run the C1 catalogue in parallel with the LR catalogue and see how you get on with it. If you set up LR to export to XMP sidecar files, and set up C! to read and write XMP sidecar files (assuming the express version allows this) ratings. labels, keywords etc are shared between both programs, so it's relatively easy to use them both. You can't share edit information of course.

There are more options available if you use sessions with C1, but the express version doesn't support sessions.
 
You can't apply lens corrections for Fuji cameras in LR, they're applied automatically from the raw data.
I should have said to go into the lens tab (the symbol that looks like the front element of a lens) and you should find the lens corrections tools, including one to hide or not hide distortion.

I've not actually ever used it, other than to manually correct a 24mm manual focus Nikkor.
 
Apart from the basic colour rendition and contrast, which down to personal preference (the colours seem weaker with LR) there is no great difference.

It's pointless shooting in RAW, and letting the software do all the work, the JPG engine in the camera is excellent. The whole point about shooting RAW is so that YOU have control over the image. Like I, and I think David have said, you can get LR to produce identical images as you will want to tweak them no matter what software you use.

But, C1 won't allow me to bring multiple frames together for an "HDR" landscape, it won't bring 30 files together for a focus stack, and it won't stitch 5 or 6 images together to make a pano. These are all things that I use on a regular basis, so I can't see the point of paying for software that isn't "complete".

I'm not saying it's rubbish, I'm saying that it still has some way to go to compete.
 
I use LR because the main cameras I use are Canon 5D Mark IV and EOSR, the XT3 and the Fuji lenses are more of a hobby, although as I'm not a professional photographer as a day job you could argue all my Canon kit is also a hobby, just a very expensive one!!! :ROFLMAO:

I do need to consider going down to 1 system at some point.
 
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