Last week Phase One released the latest big update to Capture One, bringing it to version 12, and it is a significant change over previous versions. The interface has been completely revamped, and the company has added a good few new tools and features. For Fujifilm shooters, the software now supports Fuji’s film simulation profiles, with a caveat which I’ll get to shortly.

Please note that this isn’t a review, but rather a quick overview and some first impressions. Also, apologies for being a little late with this coverage.

The New Interface

The biggest and most obvious change is the redesigned interface. The software has been given a new “flat” makeover with the Grey and Orange theme that seems to be popular lately. Some of the icons have also been re-designed and the menus have been cleaned up and reorganised.

My initial impressions of using it are it’s definitely better. After using it for a few hours, the older version now looks dated. It may take a little time to get used to if you’ve been a long time user, but I think the change is worth it in the long run.

Fuji Film Simulations

This is the one thing that Fuji Capture One users have been clamouring for. I posted a few videos recently on Capture One express, and the number one question I received was about the film simulation modes. They’ve now been added, although in a little different way to what I was expecting. I had thought that they would add them as separate ICC profiles, however, instead, you select the generic profile, and the film simulation modes come up under the “Curve” popup.

There is a significant caveat with the Film simulation support though. It doesn’t support any of the first generations Fuji cameras. So no X-Pro1, X-T1 etc. I’m sure owners of these cameras are pretty annoyed about this, and to be honest, I’m not really sure why they weren’t included. I don’t know if they will feature in a future release or not.

In terms of the quality of these, they seem pretty right to me. I haven’t done any direct comparisons with the Jpegs, as I’m not really bothered if they’re not an exact match - raw files generally aren’t, but they look right to me and are close enough. Fuji Rumours did a comparison and found that they are pretty close. To my eyes, I can’t tell the difference.

Masking Changes

The software also ads new masking tools, including the much-requested radial gradient, and they also added luminance masking. The whole masking engine has been upgraded and is now parametric and effectively non-destructive - so you can move and reshape gradient masks (much more like how Lightroom works)

You can still rasterise the mask and then edit out parts of it too, but when you do this you do lose the editability of the gradient. This is definitely a very welcome change and they seem to perform much faster too. The radial gradient is particularly welcome.

Editing and Publishing Plug-ins

Phase One has also changed the way the software works with other applications and services. The architecture to open with and edit with other applications has been re-engineered as a plug-in system and has been opened up to third parties. This should make round tripping to other software easier in the future.

They also added a “Publishing” plug-in architecture so you can export images directly to third-party online and local services. At the moment there are only a few supported services, but hopefully, in the future, lots of third parties will support this.

Other Changes and Upgrading

There are a lot of other little changes throughout the software too, for example, the mechanism for copying and pasting adjustments has been improved so that it can be told to ignore things like cropping and spot removal, which is very useful.

The software is now available in all the various versions that Phase One offers. They are giving free upgrades to anyone who purchased after the 1st of November, and for anyone else, the upgrade price (for non-subscribers) is €159.

The Future of My Capture One Fuji Guide

A while ago I wrote a guide for processing Fuji files in Capture One. It was written way back in version 8 and I’ve been updating it as changes were made to Fuji processing. I’m not going to update this old guide any more, because the changes in Capture One 12 are just too great, and it needs a complete re-write.

With this in mind, I’ve reduced the price of the old guide to €2.50 for anyone who is still on the older version and wants it. I will be discontinuing sales of this at the end of December. Unfortunately, I can’t do any kind of “buy it now and get a free upgrade” kind of offer because my store doesn’t have any mechanism to support that. The new guide will be a completely different book anyway. I will also be discontinuing the old bundle which contained this guide too.

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You can also show support by buying something from my from my Digital Download Store where I have Lightroom Presets, and e-books available for download. If you're a Fuji X-Trans shooter and Lightroom user, check out my guide to post processing X-Trans files in Lightroom. I also have a guides for processing X-Trans files in Capture One and Iridient Developer. For Sony Alpha shooters I have a new guide with tips on how to get the best from processing your A6000 Images in Lightroom.