Jul 7

Jul 7 Capture One vs Lightroom from someone who uses both (Updated for 2021)

Update 2 For December 2021

Since the latest versions of Lightroom and Capture One have been released, there have been significant new features in each, which changes the math so to speak. Rather than continuously update this piece, i’ve written an addendum, or follow up post to address the addition of panorama stitching and HDR in capture one and the new masking in Lightroom. You can find it here.

Updated for 2021

I first wrote this article last year, and since then it has become my most popular post on this blog. However, since last year, both applications have continued to develop, and both have had several new features added and both have changed the way they perform, so I felt that it was important to update this article. While the bulk of this will still be the same, there are a few things that have changed that are worth pointing out.

Despite being around for a long time, Capture One has really become more and more popular over the past few years. As capture One has gained more and more users, Adobe has also seemed to step up its development of Lightroom. With ardent fans on both sides, it can be hard for users to distinguish the facts from the fan service, and so, hopefully, this article will provide a balanced look at both.

I have been using both applications for many years now and I often switch back and forth between each as my primary editing application. This often depends on what I’m shooting with or the tasks I want to perform. I’m lucky to be in a position to be able to use both, and I realise that this doesn’t apply to everyone.

This article is primarily written from the perspective of someone looking to switch to Capture One from Lightroom, as the chances are, if you're reading this article, that's probably why. If you are a Lightroom user looking to make the switch, I hope this article can provide some useful information.

Features vs Functions

One of the complaints about Capture One from Lightroom users is that they don't understand why it's called "pro" or why someone would consider it "high end".

This may seem like an obvious or silly question, but the answer probably isn't what you think. While Capture One and Lightroom share many of the same functions, they aren't the same, as in my opinion Capture One is more of a high-end tool. This may be a controversial opinion, but Capture One and Lightroom, aren't directly competing in some respects as they occupy different segments of the market. Capture One is a more focussed tool and a more high-end tool, primarily designed around RAW processing. While it has some photo workflow and organisational tools, its primary strength comes as a raw processor.

Lightroom, on the other hand, has a broader set of tools across a lot of areas. This covers things like organisation, working with online services, creating books, making panoramas and so on. On a purely feature for feature set, Lightroom would appear to have the upper edge. But, if you're only comparing features on a spec sheet, then you're missing the things that make Capture One so good at what it does.

The answer is that, while it might have a smaller overall set of features, those features that it does have are generally more focused and more powerful. Often, while Lightroom may work in a certain way to achieve a certain unction, Capture One might have several different tools for that purpose, and those tools generally have more granular control.

If I was to make a bad analogy (which is always dangerous) it's like comparing Premiere Pro to Davinci Resolve. Premiere Pro does most of what Resolve does, but if you're colour grading, Resolve has a much more powerful toolset. In contrast, Premiere is a much broader application and appeals to a wider audience.

(This analogy falls apart a bit because Blackmagic has been busy adding features to resolve and it's now quite a comprehensive editor too)

One example of Capture One's more advanced capabilities is colour correction.

Capture One has a compelling set of colour correction tools, that greatly exceed what is possible in Lightroom alone. You can create individual colour keys on single colours in an image and manipulate them. You can create your own colour profiles and use them as the base calibration. You can create masks based on a colour key, and you have very precise controls over that key. You also have a three-way colour corrector similar to what you have in cinematic and video colour grading solutions. Combined with the powerful layer system in Capture One, you can have exact control over the colours in an image. And that's just one example.

Update: Since I wrote this last year, Adobe has added a three way colour corrector to Lightroom too, and so this is one less advantage that Capture One has.

Screenshot of the Capture One Colour Editing Interface — Capture One Colour Editing Options and Tools: Refining a colour range in the colour editor

The thing is, this high level of control is probably unnecessary for a lot of users, and that's one of the things that some people can't understand when comparing the software. Capture One may have a smaller core feature set, but those core features are generally more powerful, and more high end. Because of the extra controls, and different ways of doing things, for some people they may find this additional control unnecessary. Some first-time users find some of the extra options daunting, and that partly contributes to the view, justified or otherwise, that Capture One has a steep learning curve.

Capture One isn't for everyone, and that's ok

Each application has its own advantages and disadvantages. If you need features that Lightroom has and don't need the more powerful controls and tools in Capture One, then Capture One is not for you. One example is panoramas and HDR merging. Capture One has neither of these options. If these are important to you, then you probably should stick with Lightroom. There are of course third party options for both of these, but they aren't part of Capture One's feature set, and I don't expect that they will be added any time soon.

Lightroom has an excellent book module and allows you to create your own photo books, connecting to Blurb and allowing you to design and order high quality printed books directly to your door, from within Lightroom. There is nothing like that in Capture One. Lightroom's print module is much better. As well as bringing you a high degree of control, you can print directly to a JPEG allowing you to do simple layouts directly in Lightroom. You can't do this in Capture One, without jumping through some hoops.

Another thing that Lightroom has is a whole mobile ecosystem and built-in syncing service. Lightroom has mobile apps on iOS and Android and using the Adobe cloud, you can sync your photos across devices. It's not perfect, but there's nothing like this at all with Capture One.

Some people are incredibly irate about this, and they can't understand how anyone could use Capture One because they don't have these features, but different people have different needs. Not everyone shoots panoramas or HDR files. You have to remember where Capture One came from. It was initially designed as a software front end for medium format cameras. Its original purpose was for high-end studio and commercial photographers, as a way to get the most from their images at the time of capture. It is still considered one of the best tools for this, especially due to its tethering options.

Lightroom is designed to appeal to a wide range of people, both amateur and professional, across a wide range of genres. As I said earlier, its toolset is much broader, and for many users, it is probably more suitable. If you only ever do modest editing to your images, then Lightroom is perhaps better.

However, having said that, Capture One is constantly evolving too, and over the past few versions, they've been making efforts to reduce the complexity and simplify some aspects of the interface to appeal to a broader audience.

Here are some other areas where Lightroom has a clear advantage:

Better integration with Photoshop, including the ability to open your image as a non-destructive smart object in Photoshop, retaining all the RAW edits
Settings parity with Camera Raw in Photoshop
Much wider range of Plug-ins
Publishing plug-ins and publishing service make it much easier to work with online services. While this technology was added in Capture One, it’s still not widely supported
Arguably better print module than Capture One’s print Window (but some of this is subjective)
Wider availability of third party presets

For the things that Capture One is good at, it's very good

If you do need to do more powerful processing, or you want more precise control, then Capture One can be very powerful. I already mentioned the Colour Correction features, but there are other areas where it excels too.

Layers. Its layer functionality is really powerful, and much more so than Lightroom's selective editing. You can have almost any tool in Capture One on its own layer, and you can have multiple layers, each with its own opacity and mask, including luminance masks, gradients and so on. This means that you can have multiple instances of things like curves and levels. You can also have numerous layers with different sharpening settings on each layer and so on.
Tethering. While I don't really shoot tethered myself, Capture One is renowned for its tethering functionality. Of course, you have to have a supported camera.
Sharpening Controls are more powerful and you have more options. While Lightroom has a single sharpening control, Capture One breaks it down into both a pre-sharpening pass and a general sharpening control. In addition, it also can compensate for lens edge softness, with most lens profiles having data to compensate for the sharpness fall off at the edge of lenses. You can also use different sharpening settings on different layers, allowing you to precisely control the sharpening settings for different parts of your image.
There's a lot of other things too like Clarity has four different modes, and all of those don't cause halos like the Lightroom version. It doesn't have Lightroom's new "Texture" slider, but it does have a structure control. The grain function has multiple different grain types. There are both RGB, individual channels, and separate Luminance curves.
Instead of working with a Library, you can also work with what is called a session. This is useful when working on a standalone project or an individual shoot, and everything is contained in a folder structure that you can easily pass on to another user for further work.
There is a special overlay layer that allows you to draw and write notes for passing on to a retoucher.
In Capture One you can save presets for individual tools, and recall those settings right on the tool, which can be a real time saver. You can also set default settings for individual tools, making it easy to customise your default setup. While you can do something similar in Lightroom, you don't have as much control.
The recently added "Style Brushes" feature is a fairly unique feature that allows you to quickly combine style settings and brush settings onto a new layer for easy selective adjustments. This description doesn't do it justice though.

These are just a few of the things that make it different. There are others too like levels and advanced curves. You can completely customise the interface in Capture One, rearranging tools and creating your own layouts. Again, a lot of these features are probably things the average enthusiast or consumer photographer may never need or use, and in that case, if you're ignoring all of the advanced features of Capture One then it probably doesn't make much sense to switch. But if you do need them, then it's clearly worth it, as there isn't really anything else like it.

Screenshot of Capture One showing a Dragon Lantern at night

Image Quality & Subjective Opinions

Some things are more subjective when it comes to comparing the two. Image quality is one of them. I think this depends a lot on the camera you use and the type of images you shoot, and of course, your own personal opinions. Capture One uses a completely different RAW decoding engine from Lightroom, and so the differences can be seen across things like detail, noise and colour rendition. Sometimes these are small, subtle differences, and other times they are significant.

If you shoot with a Fujifilm X-Trans camera, for example, the detail rendering is much better with Capture One than it is with Lightroom unless you use additional processing such as Lightroom's "Enhance Details" or Iridient X-Transformer. Even then some people still prefer Capture One. I have found that the colour rendition with some Sony cameras is much better with Capture One too, as some of the colour profiles with Lightroom have problems with incorrect colours. Some of Canon's latest cameras, such as the 90D or the Eos RP have no camera matching profiles in Lightroom, and the colours are much better in Capture One.

Conversely, some cameras work better in Lightroom. Some, more obscure lenses, and even some common ones may not be fully supported by Capture One, and in some cases, the calibration may be better in Lightroom.

I recently bought a Sony ZV-1 and this is one of the cases where the raw files are actually much better in Lightroom than they are in Capture One

For a lot of cameras, Capture One doesn't have multiple picture profiles. So, with a Canon camera, for example, it doesn't have separate portrait, vivid, and landscape modes and so on. Instead, they are generally calibrated to match the "Standard" profile. For some, this will be a deal-breaker.

Update: There are a couple of things that have changed since I last wrote this. Capture One now has a dedicated Nikon version, and the company has added Nikon picture mode profiles across all versions of the application.

Some of this is entirely subjective, of course. Some people will still prefer the look of files in Lightroom, regardless of what others think, and that's fine. At the end of the day, it's important to use whatever tool you are comfortable with, and whatever works for you.

The Elephant in the room: Licensing Options

One of the main reasons that people cite for considering switching to Capture One is because of the option for a perpetual licence, vs Lightroom's subscription model. This has caused a big stir recently when Capture One 20 was released and Lightroom fans were keen to point out that the Capture One upgrade price was the same as a year of Lightroom. They also argued that Lightroom has added more features over the same time, but that's a whole other discussion.

While it is true that a year of a Lightroom subscription is broadly similar to the upgrade price for Capture One, the big difference that the people pushing this argument seem to have missed is that you don't have to upgrade each version of Capture One. You can skip Capture One 20, and your current version won't stop working. On the other hand, if you terminate your Lightroom subscription, the software will cease to function, regardless of how long you have been paying your subscription. This is the main reason a lot of people are unhappy with Adobe's subscription model, more so perhaps than the actual cost.

Personally, I have nothing against the subscription model for Lightroom, but I also understand those that do. For me, as I still occasionally do graphics work, I get the whole creative suite, and it's a much cheaper point of entry than buying the entire suite of applications outright when they first came out. It allowed me to get access to applications I wouldn't have otherwise been able to afford. But for those who just use Lightroom, and may not have any great need for newer versions, I can completely understand how this can be seen as an issue.

If you're considering switching because of the licensing, then I would make sure you understand all of the pros and cons of Capture One first though, which is kind of why I am writing this. It's not going to be suitable for everyone, and so I recommend against just switching only because of the licensing model, without first understanding the essential differences.

It's also important to point out that Capture One is available as a subscription too, with both annual and yearly subscription options.

Performance and M1 (Apple Silicon) Support (2021 Update)

It used to be the case that a lot of users complained about the performance of Lightroom, but that has changed a lot recently. If you are using a relatively modern computer with a good GPU, Lightroom should have no performance issues.

When it comes to using these applications on a Mac, with both now supporting Apple’s own M1 processors, both applications run very smoothly on this new architecture. If I was to give either the edge though, it would have to be Lightroom. It just feels a little smoother, and imports and exports are a tad faster, although there isn’t much in it.

However, it’s not all in Lightroom’s favour. The application uses much more RAW and even on a 16GB MacBook Pro, it regularly pushes the “Memory Pressure” into the high state. Some have also reported an issue where Lightroom eats up swap disk space, but I haven’t experienced this.

It should also be noted that Capture One has announced that they are working on an iPad version for release sometime in 2022

Conclusion: Should you switch to Capture One?

At the end of the day, only you can answer that question. For many users, the answer may well be no. For others, it will be a definite yes. If you are considering it, then here is my one piece of advice: Try it first.

There is a 30-day trial version available, which is fully featured. You can download this and try out the application first. There are some excellent tutorial videos from Phase One to get you started too. They should show up on the welcome screen. It's important that when you are trying the application out, you realise that it's not going to be the same as Lightroom. The interface and way of working are quite different. If you try and use it exactly as you would Lightroom you will be disappointed.

I love Capture One, but I also like Lightroom. I think there is plenty of room in the market for multiple applications. I use Capture One for about 60% of my raw processing now, although that varies from time to time. What is amazing to me is that a lot of the anger about this subject lately online seems to stem from the notion that it has to be either one or the other. It doesn't. They're both excellent applications with pros and cons for each, and in my opinion, slightly different target markets.

At the end of the day, it's up to the individual to choose the tools that work best for them, and what works for one person may not work for another. So if you're interested in Capture One, then try it and judge for yourself. If it's not for you, then that's fine.

As with anything online, some people also seem to take this way too personally. If someone likes Capture One and you're a Lightroom user, it's not a personal attack. And the same goes for Lightroom. You can like Capture One without hating Lightroom too. Lightroom has served a lot of photographers well, and it continues to serve them well. It also has a broader feature set that some users simply need. The subscription model has undoubtedly upset a lot of users, but it's obviously working for Adobe as they continue to make record earnings.

At the end of the day it's about choice and the only one for whom it should matter as to which application you use, is you. So use whichever suits your needs. I will continue to support both on this blog and provide tutorials and guidance on both.

Availability of Capture One

If you don’t already have Capture One, you can download a 30 day trial now from the company’s website. If you do go to buy it, Capture One Pro is available in both subscription and perpetual licences available, in versions for all cameras, Fuji specific , Sony specific or Nikon specific. The Fuji, Sony and Nikon versions only open raw files from cameras of the respective manufacturers, but other than that, they are identical to the full version.

In addition you can get 10% off the price of any Capture One product by using the following code: TFPHOTO

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