Phase One Capture One

Capture One is a Phase One product, a converter digital raw images. Capture One is oriented on batch processing, which orientation is clearly seen in the program interface and the workflow. But let’s go step by step through it.

Supported cameras and raw formats

Capture One’s range of supported cameras is somewhat limited. The most represented brands is Canon with 15 cameras, then come Nicon, Konica Minolta, and Olympus. Finally Pentax, Fuji, Epson, and, naturally, Phase One have one or two cameras represented in the list. And such limits can defer many a user from Capture One.

As for the destination file formats, Capture One allows the converted images to saved into .tiff or .jpeg file formats. When choosing .tiff you can specify the bit depth as well.

The original raw files are not modified by Capture One, you are saving their copies with all convertion settings and adjustments applied. An interesting feature of Capture One is the possibility of working with multiple versions of the same image simultaniously.

Tools

Capture One has the usual tools raw converters have, starting with White Balance and Exposure correction and finishing with zoom and crop functions.

What singles Capture One out is the option of working with tethered capture. It allows you to use the program for looking at camera settings, evaluating exposure (there’s a histogram), and adjusting white balance. This can be very convenient in many situations.

{mosimage align=left}But the first thing I’m considering in any raw converter is the White balance. It works quite well in Capture One. You can use not only white but middle grays to set the white balance, and that’s extremely convenient. The program also evaluates the picked WB spot as suitable or not. Good ‘cause you don’t have to rely on your perception of the image only. The two small preview windows, accompanied by RGB values, show the source image and the proof of the future image with the settings you are choosing applied.

There’s an interesting Lens cast correction that can add a preset lens cast to the image. Capture one has a good choice of most popular cameras lens effects to compensate for.

Capture One offers also a originally designed Color Balance tool. The choice of colors is visualized – you are not moving gliders on separate bars but adjusting your color on a color circle. I found it convenient; you get the fill of it, somehow. The choice can be fine-tuned with Hue and Saturation bars to the right of the circle. The result can be an addition of a desired color tint as below:

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{mosimage cw=120 align=right}The Exposure tab has some interesting controls in it.

First comes the Film mode. You can set different film effects – from linear and standard to extra shadow, and this effect will be simulated in the image.

Apart from the standard Exposure correction the tab has Contrast compensation and Color Saturation.
The tab also has both Curves and Levels working separately (toggle Preserve color balance). When you move your pointer around the image the preview window shows the place you are at and the there appears a corresponding point at a curve (in curves dialogue). Convenient enough as you can use that point for correcting color in the image. The original and resulted color values are again illustrated by small previews.

The Focus bar is not unusual in haveing two sections - sharpening adn noise.
There are two sharpening modes – Soft look and Standard. The difference between the two is clearly seen, especially in the dark parts of the image that become lighter. The effect is best visible (and should be used, I think) for high ISO images.

The Noise panel containes a Banding Suppression tool compensating for banding artifacts in an image. By increasing the banding suppression, slider noise is actually added to the image. This prevents banding from occurring on the monitor or printer.

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The program’s Color Noise Reduction works very well, the effect again visible in high ISO images the best.

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Same can be said about Noise suppression.

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That’s pretty all about Capture One tools, as the majority of them is a standard set.

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Interface

I liked Capture One Interface for its uniformity and logic. Even the abundance of pictograms and buttons could not spoil the impression.

Opening the converter you see three sections in the window – file/image browser, the thumbnails panel and the preview of the selected image with editing tools.
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File browser and thumbnails can be removed once you don’t need them to free space for a larger preview. The editing preview and tools also can be minimized to the left to free space for the image browser. It’s a good strategy, as you can take away from view the element you don’t need but it is still in its place and can be accessed immediately.

In the editing space itself (after the browsing windows are moved aside) you have a number of buttons working with all editing tools in the upper panel.
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These include the usual white balance picker, zoom, crop and exposure warning. But there are also color management on/off and simulate sharpening settings buttons. As Capture One is targeted at batch processing mostly, these options unused should provide better speed.
One of the Zoom modes – Fit to Screen - has a separate button. There are a couple of options accessible with tethered shooting, and a function of comparing two images helps in the sorting procedure.

All the other tools are arranged on the right in 5 tabs, where only 3 are truly editing tools.
Most tool controls have gliders. Some of them will also allow inserting numbers instead of moving the glider. Some just show numbers not allowing their manual change. And a few have no number slots at all. In most cases such approach is justified to my mind, at least I did not feel any discomfort in the workflow.

Apart from the upper panel buttons there are buttons on each of the tabs, some of them unique, some are the same for all tabs, such as Apply to the current selection button allowing the application of the current tab settings to the batch of images. Here again the batch oriented nature of Capture One is clearly visible.

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What I found quite useful and convenient, is a separate button for auto settings in each tab. The return to original settings is also assigned to a button.

Another very useful feature of Capture One interface are the two small previews reflecting the current state of the image and the “would be” view with applied settings you are choosing at the very moment. These evaluating previews are found in the White Balance tab, where they are used for finding a good white spot, and in an Exposure tab under Curves/Levels.

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Batch Processing

Capture One in its help file gives this warning right before Batch Processing Chapter: “An advice and warning: Do not enable this feature if you’re processing a large amount of images, as your computer may freeze up”. Honesty is best policy here. The Capture One converter is indeed unable to process large numbers of images. The large number, as I found out started from over 50 or something. Inconvenient for big collections.

{mosimage cw=150 align=left}Apart from that Capture One batch processing is very flexible. You can add files to the batch by simply clicking the thumbnail (and default setting will be applied), or do it after editing. You can process the image right away or add them to the batch without processing to do it later. Whatever you do the processing is performed in a background mode and does not interfere with the editing process. You can add to the batch as the conversion of other images goes on as well. Or remove unprocessed yet images.
{mosimage cw=150 align=right}The Batch Process tab will show you the progress of every image conversion together with the percentage of work load already done and estimated time.
The function is operated through a set of quite easily understandable and recognizable (once you get used to them) pictograms, as everywhere throughout the program.

File manager

The first step of working with any image is to open it from the place it’s stored in. Capture one provide standard interface for it: Folders tab, thumbnail panel and preview window. As in most similar image file browsers the size of any panel can be changed to best fir your needs. The thumbnail size and visibility/invisibility of exif information can be toggled with pictograms and arrows on the upper tab. The thumbnails can be tagged and untagged, sorted in a number of ways, and sent to trash (or restored from it).
The not so widely spread feature is the add annotation effect – you can add some additional information to your file, it’ll be kept with it.
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The clicked thumbnail will enable the preview of the image; it can be zoomed to any size.
A good thing Capture One allows is comparing of several images. Nice when you have a series of shots very similar to each other. I missed it in many of other programs. You can’t accurately judge the quality of the image by the thumbnail even of a big size and can often set the images next to each other only after conversion in some image editor. Here the choice of a better image can be made before conversion.

Uninstall, Support, and Conclusion

The program is unproblematically uninstalled from the computer with no files remaining after it.
The provided manual provides good guidance. But being in .pdf format it is a little old fashioned for me next to more spread now interactive helps.
Phase One has an online support forum on its site to compensate for it, may be.
The overall impression from the program is very good with quality of conversion being the main issue here But the interface is also both convenient and self intuitive. But all this best qualities are only good when you have the right camera model out of a considerably narrow list.
You can buy Capture One Pro at www.phaseone.com for $499 or download the trial version.

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