Capture One Beta 2

Earlier today Phase One posted a Beta 2 (October 30). Beta 1 did not run on my machine (AMD XP2 6000+), same as it didn't run on many others. This time it does install and run. I'm amazed at how much RAM it nails down (around 500 meg, not even counting VM), but I guess this is normal for most applications of this type these days. Lightroom is similiarly hungry, but seems to give it back once it has processed the folder/catalog update.

Having become frustrated waiting for a workable beta to appear, I ended up giving Lightroom a much more serious look, being one of the Pixmantec licensee holders that got transferred in THAT acquisition, but this another story which sort of dovetails into the new Microsoft-Phase One agreement.

Mike

Hi Mike;
Thanks for the heads-up. I've been a Capture One Pro (Mac) licensee for approximately three years. Much as I tried during that time I could never warm-up to the product. I know that some folks loved it but it always felt like an awkward user interface and flow model to me. That core "session" model, in particular, just didn't work for me. So the product has sat idle on my computer for years.

Enter version 4. I gave the first beta a look. It seems that Phase One has adopted a more open model and abandoned that goofy "session" mold. They also seem to have adopted a slightly more up-to-date and familiar user interface. But I just didn't see anything there that I don't already have, often more robustly, in my Lightroom/ACR/PSCS3 suite. I also don't see anything resembling a DAM which has become essential to me. It was also an unpleasant discovery to see that the new C1 had pooped its cache files all over my disk. Ewww!

So I'm afraid that my expenditure on a C1 license will have to remain wasted. But I'm sure that many devotees may find it an attractive update.

I second your feelings Ken. I have not yet got glued to Phase One and now with Microsoft being the Grandmother in the Woods, I am not planning to stay for dinner!

Asher

I've tried them all except Lightroom and imo C1 was and still is the best both with regards to IQ and with regards to usability. The beta introduces all the features on my wish list (including "scattering" the previews) but was a slight step backwards with navigation with tiny little icons. Haven't dl'd beta2 yet but will this weekend.

But I'm not excited about the MS link either - they tend to kill things off. The statistics server I've used for nearly 10 years was bought by MS and they promptly killed it off.

- DL

I've been using C1 happily for several years — really wouldn't want to shoot without it. Ken I think the secret is maybe that I never figured out how or why to use "sessions," so I didn't. ;-)

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

See? Don and Nill prove that old chestnut about meats and poisons.

Seriously, though, I believe that the key to any such product's "fit" is predominantly how it fits to what you need and what bias paradigms you bring to the experience. People are pretty adaptable -- once.

C1-Pro isn't quite the ancestor of Beta 4.2

I earned a 5-upgrade license to C1 Pro some years ago by helping them to knock the rough edges off the profiles for the Olympus E-1. Its operating model of pushing the processing into the background as a steady flow of work makes sense to me, while PS and LR have seemed to batch me rather than batch the work, but that may just be my laziness, not to have learned them better. The ICC profiles that C1 uses just seem to have more capability and offer more choices than ACR's model.

C1 Beta 4 is actually C1 LE with some of the nice features that only Pro used to have, like resizing and arbitrary rotations. I also was aghast to find the side car files and unerased preview caches in each raw file directory, (raw shooter did something like this, but at least cleaned up its preview cache). But C1b4 seems to use very much smaller files for its previews, so perhaps this simply makes archiving a bit easier.

With the competition from Raw Shooter, ACR and Lightroom, Phase One has not actually required me to use any of my upgrades, so I am looking forward to both the released version of 4.0LE and the Pro4.0 which I would expect to see next spring.

scott

I've been a Capture One Pro user since V1 on the Mac. I regret very much that their development has been lagging because I find the workflow congenial and am comfortable with it. I'm particularly at ease with the quality of the files that its conversions can give, although I would hope that they enhance considerably their tonal and color correction tools, as they are way behind Lightroom/ACR 4.1. The new v4 beta while appearing to hold some promise (and showing that the development team is responsive to user input) still leaves me ill at ease in regard to the features that C1 Pro will ultimately have. I'm uncertain that they will have been able to catch up to other conversion programs, but I would love it if they proved me wrong. For the moment, I'm using the beta on occasion and trying to provide some useful input. Like a previous poster, I'm entitled to 5 upgrades, and have been for more than 3 years, but am concerned that I won't live long enough to see them at the current rate of development.