- Phaseone CaptureONE PRO 5.1 gets a 4/5 rating from me, but deducting a point for:
- Spot/Dust Tool “Clumsy”. Would like the ability to resample and pick a source similar to ACR. Keyboard control to increase/decrease the radius. Right-click delete instead of deleting it from the tool panel.
- Sharpening in Web Contact Sheet. An option to disable sharpening or impede the effective sharpening proportional to the size of images generated. Example: Sharpening full resolution images at 1000, 1.0, 0 looks great, but when applied to Web Contact Sheet, the images are over-sharpened and grotesque. The workaround is making any RAW edits sans sharpening, create Web Contact Sheet, and finally apply capture sharpening globally.
- Local adjustments or graduated filter. At version 5.1, C1 still lack a graduated filter.
- Entering metadata and IPTC feels clumsy. When adding keywords, I’d like a streamlined keyboard navigation control, e.g. pressing Tabs to automatically move to a new keyword field. In the current version, you have to manually click on the “+” every time a new IPTC keyword wants to be added. When importing files, I’d like to add relevant global metadata to the files being imported or being tethered into the computer via a saved preset, e.g. website, contact email, studio address, etc.
I *really* like their Advanced Noise Reduction. In addition to the noise reduction, this new feature can add fine grain look similar to the grain feature in Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta. I am on a Core i5 w/ 8 GB DDR3 and C1 5.1 has improved performance and image rendering on my dual 22″ monitor setup. Processing files for export improved significantly.
The list below is an excerpt from the CaptureOne PRO 5.1 Release Notes from their website. Visit the link above to read the full notes and download and try for yourself.
• New spot type ideal for removing imperfections in images.
• New advanced noise reduction tool.
• Multiline fields the metadata tool.
• New metadata fields including GPS information in the metadata tool.
• New advanced recipe options controlling what metadata are included in processed files.
• New preference determining how to handle conflicting metadata during load.
• New inverse color slice feature in the color editor.
• New preference to disable JPEG/TIFF editing.
• New auto and style selector items for the toolbar.
• New size options for the focus and process recipes tool.
• Aspect ratios available directly from the crop cursor tool.
• New welcome screen.
• New option for naming without appending numbers.
• Customizable toolbar on Windows (already on Mac).
• New Auto Pause option to determine how auto selection of images works during capture.
• New Importer option for setting when to select import folder or to notify upon completion.
• Capture One gains basic color editor, clarity tool, full metadata editing and predefined
workspaces.
Enhancements:
• Workspaces now including the toolbar configuration.
• Clarity tool now allowing negative clarity values useful for portrait work.
• Streamlined Edit All Selected replaces old Edit Primary feature.
• Sorting now including sort by process state and smarter sorting by name.
• Better performance when selecting a recent folder and doing freehand rotation of images.
• Generally improved interactive speed.
• Fixed issue with tethered capture on 64-bit versions of Windows if the computer has 4GB or
more installed memory.
• Improved colors for Phase One P65+ and P40+.
• EIP support for all supported RAW files types.
• A number of other enhancements and bug fixes.
SUMMARY
Even though I have minor dissatisfactions, the new and improved features of 5.1 make my complaints insignificant and trivial. None the less, my feature requests are simple and basic–should be native to the software by now at version 5.1.
If you’re new photographer thinking about a RAW workflow software, I STILL recommend C1 like there is no tomorrow! You load your RAW into ACR with default settings and do the same in C1. You’ll see that C1 renders your image better than ACR and it looks great right off the bat.
Reprocessed w/ C1 5.1 PRO. Used Adv. NR. Used Spot Tool to remove blemishes and exported into PS CS4 for final retouching. I am VERY satisfied with the 5.1 updates.
She’ll soon enter her 3rd year full of exploratory rotations and on-calls.
