FIRST EXPOSURE
WHAT WE LIKED
I have never felt the need to
keyword my assignments and I now regret
that I never started for my personal work.
But if you are so inclined to add keywords,
Capture One has the tools you need and
they work well. As for the other features
and enhancements in version 9, they have
been thoroughly tested by Phase One and
the Capture One beta testers. Everything
works without a hitch and they all serve
to further enhance an excellent image-processing program.
WHAT WE DIDN’T LIKE
For all of the keyword
enhancements made by Phase One,
you cannot add keywords on import.
The highlights slider in the exposure
tool only allows for highlight recovery,
not for highlight increase. And the spot
removal tool often isn’t large enough to
use effectively at any magnification other
than 100 percent, which means a lot of
zooming in and out or panning around
with today’s large image files. Also there
is no control over the feather of the tool,
or any provision to change the source of
the fill for the spot if you don’t like the
source Capture One chooses.
HOW IT COMPARES
Lacking the browsing ability of
Adobe Bridge, you must import images
to the program before you can work
on them (just like Lightroom). Once
imported, you have all of the tools (and
then some) available for processing
single images or batch processing sets
of similar images that you would find
in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.
The tools look different, sometimes have
different names, and initially take some
time to understand and even find. But
ultimately what matters is the quality of
the final image you are able to create.
And in my testing through the years and
with version 9 on Nikon RAW files and a
few sent from my Canon friends, Capture
One delivers a better TIFF or JPEG final
output than any image processor other
than Nikon’s difficult-to-use Capture
NX-D software.
Stan Sholik is a commercial/advertising
photographer in Santa Ana, CA, specializing
in still-life and macro photography.
PHOTO CONTEST!
Entry Fee: $30/single or series PHOTO+ members receive 30% off entry fees! THREE GRAND-PRIZE WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
$1,000 cash prize
• A PHOTO+ Basic Membership, which includes a WPPI Full Platform Pass and access to The University for School and Sports Photographers • A $100 gift card from a major photo retailer All winning images will be featured on Rangefinderonline.com and in the April issue of Rangefinder magazine. Extended Deadline: 2/12/16
PHOTO © NICK HUFFORD
