Lightroom Classic vs Capture One, 2024 Update Battle

Thank you for the excellent summary.

I love the ability to reduce the output size of an image in export and add my own recipe. Even better, export different sizes of the same image simultaneously avoiding going back and forth.

Decent review, aren't these app so frustrating sometimes 😂

as I moved my whole library (70k pictures) capture one have forgot all the masks on adjustment layer. So every bit of cloning and healing has to be done ones again... horror. do somebody have any idea how to rectify the problem?

Capture One's problem is its name, it sounds like a studio based photography application, not a powerful at home / studio based image editing software.
I have just moved to Capture One due to Adobe's incessant use of rental economy! Bit of getting used to but it looks good!

Great summary! Will be great to hear what you think about the new C1 Beta and see if it over comes any of the gaps mentioned here (especially with the masking)

Thanks for keeping this review honest.

Selective logic on the LR tethering and export dings. Those have been around for many moons. I’m also baffled by the lack of professional tethering support but the AI features are the way of the future and Adobe continues to enhance and roll out features that amaze me. I also love C1 for its color qualities which are wow. They are both great tools that continue to have room to grow.

Happy to see C1 updated the thing with the subject/background selection when you copy-paste settings from other photo.

like and subscribed. Full support

i find style in capture one compared to preset of lightroom quite inferior, thats one feature which is tempting me to switch back to LR

Those who claim C1 is better with skin tones... just don't use Nikon, right ? I use Nikon cameras and the reddish cast is just horrible on skin tones, whatever the profile used. I always have to tame it and, with a mural selection on the lips, get their colors back. Painful and time consuming. It's just like if C1 doesn't separate magenta and orange from red, they all mix in a same global red cast. So... I just use C1 for tethered jobs, and develop all my portraits in LR later. What a waste of time.

I use both Capture One Pro and Lightroom Classic, but for different use cases. Lightroom Classic is better suited for drone images, especially for individual images of 360x180° spherical panoramas (sky vs. ground masking and synchronizing adjustment settings for each mask). However, Capture One Pro is superior in almost all other use cases. In addition, the user experience with a fully customizable interface (modules) is much better.

My real question is about presets. Can capture one use lightroom presets? If it does I can finally stop pirating Lightroom once and for all.

"In Capture One 16.3.4, you can copy unchanged Subject Mask and Background Mask Layers to other images, and Capture One will automatically re-calculate what the subject or background is."

HORIBLE EDIT IN CAPTURE ONE PHOTO!!!!! WTF IS THAT?? WHITE BALANCE IS INCORRECT

Maybe it’s just me but the spot removal tool in Capture One is inferior to Light Room Classic

Why would anyone compares Light room with Capture one? Do you compare BWM vs Kia? too many crack heads

Love the intro!

Hmm, you're saying they don't give you multiple masks on the same layer, but they do give you layers. Sooooooooo....have one mask per each layer? That doesn't seem ridiculous to me, just a design choice.

Comparing with differennt photos... Why?!

❤❤❤🎉🎉

The raw rendering is better in C1, especially in skin colors. With C1 I get good flesh tone easily, whereas in LR I go to the cmyk curves and adjust the colors.

Good video; I subscribed to your channel. However, while the AI masking in Lightroom Classic works very well in general and when creating a mask underneath a mask, the same can be achieved in capturing one, too. You need to create a new adjustment layer and do whatever you want by choosing one of the possibilities: linear-gradient, circular gradient, AI, etc. If you need one more re-touching, add another adjustment layer. The previous masks won't be affected, and the effect will add up. (although a good photo shouldn't need any -or almost any - post-editing, as we all know).
I prefer to capture one for the workflow, the compact interface, which is easy to navigate, organizing photos, and the metadata editing panel (I don't do any tethering, being just an amateur photographer).

What do you think about "Photo Grade"? Excellent video btw....

Tether in Lightroom I think is a problem on Mac overall, I have tested on a M1 Pro 14 inch MacBook Pro and a 2019 16 inch MacBook Pro with both Nikon and Canon and for the most part they won't work, but as soon as I try on a Windows Laptop the cameras connect right away.

I've tried both apps in the past few days, and AI noise removing in Lightroom blows my mind, way better than Capture One in my opinion.

I'm shooting a Canon R3 and R5 and I'm so frustrated with the reliability of their tethering in lightroom (sometimes it works, sometimes it works for a while, sometimes not at all, sometimes the work around works and sometimes not even that. It practically requires a designated half-hour before the shoot feeling the pressure hoping that tethering will work and stay working all the way through the shoot). I'm trying to learn the library and sorting system on capture one simply to have a reliable solution for my corporate headshot work. I've wasted SO MUCH time trying to solve tethering on Lightroom. Get your act together Adobe!
Ps, thank you for this video.

Number 1 thing Lightroom should do immediately that's so embarrassing that it doesn't exist, is to let us use the whole functionality when creating a mask. Why don't I have access to all the tools when editing a mask??? Are you even serious?

Adobe’s lack of tethering support is ABYSMAL. NO excuse

This needs a revisit now that capture one will copy ai masks without having to make a preset

Dude, get over yourself, software, like any other thing is an evolving process. No kuddos to you either for this BS video. This doesn't qualify as "comparison" video, more of a "you don't like LR" video. And that's OK, but don't try to make us think this is a comparison video. I use both of these, in addition to ON1 and they are all pretty fast. As far as tethering, I don't see ANY difference in speed between LR and C1. I guess you must have a crappy machine, but anywho, to each their own opinion.

With c1 subject mask both images need to be selected, (have edit all selected, I had to input on the customization quick tab), then click subject, and use the quick keybinds, it will apply to both images. Or you can fully edit one image with background + subject, then just create a preset style. If a group of images are very similar, I've cut down the time editing images by 80%. I do have a folder of my presets of Subject + background commands.

I wish there were more real competitors for LR. LR is just really good at a lot of area's (specially speed), but is in a desperate need of UI updates like the rest of the Adobe software has.

I'm just working with both, evaluating which one I'll stay with. I like the way C1 renders the RAWs (I'm Sony and Fuji user), default processing brings les noisy and more detailed outcome from C1. On the other hand, LR , together with Photoshop makes a good work and BTW good deal, compared to the cost of C1. AI denoising in LR works great...but stil the picture processing I find better in C1. The biggest downside of C1, for me as Mac user, is how slow it works compared to LR. Looks like C1 is not utilising correctly the potential of new Apple hardware, you can see it immediately playing with the sliders. LR is like light speed compared to C1. All in all, I don't know which one to choose for the future :)

Thanks for this. Great info, always looking for LR alternatives.

Smart Styles in Capture One allows you to batch edit as many people images as you want, correcting light and color balance in all kind of different lighting conditions. And you can, contrary to what you say, have a different mask in every layer.

I used a Sony camera recently and wished lrc accepted arw files

Linear profile looks better in C1. Export tool is way better in C1. Levels is an amazing tool LR lacks of. Raw rendition in C1 is better than LR's. Separate modules is great in C1. Integrates awfully with some third party plugins. Styles with masks in a separate layer is great.

LR has way better mask options. LR renders quicker than C1. Color rendition difference has been highly reduced between both. The cost of Lr subscription with PS is way cheaper than C1's.

So, I’m hoping you or your followers can answer this. Why can’t I tether my camera?

I’m using Capture One Pro and it keeps on crashing when I plug my camera in. I was able to tether with MacBook Pro M2 pro but when I downgraded to MacBook Pro M3 pro, my camera cannot even be recognize by CP1

I’ve used capture one a little over the years but have used Lightroom from its beginning. Got tired of adobe subscription even though my company pays for it but it doesn’t on my Mac, I use windows and Mac. Black Friday I saw capture one for half price, I tried the trial for 2 days , imported 120000 photos from Lightroom catalogue. Just love it, it’s faster the interface and controls all make sense. Once you find out how things work it’s so fast to use. And the help menu is the best in any program I’ve used. The new AI works well not quite Lightroom standard but good enough.
Great purchase will never go back to Lightroom .

Bit of a major goof not knowing about C1 custom styles and AI mask generation.

The bundle of Photoshop, Lightroom and Adobe Raw is hard to resist at such a reasonable price, when combined the options are about limitless. The complaints about the file system are issues I have zero concern over, maybe it is my workflow just fits their system. As a result I would expect the Photographers bundle to be the most popular package and most supported for add-ins. When processing a session with a lot of files in the same lighting formula, making detailed edits with the masking options on one file it is very effective to have the same masking applied to all the files, even with very different poses and positions in the frame. Twice a month I shoot an actor master class for experienced stage actors who want to transition to cinema, over 2 or 3 days and part of it is lots of stills of each plus videos of 1-2 minutes of dialog. with 60 actors that can result in 6000 files to be done, so the new masking tools using AI makes it a snap. Nothing else out their can save so much time and be so effective and when judged by cost, it is hard to not have the Adobe Bundle. Much of my work is studio sessions for casting directors, or for the 12 different ballet theaters in my city, or 9 opera houses, and actor/model portfolios. I shoot a lot of live theater, 278 drama theaters within walking distance of my city center home.

I am maybe misunderstanding the problem, but you can use cmd+left click to select multiple images and then run the subject or background AI on those multiple images at the same time. And, as mentioned already you can combine this with a style to apply editing plus AI subject selection across multiple images.

CapOne needs to lower its price to be more competitive. No geotagging either this is a must. When Adobe added the AI masking features I left CapOne and have not returned. The point color is a welcome addition although not as flexible as CapOne. And I agree all editing features should be available in masking mode.

i switched back to lightroom classic after using capture one for a couple of years because of the ai masking. I miss the cop wireless tether and sessions and brightness slider, and now their ai selection is tempting me back. So thanks for this video. I think I'll just stick with lightroom for awhile since I pay for it anyway with my photoshop subscription. I can do wireless tethering with the sony imaging edge app but it takes some fiddling to get it going.

Thank you for the video. For me it would've been more useful to use the same images in both applications to see how well the masks working and how the end results differ in kind of sharpness and colors...

Thanks for the comparison, agree C1 is still early release and will for sure get more functionalities later on. You can btw sync edit using AI mask on several images by saving it as a style and applying the style to the other images it will re-calculate the AI mask and apply the edits ...