Phase one capture one Pro 11
Lightroom has an arch rival. Said rival may not be a budget option, but it is very, very good £289/$299, or from £18/$23 month on subscription
Capture One was originally a tethered capture and editing tool for Phase One’s medium format cameras. However, it’s long since evolved into a much more powerful and broad-based standalone tool that does almost exactly the same job as Lightroom.
Like Lightroom, Capture One Pro offers a database-powered image catalog with powerful organizational and searching tools. You can browse your images by folder and group them together in Collections (or Smart Collections based on search criteria). But Capture One Pro also offers a ‘Sessions’ workflow designed specifically for tethered studio photography but also very well adapted for culling, rating, editing and exporting images from a shoot.
There are differences in the editing tools. Capture One Pro works in a single window rather than in Lightroom-style ‘modules’ and has a highly customizable set of ‘tool tabs’. One of the key differences is its layers-based local adjustment system which makes it much easier to see and edit your changes to your work.
Performance
Not all Raw converters are the same, and Capture One Pro is one of three which stand above the rest – the others are Lightroom/adobe Camera Raw and DXO Photolab.
Capture One’s conversions are smooth and very sharp, and its tone and colour controls make it easy to get the best from your Raw files. It does actually come with preset ‘Styles’ but Phaseone also sells Style packs as add-ons, just in case you want more. You can make manual adjustments and save your own Styles for later use too.
Its camera support is not as wide as Adobe’s and it doesn’t have as many lens correction profiles, but its tools and its results are superb enough to carry it further.