For a long time I have been unhappy with Lightroom. The subscription model doesn’t bother me too much, but the way Lightroom hogs your computers RAM and get’s incredibly slow with big catalogues frustrates me.
I’ve downloaded trial versions of Capture One in the past but have never actually bought a license. Recently Capture One released camera-specific licenses which brought the cost down a little bit. It was this release that made me finally take the plunge and purchase a license. I bought the Nikon only license because, well, that’s the brand of camera I have!
Capture One is slightly different from Lightroom in terms of layout and tools, but the great thing is you can completely customise your workspace which is great. Below are a few tips and tricks for making the transition smooth.
5 Top tips for transitioning to Capture One
1. The interface
The interface in Capture One is completely customisable from where the filmstrip sits to how your tool tabs are set up.
If you are moving over from Lightroom there is a pre-made workspace to make Capture One look as close to Lightroom as possible.
Almost all the tools in Capture One can be reorganised within the different tool tabs. You can even create your own tool tab with the tools you use the most.
2. Importing Lightroom catalogues
Capture One makes the transition from Lightroom even more straightforward by allowing you to import your Lightroom catalogues into Capture One. It will bring across your selections, as well as created collections.
This is a great option if you work with one large catalogue and want to bring across all your old previous work
3. Presets and styles
Just like Lightroom, Capture One also has presets, but instead they are called Styles. You can download pre-made styles as well as create your own styles and presets.
A preset in Capture One is a pre-defined set of adjustments for just one tool, where a style is pre-defined adjustments over multiple tools.
4. Layers
Layers in Capture One are similar to brushes and graduated filters in Lightroom. They do though work in a similar way to layers in Photoshop.
5. Colour Editor
The way you edit the hue and saturation of parts of an image are down through the colour balance tool panel.
Unlike Lightroom, Capture One’s colour balance tool is a bit more involved. The colour balance editor is split into three section, Basic, Advanced and Skin Tone. The Basic section is probably the closest to what you’re used to in Lightroom but it doesn’t qiuite look the same.
To make this tool look similar to Lightroom you can download a Colour Editor Preset which will change the Advanced panel to display the eight colour ranges like in Lightroom.
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