Capture One Pro Image Editing and Processing (Podcast 544)

by | Oct 10, 2016 | Podcast, Tutorial, Videos | 12 comments

This week’s podcast is a video tutorial, to walk you through my new image editing and processing workflow in Phase One’s Capture One Pro. I have been using Capture One Pro since July, and have absolutely fallen in love with it, to the point that I haven’t used Lightroom once since switching.

I have also not used Silver Efex Pro or Color Efex Pro at all, and I’m finding myself in Photoshop less often too. My biggest test was how comfortable I felt working on all of the images from my recent tours in Greenland and Iceland, but these were no hiccups at all. I have worked exclusively in Capture One Pro, from import to export and everything in between.

One thing that I was kind of surprised by, was just how little work I had to do on most of my images to get them to look how I wanted. I have never been a heavy image processor, but during my earlier tests, I was putting quite a lot of time into each image. In reality, most of the images that I worked on over the last few month were how I wanted them to look after tweaking just a few sliders.

On occasion, I dived in and did a little bit of work with Adjustment layers, and sometimes did extensive cloning and healing to remove unwanted features like lots of people in the shot, and none of this was difficult to achieve.

What’s really enhanced my Capture One Pro workflow, is the ability to customize Capture One Pro’s user interface and shortcut keys, literally putting everything that I need right at my fingertips. Because of this, I also spend some time in this video explaining some of these aspects, especially the custom shortcuts.

To make it easier to follow along, I’ve actually shared my shortcut customizations here along with a PDF to print them out for easy reference. If you haven’t customized your own shortcuts, you might want to give these a try. Come back to check the shortcuts page from time to time too, as I’ll continue to tweak my shortcuts and will update the page whenever I do. There is a link to the page in the PDF to make that easy to do.

So, here’s the video. It’s almost an hour long, so grab a coffee and a plate of cookies, and I hope you find it useful.

Here too is a link that will list all Capture One Pro tutorials that I release. With this video, we are currently at four, but this list will grow over time as I release more.

https://mbp.ac/cotutorials

Capture One Pro 10% Discount

Please note that due to changes in Phase One, the discount code that I mentioned in the Podcast is no longer valid. Do give Capture One Pro a try though. You can download it here and use it for 30 days before you make up your mind.


Show Notes

Download Capture One Pro to Try: https://mbp.ac/c1download

View all Capture One Pro Tutorials: https://mbp.ac/cotutorials

See details of future tours here: https://mbp.ac/workshops

Music by Martin Bailey


Audio

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12 Comments

  1. Paul Franklin

    Martin, when you want to show a comparison before and after, for example in the clarity or structure or whatever sliders, just click on the word “Structure” or whatever tool you want to show and it resets to “0” for as long as you hold the mouse over the word.
    Paul

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Aah, I see. Thanks Paul! That’s a great tip.

      Reply
  2. Bud James

    Martin,

    I’ve been a Lightroom users since the pre-public beta. When I moved from Canon Pro DSLRs to Fuji-X cameras three years ago, I was very disappointed with the RAW file conversion results that I was getting with LR. I tried CaptureOne Pro 8 (now 9.3) and was so impressed with my initial results, I switch to C1P.

    As a result of my personal journey with LR and now C1P, I found your recent podcast on your experiences very relevant and excellent. Please keep up the good work.

    We were just there for a family vacation in China and Japan last summer. It was my second visit to Japan and Kyoto and I loved it. Attending one of your photo workshops in Japan is on my list of things to do.

    Regards,
    Bud

    http://www.budjames.photography

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi Bud,

      That’s great to hear. It sounds like we had similar paths. I was pointed to a post recently that tries to show how Lightroom is better, but as much as I loved Lightroom and didn’t want to admit it, Capture One is simply better when it comes to image quality. Now that I’m used to working in Capture One Pro, I’d actually say that the interface is better in many ways too. I only miss a few things, and nothing critical. I’m really pleased that you are enjoying Capture One as well.

      I’m also pleased that you’ve enjoyed these posts. I’ll continue to keep them coming.

      That’s great that you were here in Japan recently. I’m sure you fully understand why I love it here. It would be great to see you on a future photo workshop.

      Cheers,
      Martin.

      Reply
  3. John Steadman

    Hello Martin.
    Thank you for showing your wonderful images to us, the colours in the landscapes are super and the areas look as if they have not been touched by man.
    Your video on Capture One processing is excellent and I need to watch it over again, and I look forward to any future videos on Capture One from you. I am sure they will help me in the transition from LRCC.
    Best Wishes.
    John.

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi John,

      You are very welcome. Thanks for looking! 🙂

      Many of the places that we visit in Iceland are relatively remote, but there are signs of man. I just mostly point my camera in the other direction. It’s often really just a well worn path though, or a patch of earth showing instead of moss at a popular viewpoint. Much better than it would be at places of such beauty in many other countries.

      I am currently working with Phase One to produce some small bite sized videos to show how I process single images. I’ll probably end up doing a few of these, and I’ll let people know when they are released. I’ve also go some other posts in mind too, so please stay tuned.

      Cheers,
      Martin.

      Reply
  4. Travis Belton

    Hi Martin,
    I’m a longtime Aperture user and when I switched from Canon to Sony a little while ago I also made the switch to C1P. It’s very Aperture-like, though I am having a heck of a time getting used to the keyboard shortcuts. So this video, plus your guide to setting your own keyboard shortcuts is very timely and appreciated!

    I’ve enjoyed listening to your podcasts for a long time (on my long work commute) and look forward to watching more videos on C1 processing techniques. So great of you to pass along your learnings.

    Best,
    Travis

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi Travis,

      That’s great that you found this useful.

      Thanks for listening, especially for so long! I’ll be providing more information on Capture One soon.

      Cheers,
      Martin.

      Reply
  5. scottwillard3

    hi martin,

    i am finding your transition to capture one very interesting.

    are you able to share your workspace? i like how you have things laid out, would be great to try it and tweak as needed.

    thanks

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi Scott,

      I’m pleased you are finding these posts interesting.

      I have added my workspaces to the bottom Shortcuts Download page here: https://mbp.ac/coshortcuts

      Please give these a try.

      Cheers,
      Martin.

      Reply
  6. Bradley Orner

    Hi Martin,

    Like you, I am a Canon shooter and have converted to Capture One Pro. I’ve been using it since version 7 on a 2011 Imac running El Capitan. I’ve been having a great deal of reliability and loading problems with since version 9 came out. I was hoping that version 10 would improve said reliability but it seems just as bad. Even small local Session catalogs can take forever to load, and about 1/3 of the time, C1 Pro will crash. I’ve had reluctantly had to go back to Lightroom, sadly. I really thing C1 is/was/should be far superior to LR, but can’t deal with the crashes. C1 support has not been very helpful.

    Just curious if you’ve had any loading or crashing experiences?

    thanks,
    Brad

    Reply
    • Martin Bailey

      Hi Brad,

      Sorry to hear you are having these problems. I am not seeing what you describe. If I was, I’d have stuck with Lightroom in the first place. I have not had a single crash as such, although I did find a critical issue in Capture One Pro recently, where all Adjustments become disabled if you batch rename files. This was frustrating, but the developers are now working on a fix, so all is good there.

      I’m curious, are your catalogs on the internal hard drive of your computer, or on an external hard drive? I tried running my catalogs on an external Thunderbolt 1 drive when I first jumped ship, but it wasn’t fast enough. I am now using an external SSD drive, and that launches fine, even over USB 3.0 on my iMac.

      My iMac is coming up to four years old, so not as old as yours but not a new machine either. Capture One Pro has slowed down some since I started to try a 4K display, but the load time of the catalog hasn’t changed. It’s the time it takes to update previews etc. and there are still no crashes.

      I could guess at other reasons for your issues, but if you’ve already worked with support without reaching a solution, it would probably be a waste of time. All I can say is that I’m not having issues.

      Regards,
      Martin.

      Reply

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