Capture One Pro

[Barmaglot]

I just got a shiny new Sony a6700 and realized that my old free Capture One Express 11 for Sony can't process its RAWs. Phase One is offering a perpetual license for Capture One Pro at 60% off, for a total of $128. Anybody here using it? What does it offer for that money over free/open-source alternatives such as darktable, Raw Therapee, etc? I don't really need much besides tweaking levels and colors, sharpening, rotating and cropping, although some tools to reduce the occasional backscatter would be nice, along with intelligent masking for editing blackwater photos.

[TimG]

….. 12 months of LR……

[Chris Ross]

9 hours ago, Barmaglot said:

I just got a shiny new Sony a6700 and realized that my old free Capture One Express 11 for Sony can't process its RAWs. Phase One is offering a perpetual license for Capture One Pro at 60% off, for a total of $128. Anybody here using it? What does it offer for that money over free/open-source alternatives such as darktable, Raw Therapee, etc? I don't really need much besides tweaking levels and colors, sharpening, rotating and cropping, although some tools to reduce the occasional backscatter would be nice, along with intelligent masking for editing blackwater photos.

I use Capture One - a big bonus for me is that includes Levels - to me that is invaluable, to get a punchy, contrasty photo you need to get the histogram under control and the levels tool also allows very quick colour balance adjustments -  by adjusting levels on each channel, something that LR still doesn't have as far as I know. 

 

Backscatter removal tools I find are best in full photoshop they are not so intuitive to use in LR or Capture One, same with masking.  Though I just tried the healing mask in Capture One and it seems to be pretty quick to deal with backscatter.