If you’re into photography, chances you are using Lightroom for a better part of your photography workflow. Professionally I’ve been tied to Adobe range of products throughout my career so consequently, when I started playing with photography ACR and Lightroom were obvious choices. Without the doubt, Adobe is the market leader, a choice of most professionals in the world and until recently I haven’t questioned my loyalty to Adobe and Lightroom. However, my troubles with Adobe started not because of the quality of their software but with really strange sales policy for those unlucky ones born outside the US.

Borders

You would think that in the time of true globalisation, internet and credit cards that it would be easy to get the software you need. Nope, it seems that Adobe’s cloud does not reach outside some pretty conservative borders. Adobe is not a sole example in this. Popular companies Apple and Google have similar policies. In reality, this means that if you live in the US you pay one price, other if you live in approved countries and you can’t even buy if you, for example, live in Serbia. This is not very cloud-like behaviour and I don’t see a common sense in having different pricing for software that is globally distributed via the Internet and even more preventing anyone from buying it. You can’t even change the country of your Adobe ID without a hassle.

Adobe is not alone

Faced with the inability to use Lightroom any more, even though my entire photo library is managed with it I started thinking about other software that is out there. My first thought was trying out Apple’s Aperture which is pretty much affordable alternative but I like to try the software before I buy. With Aperture, you can’t! OK… any other? So I’ve watched Joey L’s Creative Live Workshop and he’s been using Capture One Pro 7 by Phase One. From what I could see it was good software, a bit buggy but awesome in skin tone rendering and sharpness, great for tethered capture.

I’ve decided to give it a go and use their 60 days trial and it’s been a couple of days since I have been testing it with various old and new shots. While the interface style (to me) looks a bit outdated logical to use and very flexible. I’ve never really liked how Lightroom splits the workflow into modules. It’s also much faster on my latest Macbook Pro 17″ which makes reviewing and editing easy and snappy. Last and most important from what I can see it is great in rendering portraits.

Capture One Pro Quality

I will soon try to back up this text with some examples. But by default, it renders RAW photos much nicer then Lightroom with putting some effort and time into it. Even after some fiddling with Lightroom sliders, I couldn’t achieve such nice skin rendering with the level of details I got with Capture One. I can’t say for certain it is really true but my first impression was that my photos were taken by a different better camera.

I will continue to evaluate both… but the best part about it I’ll be able to easily buy the software without unnecessary BS and at the moment for a very good price of 160 EUR.

What do you think?

I know that comparing software or hardware is tricky and a source of countless flame wars but I would really love to hear your experiences with RAW converters. Do you see the difference and is it worth crossing over? I’ll be happy to discuss.