Capture One Users

[TurtleCat]

i don’t know if you all vote on the feature recommendations or not but you’ll get comments from the developers at times. They finally commented on whether they will improve the noise reduction and sharpening to the levels of their competitors. The answer is no. It’s on their radar but not likely for quite some time. https://captureone.ideas.aha.io/ideas/FR-I-951

I have a card that came with my Z8 for a free version but I’m just not able to shake the thought that my needs are moving in a different direction from the software. I used LR for years even with subscription. They finally improved it. Maybe I have to admit defeat and go back?

 

[Captain Spaulding]

Understandable. I’ve found that PureRaw fills most of that gap. But, YMMV.

 

[apanella]

A tool set that works fairly well....
C1 for photo editing; Helicon for Stacking; NIK Dfine (any version, but I use v7) for fire and forget NR; Affinity just in case there is a need for frequency separation.

Per previous recommendation, Paul Reiffer is a great reference with his live editing sessions.

Thinking more about NR only 90%+ of what I experience doesn't need anything better than C1. For me, contributing factors seem to include:
*Maybe I am not as picky?
*I tend to favor reducing DOF*** over increasing ISO, so I don't see ISO12800 or higher that often.
*I tend to _not_ rely on digital cropping***. Admittedly, a lot of downsides with this approach. Certainly, trickier with BIFs and other things that move. Basically, the more I crop, the more I worry about noise.

*Selective masking to tailor NR to specific areas, sometimes combined with a global NR, can yield interesting improvements. Note: C1 selective masking options are very good.
*If things go really bad, the files from my gear respond very well using Dfine
*I stick with a 14-bit or better math pipeline (The choice of C1 is specifically to maintain the pipeline). 14-bit files have greater margin when it comes to the NR math when compared to an 8-bit starting point.
* All though I do not know how to quantify this statement, it seems less-aggressive NR algorithms which seems more pleasing to my eye. But maybe that is just personal confirmation bias. YMMV.


*** Important consideration: Avoiding cropping and reducing DOF stresses the budget for (long and/or fast) glass and places higher demands on (as Steve calls) field craft. Admittedly, an artifact-free software would be much easier (and definitely cheaper).