Capture One Prois software specifically dedicated to handling and editing raw images, with emphasis on raw workflow. (This review is based on the current version 3.7.1)

Please note: I limited the scope of this review to raw workflow, and don’t touch on important functions like shooting with a tethered D-SLR, or on using the Phase One camera back.
For a complete list of Capture One’s features and functions, check the Phase One website.

First off, to give you an idea of what Capture One looks on a PC:

The application’s main window is divided into 4 sections:
- Menu & Toolbars
- Thumbnail window, which displays the info about your images, and is used to select images.
- Preview Window, where the selected image(s) is displayed and updated in real time.
- Functional tabs

There are five Function tabs, which correspond to the main stages of the raw workflow:
- Capture
- White Balance
- Exposure
- Focus (where sharpening can be checked)
- Process (where the images are finally processed as tiffs or jpgs)

As I mentioned, the images are displayed and updated in real time in the Preview Window.
This is one of the most important and impressive aspects of Capture One - changes made to the images (whether WB or exposure or sharpening) is displayed near instantly. This program is a speed demon. If you’ve been editing your raw files with an application like Nikon Editor up until now, then you’re in for a sweet surprise.

And yes, you can size the thumbnails as you wish, and also re-size the thumbnail window.

The file browser is called up via an icon from the Thumbnail window and appears below the thumbnails, as shown in this screen-grab. It makes navigation as easily accessible as it needs to be for an efficient workflow.

My first impression was that Capture One Pro didn’t look like ’standard’ Windows-based software.
The were fewer menus, and there were more icons spread around the screen.

Also, right-clicking did nothing in most instances. I’ve become so accustomed to Windows-based programs where right-clicking on anything shows the relevant options, that I felt initially lost when Capture One didn’t do the same.

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But how does Capture One perform in action, you may well ask.

Immediately impressive things:

 -  the focus tab, where you can near-instantly see a 100% selection of where your cursor is pointing. Invaluable for a quick check for sharpness, especially for the eyes of your subjects in portraits.

This is also the area where you can preview your sharpening settings and how it would affect the overall image, but also offering you the opportunity to view in detail how your settings affect the image.

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 -  highlight check can be easily toggled on and off.
This is invaluable in determining if your exposure is off. In the example photos, the red areas where detail show where detail would be lost. (And yes, I do realise that in this image, the overbright sky shouldn’t determine my overall exposure. I simply chose this image as illustration as to how it looks.) The threshold values at which the warning shows, can be changed to suit your needs.

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 -  by right-clicking on the main image, you get an enlarged circle which you can slide over the image to give you a detailed portion. This tool makes it easier to correct WB or check for over-exposure, since you you see the RGB values of any area you enlarge as you move your pointer around.

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 -  the process window gives you the estimated time it will take to finish a batch, and a percentage indication of how far the batch processing has gone.
The two main windows that you’ll be using to edit RAW files will be Exposure, and White Balance.
That’s why it’s a pity that you have to hit tabs to move between these two screens, for every image. It’s poor ergonomic design. You could use the short-cut keys (F3 and F4, or Alt-C and Cntl-E) to move between the tabs as you edit sequences of images, but ideally I would’ve preferred these controls available on a single palette.

That said, the controls for Exposure and White Balance are plentiful, and easy to understand.
Here’s what the White Balance tab looks like, with the drop-down menu to show the options.
The colour wheel is an excellent tool as well, for fine-tuning white balance / colour balance.
(Of course, you have calibrated your monitor !?)

For WB correction, you have an eye-dropper tool, as well as two small panes where the white balance is compared as a kind of before and after, to see what the WB would be like if you chose that specific area. (They are obscured in the screen capture below, but can be seen in the previous screen capture.)

An interesting feature of Capture One, is where different film curves can be applied, giving you options as to whether you want to favour high-light or shadow detail.

Contrast and Saturation are also changed within the Exposure tab.

 

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Nikon D2x - White Balance encryption       [update with new info : Dec '05]Nikon D2x users - you’ll be happy to know that Capture One is now able to read the WB settings for the D2x. Nikon finally relented on the counter-productive issue of WB encryption.

      [I'm leaving the original text here in the next paragraph, to show how Capture One
       previously dealt with the WB encryption of the D2x.]

D2x users - how WB encryption affects you with Capture One :
- Capture One recognizes all of the Preset White Balance settings, and does an excellent job emulating them.
- If you chose an Auto WBsetting on your D2x, then Capture One will perform an Auto WB on the actual image as you are pre-viewing it. With only a cursory check on this, it seemed to perform as well as any Auto WB would. (I’m personally not fond of using Auto WB, since this works against getting consistency between images in any sequence. It’s also the reason I shoot in Manual Exposure mode 99% of the time, but that’s another topic again.)
- It is only with Custom WB settings that Capture One (at this point) can’t read what the D2x has set for WB. Personally, this isn’t a big issue for me, because … I’m shooting in raw, and adjusting the WB in post-processing is a breeze.
- Here is Phase One’s original response regarding WB encryption: Nikon D2x WB support.

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Random operational notes: Being my usual paranoid self, I initially had Capture One set to save my images frequently.
Such as whenever I changed a collection (ie, clicked out of the folder). This made moving files within Capture One very slow, since it would now want to save edit settings for all the files within that collection / folder, before allowing you to move them over to another collection / folder.Therefore, to work faster, I set Capture One to save every half an hour, and whenever I closed the program.

If Capture One runs a batch, it slows down the refreshing of thumbnails considerably.
So it is always better to allow Capture One the time to generate thumbnails, and then work on the files you need to adjust. There is a blue dot that shows which images still need thumbnails to be properly generated, and there is a counter at the bottom of the screen to tell you how far it has progressed. No guessing needed.

Capture One generates work files and preview files of the images that you view and edit. The preview files can be periodically deleted since they do progressively take up more and more space. However, the work files which contain your edit info, are very small in size. All the changes you make to an image are saved to these separate work file. These can be saved in a archivefolder of our choice - eg. with the images that you archive on a DVD or another hard disc. This was an aspect of Capture One that I really liked, and is an easy way to make back-ups of your edits, along with the original raw images.

A nice feature (but an expected one), is that Tool Tips show up when you hover your mouse pointer over a Tool. Actually, this is a necessary feature in a software program that has more tool icons than menu selections.

Right-clicking on an image gives you a number of options, including annotations and meta-data.

As expected, Capture One can run multiple batch processes to multiple destinations (with different settings.)

Another important feature of Capture One Pro that would benefit the high-volume photographer, is QuickProof.  This would enable you to generate lower-res images to be used for proofing (and small enlargements) at a fraction of the time it would take to generate a high-res jpg or tiff file. For thousands of images processed every week, the time saving could be considerable.

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negatives:

  -  The user interface is non-standard, and takes a bit of time getting used to.
For example, as I mentioned previously, right-clicking won’t get you anywhere.- some of the icons jump around between tabs. Very annoying.
Example: the ‘Apply settings’ icon changes position between the Exposure menu and the White Balance menu. Since you can apply Exposure and / or WB settings to other images from either window, it becomes distracting to not be able to move your cursor automatically to a specific point already. Instead, you have to momentarily look for it.

 -  I had Capture One crash on me whenever I tried to close an open folder (delete a collection) with a huge number of images - 1700 in this case. I had to find a work-around, by closing C1, and renaming the folder with the images as something else, and then creating an empty folder with the same names as which I wanted to close the collection in C1.

 -  When converting to a B&W image via the ‘Generic Gray Scale’ in the Process tab, I get a decent enough monochromatic image - though most images will need some work to punch up the contrast a bit. But what is strange, is that Capture One then doesn’t see that image if you use the explorer window to browse for it.  You can see other JPGs - but not the B&W jpgs created with the  ‘Generic Gray Scale’ profile.

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Final verdict:
Despite the few negatives mentioned, I have to say that I LOVE this program!
If you’re a D2x raw shooter, then I can’t recommend this program highly enough. For anyone else that is shooting in raw, this program needs some serious consideration. And if you’ve been slogging with the turtle-like Nikon Capture, then Capture One might just be the answer to all your prayers.There are a few hiccups and oddities with this program - as I guess most pieces of software has - but this barely detracts from the impressive functionality of Capture One.
It is fast, efficient and does a stellar job as a professional tool.

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Support:
Support comes in an impressive number of flavours.
- the most obvious one, the Help function as part of the software.
- a downloadable pdf file from the Phase One website
- online tutorials in the form of movie clips
- an online forum where users can ask questions and have them answered by the staff and other experts. I like this in that it gives other users the chance to look for answers and options without having to ask everything one on one from support staff.
- and as a last resort, you could contact support directly.

For a complete list of Capture One’s features and functions, check the Phase One website.