Capture One licensing
I am certain others will have posted on this subject already. However now Capture One have released a free Express version for Nikon myself and a few others have taken a closer look. The interface is rather obscure and esoteric but its functionality is coming to me (slowly). There is still a towering elephant in the room. The licencing.
Let me be clear here, Capture One is not cheap and in an age where both cheaper alternatives are available and software generally has become much much cheaper, Capture One and its licence policy is rather an anachronism.
In my household both my wife and I are enthusiast photographers, indeed we have presented our work to other photographic clubs. We both have a powerful desktop PC as well as a laptop and a tablet each. Yes a purchased Capture One licence is 'user' based and allows 2 installs. But are we expected to buy at least 2 licences and maybe many more?
It just is not going to happen and talking to many other photographers they are of the same mind and opinion. Capture One will continue to be niche software with low take up and the subscription model is a non-starter for most.
Take a look at Affinity and see what can be had for £50 and then get your marketing guys and business modellers to see if Capture Ones licensing models will be sustainable? Unfortunately I doubt it.
When my wife and I present our work we get more questions about paper used but secondly we get asked about how and in what software we processed it? Capture One will take off when the word gets out and it is getting used more but that is not happening. I know only 1 photographer of literally hundreds who uses Capture One and to be honest he is not that good (yet) so is not an ideal model.
The pricing is far too high and the licencing too restrictive to buy the software.
Have I made my point?
So my feature request is simple, get it to the masses and see it take off. Reduce the price, increase the licence seat numbers. Learn from Skylum and the like.
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Well, did you go to Affinity & Skylum and asked them to reduce the price too because RawTherapee is free or because camera-specific models of C1 are free ? just curious ...
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No, I own Affinity and Luminar. I also have RawTherapee, DarkTable as well as LightZone, Gimp, etc etc. I was an IT Tutor and Senior Software Engineer for 25 years so have a keen interest in software so am fully loaded. I also beta test for many video and photographic plugin companies but cannot name those due to NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) which I honour and am bound by law.
Skylum and Luminar have both priced their software sensibly, RawTherapee is a work in progress, GIMP has never taken off (mainstream) as the interface is appalling, something they are addressing now so watch that space.
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I dont want to upset any Capture One Fanboys so dont get upset, its just business.........
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Ian D,
You maybe already know that this is a User to User forum primarily.
If so, in part, you are preaching to the choir and in part you are, possibly, offending people by referring to them as "fanboys".
I am slightly surprised that with all of your experience - and I note you have LightZone - that you find the C1 interface "rather obscure". Presumably you also, after 25 years, know the history of LightZone from when it was a commercial offering.
FWIW I never got to grips with Photoshop (yes, I know, an entirely different product as it is not a RAW converter) .
For much the same reasons I find Affinity to be somewhat un-natural (compared to Capture One) but then it has different opbectives and approaches matters in a different way. The product as not direct competitors. I'm not sure that the Serif guys even think about C1 in any way. Why should they?
FWIW I ave for many year boguth Serif products. I live very near to their offices.
Over the year I have spent a lot of money with them (by your assessment) for a lot of products I have hardly ever used. Nothing wrong with the products - just that I rarely need them. But sure, I will buy at the price offered. As a business model it presumably works for them although I suspect that, like Adobe, their main income stream come form products other than photo editing and especially RAW conversion.
The thing is, Ian, you have to allow that companies do their own market analysis for feature functionality and pricing and choose their business development options accordingly.
We, as consumers, decide whether to buy in or not.. Certainly if something if cheap enough (and appears to be sustainable at that price) I might decide to buy in and then not really care about its future if it is not a main part of my processing and especially if what it does is, basically, a cheaper clone of a product that could, if necessary, replace it should my requirement move that way.
Bear in mind that you and your wife, as prolific users of many hardware tools, presumably bought at some costs, could perhaps consider a multi-user licence as a professional user and thus obtain a reduced "per seat" cost of usage rights.
The costs in that respect are, in my experience, a lot lower than one might be asked to pay for other types of Professional Business software. Real world stuff business processing stuff can be very expensive indeed.
Oner thing I identified some years ago is that if something is considered to be of low (especially zero) cost it is also of low value perceived value and people rarely care about it.
Or, to be more precise in that statement, in the consumer world the wealthy and certain people who choose to strongly follow a brand are willing to pay excessive (?) amounts for the exclusivity with which they choose to identify.
Others will buy cheap imitations.They car not about the quality of the product nor its longevity.
In turn the manufacturers care not whether the customers actually use the product - but any that do are important to them for several reasons.
Any company operating as a commercial enterprise will need to work out where their core revenus stream comes from and service the needs of those users - or change direction and take a carefully assessed gamble on being able to do something different.
That is their decision and, ultimately, their success or failure.The question is whether to go mass market, niche market or something else.
As you say, it's just business.
Is the corporate philosophy for low prices and mass market along with whatever that brings? Or higher prices with the hopes of gathering a loyal following that is less volatile? Or something else.
To use a phase of the times ... it is what it is. (Not a phrase I like but needs must when the devil drives ...)
The management and marketing people have to devise a strategy that they think will work and allow them to fudn and further thier business objectives.
At a personal level, as a consumer paying for the rights to use the software, I entirely sympathise with your wishes.
But having seen the changes in the commercial software market in the past 40 years and especially in the past 25 years as a consumer rather than as part of a developer organisation, I also see that things have changed as the industry has "matured".
With maturity comes additional costs.
Consumers can decide for themselves whether to accept those costs or go elsewhere. This, in essence, is what we see daily in the photo editing market.
Whether one sees migration as an opportunity or a curse (and so how one responds to it) will influence the way one approaches the opportunities available when taking into account long term business plans.
Competing on price with different product types in an uncertain and possibly shrinking market does not sound like an obvious formula for success for a public company. However, that's just my opinion.
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"No, I own Affinity and Luminar. I also have RawTherapee, DarkTable as well as LightZone, Gimp, etc etc. I was an IT Tutor and Senior Software Engineer for 25 years so have a keen interest in software so am fully loaded. I also beta test for many video and photographic plugin companies but cannot name those due to NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) which I honour and am bound by law."
Dude, we are not interested in your penis' size... what you own and/or use is irrelevant... but let me note one thing - for a senior IT professional who is worth his salt the price of 2 C1 Pro licenses is peanuts... at least in USA where I live & work, for that exactly reason.
"Skylum and Luminar have both priced their software sensibly"
says who ? I say they are work in progress (just as RT, which was a fully functional converter when those kids were not yet even planned) and has to be much cheaper :-)
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Lol dee jjjaaaa,
Why is it that any original post attracts the forum troll first?
As usual their posts add nothing of substance (because they themselves are without substance) and they frequently quote (as you have done) the original poster.
Who uses the expression 'Dude' ? It went out of fashion and has been uncool for nearly 20 years!
No one in here cares that you feel inadequate in respect of your penis size?
You are clearly young. spoiled and still live with your mum and dad. Get a life kid!
Two C1 Pro licences are peanuts in USA? You sound like a Trump fan and you richly deserve him, lol. A great indicator of where USA is in world opinion. Sad but true.
You have humiliated yourself and reinforced world opinion to the detriment of your nation and you achieved this on your own. Try posting something useful and original rather than trolling kid.
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SFA,
Thanks for a long and measured response. Your post is what I hope for (as opposed to the USA Troll kid). I have little criticism of C1 other than price for licences.
I do wonder if your experience of Serif products are the earlier painfully marketed consumer products? Affinity is quite different (for I also own many earlier products which I also do not use).
You are indeed correct that consumers can make their own choice on prices etc and accept these or go elsewhere. This is the point of my original post. The price and licensing (in this day and age) will mean many will turn away and not buy. This is especially true of those with alternatives so do not NEED a solution. I am sure you remember early IT costs (businesses and rich people only) and office software costing many times a monthly salary to write a letter! Those days have long gone. Even Adobe recognised this and held Photoshop prices for a few years before turning to the money-spinner of regular income and little progress in their software.
Of the many photographers I know almost everyone uses Lightroom and Photoshop but it is significant that the one C1 Pro user did not know Photoshop at all. Also bundling of C1 with Sony Mirrorless cameras for those first coming to the world of photography helped introduce C1.
Thanks for your post, let us hope the little wet behind the ears US Troll goes away as they stifle conversation.
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Ian D,
Capture One's relationship with several manufacturers will no doubt drive their market place to a large extent.
I think it is clear that Adobe's domination of severl broad markets in graphics, design and some photography plus their code development products etc. etc., offer them an entirely different business model to anything Capture One might currently be able to offer.
My guess is that a very significant part of their revenue, whether business or consumer derived, comes from licenses that are in place for software never used. The subscription approach means this revenue can become recurring with no need to bring to the buyer's attention that an upgrade is required every year or so and thus avoid people realising they are paying for something they don't use.
That is not intended to be a criticism since it is a holy grail for many business operations to encourage people to unquestioningly keep paying for things they think might be useful year after year.
I have Affinity Photo. I use it for some particular requirement occasionally I don't really gel with it just as I have never gelled with PS. I got on with LR but the requirement to use a catalogue was a pain and in any case I preferred LightZone and the results it could (and still can) produce. You mentioned LZ earlier so I assume you are familiar with its history.
Affinity's initial claim to fame was that it got Serif into the world of Apple as a Photoshop alternative but with added RAW processing. On Windows, at least at the level of at the level of basic functionality and toolsets, it's revised UI still offers the core operational functionality of the PhotoPlus series of products that preceded it. That's fine. They did a job and as a very occasional user of their features I could afford the regular deals that were offered as the versions progressed.
Presumably at some point we will see an Affinity version update that also requires a payment. That too will be fine.
I'm not sure you can compare business software marketing over time.
Business applications at the corporate level are still very expensive. They can be made to look "cheap" by apparently offering multimillion dollar "deals" for entire applications ("hey, if you buy 50% of our modules we will include the rest for nothing more then then the annual maintenance fees. That you will be able to expand on the cheap when you are ready to do so ...." )
Of course this sounds wonderful but many organisations struggle to implement even their basic needs and so never get around to the "freebies" that helped them make the initial spend.
At the business but non-corporate "desktop" level most of the areas I have been involved with seem to have evaporated.
By way of example, one of my favourite applications used to be available 20 years ago as a single desktop licence for about £400 but buying multiple licences could get that considerably lower. It came, back then, in a box with a fully printed User Guide and installation manual and with the programs and a few utilities on disk or, eventually CD/DVD.
As a consultant or trainer one could obtain a "Not for commercial use" deal for about £40.
These days everything is on line (so reduced costs for boxing and distribution) but there are no reduced cost try-out copies ordinarily available and in most cases "Partners" are expected to pay pretty much full price (circa £2000 per annum) for a subscription deal.
Back in time many licences were bought by business who have been shown the power of the product by an advisor using a copy of the software on the desktop. That avenue was closed and the price increased - although in part the changes to corporate IT structures and security requirements have constrained most of the options there used to be for dropping applications or test data files on the computers of desktop users in order to demonstrate, hands on, how their work could benefit from the tools on offer.
Cheaper it is not.
Adobe had a clear strategy of striving for market domination eventually settling on a plan based on aggressive pricing when required combined with buying up quite a lot of the perceived competition.
Making the corporate name a "household" name was clearly important and to be driven via turning product brand names into verbs - a bit "Hoovering" becam eht e go to term for the act of using a vacuum cleaner. Thus "to Photoshop".
They also took control of quite a number of "Industry Standards", notably for this forum many photography related "Standards".
In other places they cleverly create and supported PDF files and enabled people to use them and abuse them for free. That introduced some interesting situations in terms of quality and support but ultimately became the standard (or more accurately "standards" for electronic documents. Mighty Microsoft attempted to compete bet gave up after a few years - as they do.
In the course of all of that activity they turned the business into a cash generation machine ans saw the share price shoot up. Once at critical mass ones options for maintaining fiscal success from the sort of product range they have by simply pitching more product to existing users.
It's not easy to compete with that approach head on, do it at low price and maintain quality.
One is also likely to attract a rather different user base that may arrive with a preference for seeking just what they are used to but at a lower cost.
If the marketing is initially successful handling growth can be a challenge.
Additionally there is the philosophic principle that if one obtains something that is free or low cost means that people do not really value it. As a business, especially a technical business reliant on many other sources of issues over which one has no control, one can be buying oneself a lot of problems from a business perspective.
If could be argued that chasing expansion in a narrow and seemingly retracting market, all based on a single software product might be a very brave thing to do a this time.
LightZone tried something somewhat similar for back in the those days and brought the commercial product to an end.
I would prefer that C1 not go the same way until I have given up taking photos with anything but a phone.
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SFA,
"LightZone tried something somewhat similar for back in the those days and brought the commercial product to an end.
I would prefer that C1 not go the same way until I have given up taking photos with anything but a phone."
Believe me I do not want C1 to go bust either however I do believe they have over-priced their product and this will prevent wide(r) take-up. Whether existing owners prefer the elitism or a longer term wider user base is a moot point. There are pros and cons in each direction.
Commercial users of software care little of its cost (they mostly do not pay it themselves) and even those that do (small businesses?) always write those costs off to the customers and tax man over time. This allowed Adobe to price Photoshop (and other adobe packages) very highly indeed to the man in the street. A benefit of this was the software worked very smoothly and any (after release) bugs were quickly fixed. This is certainly not true of current Adobe software. Its as if they have a much poorer (younger?) software developers who are just not gifted?
As such, now is the time for others (including C1) to 'seize the day' and indeed I do wonder if this is why the free Express version has been released? A great move but many of us (the customers) have more than one brand of camera in the household (and more than one potential user). Any licence that limits to a a single user in a household is doomed (eventually - Anthropics take note here). Two installs would be acceptable, indeed this is what even Adobe allow!
I want C1 to thrive and prosper and would actually like to see Adobe be abandoned by one and all such is their shocking, rude and blind to reality customer services!
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Ian,
There has nearly always been a de-featured Free "Express" version of C1.
It was dropped for a while and then re-appeared when the Sony arrangement was launched. The included feature and function sets have varied a little from time to time.
Now also available for Fuji and recently Nikon one assumes that the manufacturers are signed up to some arrangement that support the Express version as well as the Manufacturer restricted but discounted paid for "Pro" feature licenses.
Maybe not .... but it seems likely.
C1 licenses for Manufacturer versions of the Pro feature version allow, currently, for 2 activations. Activations can be self managed in moments. I seems to recall that concurrent use if not feasible.
Full unconstrained licenses provide for 3 activations.
For more concurrent activations there are multi-users options available.
I like your optimism about a "moment" to be seized.
I would like to think you are right but I'm not sure.
Both of my daughters have DLSRs bought a few years ago but I have not seen any images for them for a long time. In one case never as far as I can recall. Their phones (and their husbands phones) take a lot of pictures. One of the husbands recently bought a drone. So has some interests but despite buying a decent wide angle lens at some cost on the their honeymoon and using it well at the time the only other time I recall it being used was a short holiday trip we had with them about 5 years ago where pushed the opportunities for some good scenic opportunities before we went.
I don't think I saw more then one or two of the results after the trip. I've never seen the camera again despite there now being 2 grandchildren keeping the phone cameras busy.
Camera industry sales figures seem to suggest that such patterns are very common these days. Perhaps that's why Apple decided that Aperture was ripe for retirement? Replace it with a phone biased app.
Is there really a moment of opportunity?
The camera manufacturers seem to be looking up market and lower volumes with higher prices and, presumably, greater profit potential. Maybe that's the only realistic way to go at the moment.
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SFA,
Yes for better or worse mobile phone photography is here and growing though its a case of volume versus quality. I did last year see a super mobile image which won a few local inter-club competitions but that is all I have seen so far that I rated highly.
My own wife who was club champion 5 or 6 years in a row (me being runner-up each year! - very annoying) has got a Huawei Pro 20 and has almost stopped using her Nikon DSLR.
As for me I am turning my back on competitive photography (i.e. taking what I know or hope will win) and am concentrating on Fine Art work and printing said images. It was all going well until my Canon ImageProGraf Pro 1000 has broken down after less than 2 years with a design fault which Canon refuse to acknowledge!
I am also pressing for a reasonable quality 4K projector (a 99% of sRGB for under a £1000) since anyone can get a reasonable image even out of a poor mobile phone and it looks ok projected at 1050 x 1400 or 1200 x 1600!
Certainly the volume of images has increased if not the quality and mobile shooters might be happy to use a simple preset app they are not going to buy C1 or Lightroom or Photoshop! Also (from my experience) rather like X-Factor wannabees the mobile phone shooters are not good at self evaluation and think they are genius photographers .... lol
They have IT skills as far a navigating their phones and sending email/updating Facebook but but have too short an attention span to edit, crop and spend time on an image unless it is their own profile picture. Not C1 buyers or users I am afraid. Look to the quick (and effective) changes software such as Luminar can make with simple sliders!
cheers
Ian
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I have been using Lightroom since LR1 but have stopped at LR6? as I am not interested in the subscription model. A while back, having trialled and realising the steep learning curve for me would require more time than the trial period allowed I bought C1 12. Since then I have probably not experimented more than a couple of times. Yesterday, I upgraded to C1 20 in the hope of rekindling my spare time interest in photography.
i am not a professional photographer but I do take lots of photos for my work which means that indirectly I do get paid for my photos. I have 2 cameras: a compact Olympus Tough which I have with me every time I go out and what I call my proper camera, Nikon D810 with some prime lens. (Before the D810 i had a D800E but changed for the ISO at 64. When I used to take film I loved using Ektar 64) The Tough came into its own recently when during lockdown I stopped my car half way down a hill of what would pre lockdown have been impossible to take a photo just after sunrise of a landscape vista which the week before would also not have been possible because the landowner had only just removed the trees that had stood in the way for years the pic was published by the local newspaper website and described as stunning
I am not technically-minded, composition is my thing. Also I rarely take pic of anything that moves and that includes people. But some years I took the time to try to understand more about the technicalities and became a fan of HDR. To complement, In my spare time, I set uo a camera club and attracted four FRPS members which I thought pretty good. I am also a published author (not self-published) of a book of photos with a heritage theme. And long ago I had a week long public exhibition of my photos and poetry.
What has what I have just told you got to do with the op?
First and foremost, business is not an extension of social services. Phase One have a target market which I guess would be described as professional photographers and keen amateurs who might aspire to become professional or reach the standard at which others would want to buy their photos.
Secondly, low cost software I find is rarely as good as higher cost. Cost is the wrong word, I mean price. Low price, free even, is often too gimmicky for my liking. When I moved from using low price page layout software to Adobe Indesign the difference in the degree of control was startling for me. The same goes for most price differentials. I play badminton, social standard, I am not as good a player as I might be but unlike my friends who unlike me wouldn’t pay £150+for a racquet they suffer more aches and pains because their lower priced racquets do not absorb the strain of hitting a shuttlecock.
Yes, Phase One could compromise its exacting standards and Instead target the mass-market with its propensity for low price regardless but what would professional photographers do? And equally what would those of us whose life-style is not mass-market do?
One of these days I shall finally give up on LR and import my 15000+ photos into C1 and resume using my proper camera and with the help of C1 delight in taking proper pictures.1
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