The price is to High for version 23
I left lightroom to come to Capture One four years ago and I've upgraded every year. But I just can't justify £200 for a small handful of updates that should've already been in the software. Lightroom subscription is only £10 a month so how can they justify the charge. I'm going back to Lightroom as Capture One seems to be on a different planet now such a shame because I love the software
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I hear you guys. I chose capture one years ago because the price made more sense than adobe and I liked the session feature. The sony version was all I needed and was not too expensive.
I upgraded several times and then bought the full version when they dropped the sony version enven though I didn't need it, I thought it kind of sucked but they said they had big announcements / plans for the future.
Turns out all it was was ipad support which I have zero use for.
Now they raise the price once more, I think now the upgrade cowt is more than the full price I first paid for my sony version and on top of that they will lock me out of upgrades if I dont upgrade after two years.
So I think I'm going back to Photo Ninja which still looks the best to me after all these years even though it's limited in functionality. The colors are way more accurate than capture one ProStandard and the detail rendering is the best I've seen from all the raw converters I've tried.
That and Affinity Photo should give me great results but the workflow won't be as smooth unfortunately.
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Photo Ninja doesn't look very up to date! According to their website
- the only Nikon Z series camera it supports is the Z7, so not the Z6 (which was released in 2018), Z6ii (2020), Z7ii (2020), Z50 (2019), Z9 (2021) - and there are others. As a Nikon user, I didn't look at other brands.
- it only supports Mac OS up to Big Sur (MacOS 11) so not Monterey (MacOS 12) or Ventura (MacOS 13) at all.
- it supports Windows 10, so not Windows 11 at all.
Ian
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No it's not up to date unfortunately, the developer has been working on version 2 for years now, it's unclear if it'll ever be released.
Having said that, it works perfectly fine on Windows 11 and to my eyes it is still one of the best Raw converter out there, it supports my sony A7III camera so I'm ok and I think I will start using it more.
I own it (Photo Ninja) and Capture One 22, which should still work fine for a while so I can keep using it but I won't be upgrading to 23 and with their new policy I probably won't upgrade it ever.
Lightroom is now more interesting price wise but everytime I demo it I have a hard time justifying paying every month to use it as a hobby. Sometime I spend months not taking any photos so I prefer to own the softwares I use, that way I don't feel like I'm wasting money when I don't use them.
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Well I’ve been using Lightroom now for the last three months since making this post. I’m only a hobbyist photographer so don’t use it every week but I’m actually thoroughly enjoying being back in the light room set up. Capture one was fantastic but their pricing scale is absurd. When you can buy on a black Friday deal cheaper than the upgrade price, someone’s got the figures completely wrong.
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Yes of course one could buy another license in 5 years at full cost, we're never really locked out, but out of respect for customers there should always be an upgrade path for any prior version. Like 50% off full price for owners of the 2 last version and 30% off for all prior versions, something like that.
Anyway, they're not the first company to act like this, that's life I guess.
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Mark my words! lol, the Black Friday deals will only be for NEW customers. Yeah, we can create a new account and buy that way. Might need a new CC and all which could be a pain.
But what would they be getting is a doubling of accounts per actual user. That might look good on paper and all but the reality of the situation, there's no real upside.
^^ Entirely hypothetical situation, but plausible.
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I guess we'll have to take a wait-and-see approach.
Plus, some of these deals are sold through places like B&H where anyone can buy.
Yes, anyone can buy it, but you must activate it with C1 before you can use it.
they would be shooting themselves in the foot to block getting revenue from you.
Yes. But, as we have seen with C1's current moves, companies can do some really dumb sh!t.
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Philip, do you use Lightroom (cloud based) or Lightroom Classic?
Are there features you miss from capture one, features you enjoy more on Lightroom?
I'd be curious to hear about your experience.
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Hi Fourdogslong, the only reason I left lightroom originally was that they went over to a monthly subscription plan and C1 was cheaper, even though I upgraded every year, but not anymore.
I don’t actually miss any of the features from C1. It was beautiful to use and I really enjoyed working in the package. (the only thing I think C1 did better when I moved to them was they handled the Fuji files better but light room has sorted out all the issues with this and I don’t notice any problems anymore).
The version I’m on is Lightroom classic as I don’t need to store them in the cloud, and my Internet isn’t fast enough to upload all those photos anyway. The really nice thing is you also get the iPad version of Lightroom included in the monthly price where is C ones version for the iPad is nearly the cost of all of Lightroom :-)
The one feature I really missed in the way it’s implemented in lightroom is faces and it’s fantastic to have this back again the way lightroom does it.
I think the upgrades that happened in the last four years in Lightroom has really accelerated it to a very powerful and pleasurable package to use now. It’s worth a look as you get to use it for free for a trial period0 -
That's good to know thanks for sharing your experience.
I wish they made lightroom classic look a bit more modern like lightroom cloud based, I quite like how that one looks but I prefer to keep my files locally.
Anyway, for now I'll keep using what I have, see if I can make that work in the long term.
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I occasionally switch between Capture One 20 Pro and LR classic, I have some nice filters in Capture One that I don't have equivalents for in LR. Today I went to check my upgrade pricing and shocked to see they're expecting me to pay £300 to purchase the latest version, I was hoping they may have a spring sales on, it was £200 to upgrade last time I checked, but previous discounts may have bought it down to £100, but £300 is utterly ridiculous! I'm not a professional, first purchasing the Fuji version of Capture One when I brought my first Fuji camera, then upgrading once, then again to a discounted Pro version. Capture One used to render Fuji notably better than Lightroom, but since LR improved it's extremely close now. Capture One's highlight fall off and controls seem moderately softer than LR which I like, but Lightrooms chromatic aberration is way better for backlit tree branches etc, LR also gives some of my photos a very subtle magenta cast, mainly noticeable on woodland floors, but I can correct that via the calibration panel. Other than that, that the image processing seems pretty close to me these days. I purchase the Adobe photography plan though Amazon each year, last November it cost me £72, so for £6 a month I get LR classic, LR on my iPad and iPhone, and Photoshop on both my PC and iPad, plus unlimited sync for lower res versions of my images. Compare that to Capture One who want £24 a month for a much more restrictive product is madness. I'm guessing they no longer want to sell to personal users and are only focused on businesses. I only wanted the haze removal tool, plus the new layers in styles look intriguing. Not £300 worth of intriguing, lol! It looks like I'll be no longer be using Capture One at all when I next upgrade my Camera. Shame as it's a great bit of software, just not great enough to justify the huge price compared with their competition.
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I'm seeing, with C1 dramatically increasing the prices; the net effect is pushing the enthusiasts out of the platform. I guess they are betting that new professionals adopting the platform will make up for the drop in those lost enthusiast users.
But there are two problems with that thought.
- Most often, it is the enthusiast that transitions to the professional.
- Many professionals are watching their expenses very closely now too.
I am making the assumption that C1 increased prices to cover its expenses and, hopefully, drive some new innovation and, obviously, increase profit. But, while you increase the price, you will inversely decrease adoption and take on additional attrition.
IMO, we are here because of failed marketing. C1, I don't think, is doing a very good job of bringing new users to the platform. But they are doing a bang-up job of pushing people away.
"Be so good they can't ignore you" is a common phrase. Another one is to make your offer so good people just say "take my money". I don't see either of these being followed.
Gmail was wildly successful. It still is to this day. It became so because it was a no-brainer, a free email account. What happened, in turn, is mass adoption with millions upon millions of users. The core of Gmail is free, and there are upgrades that enhance the experience.
Now, I'm not suggesting C1 go free, no. But more reasonable pricing that negates any possible comparison with a competitor product IS a better option. With a large number of users comes greater stability financially. Smaller increases in pricing across millions of users cause dramatic swings in revenue. Hitting a smaller user base with a significant cost kills the "take my money". That gets amplified when the "be so good..." part -aka ROI based on features is comparable to or lacking in competitors' offers. At the moment, C1 really only has one direct competitor to watch out for, Lightroom. But all it takes is one new entry to the field, and it could really put the squeeze on a platform that is not as deeply entrenched, as C1 is.
Adobe, at any moment, could turn the lights off at C1. They could offer their platform at a loss as they have so many other revenue streams it wouldn't really affect them on the grand scale. I think is in C1's best interest to go back to the drawing board and right the ship before it's sitting next to the Titanic.
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These new upgrade and subscription prices are ridiculous.
I did prefer c1 because i could upgrade it for a reasonable price whenever i think the new version improvements are worth it and still own and use the software if i am not upgrading.
Now i have to subscribe to adobe again to use LR because its much cheaper.Or I am stuck on an really old (pre 21) version because i missed the deadline for upgrade to 23 in January while i was on vacation taking actual photos. The new price for me is the full 349€ after i already paid for 2 previous versions. That's what customer loyalty means to companies these days. Nothing.
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I would go to lightroom (which I have done and don’t regret it) it’s cheaper and they have upgraded it a lot over the last five years that I used capture one
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I decided to switch to Lightroom Classic too, even though it's subscription based the price is one of the lowest when you compare the annual price of buying and upgrading other softwares.
Plus the integration with Photoshop is very nice, photo stacking is awesome, Face recognition is useful too and I like the way it renders image quality.
It also works with the ColorChecker calibration software, Capture One is problematic in this area and Capture One colors never worked for my camera so in order to use a ColorChecker one needed to buy Lumariver, another expanse... Lightroom just works with the colorchecker's own software, no other puschase necessary and the results are great and super easy to do.
Lightroom Classic is a bit slower than Capture One, does't feel as stable but it's good enough, it's a different workflow, not all the same tools, for example I miss the Mask refine option of Capture One and the Skin Tone color controls, but overall I can get where I want with Lightroom too and it's all that matters.
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@Fourdogslong I've not noticed any stability issues with Lightroom myself, but I do have a high end PC with a lot of RAM which may help, though it definitely doesn't feel as responsive and smooth as navigating around Capture One. Regarding the Skin Tone controls, I've found that Lightrooms Colour Range mask works well, I just select 5 skin tone points, then lower the refine option, and it's then pretty similar to Capture One, allowing me to then reduce texture, adjust saturation, highlights etc for just the skin. I can also then combine that mask with the AI select person mask to ensure the skin tones only affect the people and not other items of similar colour in the scene.
For my Fuji Cameras I still think Capture One produces a slightly more natural filmic looking result, it definitely pulls out more detail than both Lightroom and Out of Camera JPGs, but unless you really pixel peep or blow it up to a very large size, no one viewing from a normal distance would really notice. At 300% it's obvious, lol ;-) I think Lightrooms worst feature is it's noise reduction algorithms, at default settings Capture One seems to retain more detail, less noise, while retaining a smoother Bokeh, but again it's pretty subtle from normal viewing distances.
I really like Capture One but I already pay Adobe as well, as I use Photoshop for more complex editing requirements, prefer Lightroom classics file management features, and also like the ability to be able to quickly pick and reject photos using my iPhone and iPad. For now I'll continue to use Capture One 20 alongside Lightroom. I may end up moving to Capture One Express as an intermediate step when I next upgrade my Camera, I already send my Capture One outputs to Lightroom anyway, it may just have to be a TIFF instead of a JPG if I need to apply local adjustments! £300 to upgrade pro is just unreasonable for non-commercial photography, especially when the alternatives obtain almost identical results at a much more affordable price.
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Thanks for the Skin Tone tip, I will definitely give that a try!
It's funny you prefer the capture one render with your Fuji, with my Sony, I feel like lightroom presents finer details, it looks less "crunchy" than C1 and I appreciate that.
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I think Capture 23 is a super nice program and I tested it today for several hours to get a hang of it. Unfortunately, they seem to be pulling back on features for the perpetual version (no feature updates any longer, for example), trying to "nudge" you into their more expensive subscription version (than LR + Photoshop) combination. $299 per year?!
Although I'm not a professional photographer, I can appreciate all the great features Capture 23 has. IHMO, features and quality of software and documentation isn't the issue.
Bottom line - I deleted my evaluation version of Capture 23 and I'll head back to LR, unfortunately. I really, really, really dislike subscriptions. I know companies like subscriptions for cash flow, not that there isn't some benefit for the user having updates all the time.
Don't normally leave comments after a day of usage and testing, but I was really surprised by the high cost and the apparent direction of the company away from really supporting perpetual licenses as they did before. :(
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@FirstName LastName,
I wouldn't say they're pulling back on new features for the perceptual version. As I understand it, when each perceptual major version is released it will have feature parity with the subscription version, but over the year it won't receive any new features, only bug fixes. The following year when you upgrade (if you upgrade), you'll then purchase all new features added over that past year. This is pretty much how it's always been for traditional perceptual software licences, big updates yearly rather than regular smaller updates.
The cost is still the biggest issue for me. They recently offered me a 50% discount, which sounds great, but because I don't upgrade every time I now need to pay 50% of the full version price. That's still £150 compared with Lightroom and Photoshop that I paid £72 for this year. For businesses that's probably small change, but for hobby users like myself it's too much in the current climate.
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It's the cost, their (imo illegal in the EU) denial of access to bug fix releases (after a few month when the next feature release is out) and their unwillingness to fix certain bugs reported by their customers; and they treat their customers in a very unfair way because their policy changes are asymmetrical, they raised the total cost of ownership for us but do not spend a penny more to give us a higher quality product than before (if not even the opposite). If I had to guess I'd say the private equity owner is preparing for an exit. Eight years ago I happily joined the C1 bandwagon, I wouldn't do today.
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@... Like Capture One have their 50% off sale periodically, Amazon UK seem to have an Adobe sale each year on Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. For several years now they've dropped their price of Adobe products by a good 25-30%. The Photography plan last year went from £120 to £72, the LR CC 1TB package from £100 to £70. I figured out you can also stack these redemption codes, if they're for the same product it'll just extend your subscription term, if they're different products they'll run in parallel. So purchasing the 2 above packages gave me LR Classic, LR CC, PS, and 1TB storage for £142, a saving of almost £100 compared with paying monthly.
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Using Adobe Lightroom again, Capture one is to greedy, It´s not worth the price..!!!
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