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PhaseOne not interested in new customers !!!

tgutgu
As every time, I download new CaptureOne versions to test drive it. This time, version 6.0 had some crashes and my new camera, Panasonic Lumix GH2, was not supported, so I did not purchase it.

Now that 6.1 is out with some bug fixes and GH2 support, I wanted to test drive version 6.1 . After the start, the program tells me that my test period is over. I know that PhaseOne did not allow to retest versions of the same minor release (such as 6.0 and 6.0.1) but reset the test period for each new minor release (i.e. 6.0, 6.1, 6.2). This policy apparently has changed (before I could test version 5.0, and 5.1).

I don't know what's going on here? Is PhaseOne becoming more paranoid with each release? There is not problem to test drive each new minor Lightroom version - why not this one. What does PhaseOne think, how they can get new customers, especially users of other raw editors? How can I test it, when my camera is not supported?

Just to make clear, I do not own a second PC and will not reinstall my current one. I am a licensed owner of Bibble 5, Lightroom 3, DxO Optics Pro, LightZone, and RawShooter. I am not happy with Adobe's release policy, not happy with Bibbles color profiles for the GH2, and DxO and LightZone do not support the GH2. So I have enough reasons to think about a change. Now I feel that PhaseOne takes every tester under the suspicion, that he would install again the software and use it illegally again for 30 days. Honestly, I feel treated like a suspect.

I won't buy another raw editor without testing it in reality. If PhaseOne does not want me as a new customer under this circumstances, they should tell me that here clearly. I won't wait until version 7.

PhaseOne applies the most ridiculous test drive policy of any relevant imaging software vendor I know of, except Adobe with its Photoshop test policy, however, that product plays in another league anyway.

Thomas
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  • Drew Altdo
    Thomas,
    Did you consider contacting Phase One and asking? Often I find that contacting the company in question clears up a lot of the questions and keeps conspiracy theories to a minimum. 😄

    Just to clear things up.. we reset the trial period based on the contents of the release, not the number format. If I recall properly we reset the trial period on 5.1 because it had significant feature additions. 6.1 did not have significant feature additions hence no Trial period reset.
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  • tgutgu
    [quote="Drew " wrote:
    Thomas,
    Did you consider contacting Phase One and asking? Often I find that contacting the company in question clears up a lot of the questions and keeps conspiracy theories to a minimum. 😄

    Just to clear things up.. we reset the trial period based on the contents of the release, not the number format. If I recall properly we reset the trial period on 5.1 because it had significant feature additions. 6.1 did not have significant feature additions hence no Trial period reset.


    My remark was based on a note from German customer support, which indicated the policy of resetting trial periods with minor releases. I have contacted German support already this time again.

    I made my strong post, in order to let PhaseOne rethink its policy with this regard. You should consider the following:

    1.) .0 version are usually quite buggy. So a customer, who trials such a version, won't buy it, if it has too many problems. However, he might come back later at the next minor release to test, what has been improved.

    2.) The current version does not support the camera, the customer wants to buy in a not too distant future, but supports cameras he owned previously. So he downloads CaptureOne to tests its features. Even though he likes the features, he wants to wait purchasing it until the new camera is supported (my case). Then the customers wants to make a quick check with the newer version, in order to see if the color profile of the camera is ok. This seems to be even more necessary, as PhaseOne calls the GH2 support preliminary, which means that you probably want feedback. How could the potential customer give the feedback, if he can't test it? I have had enough cases - most notably with Bibble - where the official released camera support wasn't really good with respect to the color profile. The most recent release of Bibble 5.2 initially had a strong magenta tint.

    When Capture One 5.0 was out, I had exactly the same problems. I downloaded the new version to see the new features, but could not test again, when my new camera was supported. At that time German support was no help at all, they claimed that they won't give me another trial period, and I had to wait for the next minor version, and could not disclose, when this was going to happen. Then I lost interest and Phase One a potential customer.

    There are other ways than this strict trial policy. You could probably limit the amount of trial periods to a low number and allow resetting the trial period only with some delay (two to four weeks). Even making the trial period shorter (Bibble has only 15 days) could help to protect your interest and serve customers like me. Adobe Lightroom is the big player, the de facto standard. You have to convince ME that Capture One is better. It is already enough that I have to beg here to give it another try. You make it very easy for yourself and very difficult for new customers. Bad idea I would say.

    Thomas
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  • duartix
    Cheers Thomas!

    I fully understand your point and I believe that Phase One does it too, but I also understand that they need to protect their product and this must be a compromise.
    If I were in your shoes I'd probably do the following:

    1) Install VirtualBox.
    2) Set up a VM.
    3) Install W7 on the VM.
    4) Install C1 v6 on the VM.
    5) Take a test drive.

    You'd be hard pressed to use that as a Production Environment because you'd be running C1 far from it's native speed, yet the functionality is all there to test and when you're done testing you can bin the whole setup in less than 2 minutes.

    I'm giving you this advice because I believe C1 is really worth a try. Color management is simple and on the spot, image detail is far above any other RAW developer (even though it's a bit over sharpened), interface is the cleanest I've ever seen, file management doesn't play with your files behind your back (lost a few files with LR), customization is great and it's bloody hell faster than Bibble the alleged speed king. 😂
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  • deejjjaaaa
    [quote="NNN634260406743189335" wrote:
    image detail is far above any other RAW developer

    man, you forgot to mention that prints done w/ C1 have at least 6 stops of DR more than laws of the universe are allowing ! 🙄 ... nowadays "far above" words can be used only when you are talking about C1 vs in camera/firmware raw converter and even that not for all cameras.
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  • Robert4
    [quote="deejjjaaaa" wrote:
    [quote="NNN634260406743189335" wrote:
    image detail is far above any other RAW developer

    man, you forgot to mention that prints done w/ C1 have at least 6 stops of DR more than laws of the universe are allowing ! 🙄 ... nowadays "far above" words can be used only when you are talking about C1 vs in camera/firmware raw converter and even that not for all cameras.


    Now, now, let's not be bitter...
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  • Coach2
    While I can't agree with your heading of PhaseOne not being interested in new customers, I do understand your frustration with the trial period. When v5.0 came out I couldn't fully test it out within the 30 days. I ended up buying it on faith that it would perform, which it did very well. When v6.0 came out I decided to wait it out since I had no rush to upgrade. Now that Canon G12 support is available I'll begin testing it soon. I'm sure I'll upgrade anyway, but at least now I can give it a good test drive first.

    Perhaps instead of a time period, a startup counter might work better? That way I could try it a few times then if there are serious issues with my setup I could try again later with the maintenance releases.
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  • tgutgu
    I can understand that PhaseOne wants to protect their software, but there are other and better ways to do that, instead of arbitrarily decide, when to reset the trial period and when not. And what Adobe allows shouldn't be any problem for Phase One. So resetting the trial period after each minor release would be ok either. The time between minor releases is big enough to make license violators go away.

    If PhaseOne would be smart, they could send me via private mail a download link to a 6.1 install with a new trial period. German support showed beton head behaviour last time, and I am afraid that they will keep this stubborn attitude.

    Thanks for the idea with the VM, but this sounds really a bit too much hassle to me. It is up to PhaseOne to give me another try to win me over, and it should not be in the hand of the interested customer, to apply non reality workarounds just to get a test license work. Testing means to work under the conditions you want to operate the software. I want to know, if there are performance issues on my machine with GH2 files.

    Just look at the performance issues reported with Lightroom 3 (I don't have any though), and you understand that testing under real conditions is necessary. That's why Adobe is fairly generous in this respect, just to avoid excessive refund requests.

    Thomas
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  • duartix
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    Thanks for the idea with the VM, but this sounds really a bit too much hassle to me. It is up to PhaseOne to give me another try to win me over, and it should not be in the hand of the interested customer, to apply non reality workarounds just to get a test license work. Testing means to work under the conditions you want to operate the software. I want to know, if there are performance issues on my machine with GH2 files.

    Cheers Thomas!
    I'd just like to repost to demistify the idea that installing a VM is complicated. It is not really! That's why I suggested VirtualBox (VB) instead of VMWare. First because it is free. Second because it's got great performance. Third because it's very simple. Really! It shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to install and understand how you set up a VM. Basically you just tell VB how much memory/processors it can consume, where you should locate the file that replicates the OS disk and Enable 3D (OpenGL) acceleration on Display Settings. After that it's just a vanilla W7 install and Capture One. When you are done just delete the VM file and unistall VB.
    You've got a point though about accessing the application speed but OTOH if it's fast enough, then you can be sure that it's going to be faster when run natively.
    What kind of system do you have? I might give you give some feedback on performance on best (i7 860 (Quad Core with HT) 2.83GHz with a 430 fermi) versus a worst case scenario (Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz no OpenCL). Anyway I can tell you that if you use any kind of noise reduction it will be around 2.5x faster than Bibble 5.2, otherwise it will be nearly as fast as Bibble (as in 7s against 6s). When using heavy filters (like lens distortion) the penalty is usually arithmetic in C1 whereas in Bibble it's usually geometric.
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  • LadyRainbows
    I know there are ways for Phase One NOT to have the trial timer keep ticking when you uninstall Capture One. For example, the current trial design is once installed the timer starts ticking, when uninstalled, in continues. Maybe have it stop, when ever you uninstall it? I know this is very frustrating to me as well.
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  • tgutgu
    Hi Duartix

    My machine is a Intel i5 750 with 2.67 Ghz with 4 GB RAM. So it should be enough. I may give Virtual Box a try, although I feel that it is PhaseOne's obligation to give interested users a reasonable and real chance to test Capture One, which they don't. Often the reason of another trial period is not added features, but - probably more importantly - additional camera support. It is a shame that they don't recognize this.

    With Virtual Box, I guess, my external drives will be recognized.

    As you have experience with Bibble and Capture One (and perhaps Lightroom), how do these products compare in your opninion? I know Billbe and Lightroom, but Capture One only very little.

    Kind regards

    Thomas
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  • Dale13
    One should not have to install a virtual machine to test a program. There must be other ways that C1 can ignor time lines, i.e any output to conversion or to a printer have 'Trial Over' centered on the converted tiff, jpeg or print making the file non usable but still usable for test purposes. I only had 10 days of trial as I was hospitablized and the time line had passed before I could do more testing.
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  • duartix
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    Hi Duartix
    My machine is a Intel i5 750 with 2.67 Ghz with 4 GB RAM. So it should be enough.

    It does look fast enough for nearly instant feedback (<1s) on editing, however the GPU might play the deciding role should you possess a fast one.
    I won't promise but should I have some time tomorrow and I'll throttle down my multiplier, disable HT and OpenCL and I'll give you some numbers.
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:

    I may give Virtual Box a try, although I feel that it is PhaseOne's obligation to give interested users a reasonable and real chance to test Capture One, which they don't. Often the reason of another trial period is not added features, but - probably more importantly - additional camera support. It is a shame that they don't recognize this.

    I agree with you even though I don't see how they could provide you a test version with an extended period without individually customizing it...
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:

    With Virtual Box, I guess, my external drives will be recognized.

    IIRC you can activate each USB device individually and dynamically through the VB menu even after the VM is already started. I'm not sure if you can't even access them simultaneously with the host OS and the VM.
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:

    As you have experience with Bibble and Capture One (and perhaps Lightroom), how do these products compare in your opinion? I know Bibble and Lightroom, but Capture One only very little.


    Long story but loaded with opinion.

    I'll can tell you I started using Bibble 4.9 about 4 years ago because I was on a Ubuntu high and it was touted as the fastest RAW developer around by far. Loved the interface, the speed and that neat Perfectly Clear button (which was pretty useful but I eventually came to emulate with the other filters). I also liked the way it kept the sidecar files around the RAWs so I could move folders around without breaking anything.

    Meanwhile I got an E-510 and since Bibble took a few months to support it, I had to go back to XP and endure LR (was it 1.2?). It was a mess! 🤬 The interface was unintuitive and had a steep learning curve and worst of all LR kept thinking it was smarter than me and it knew better than me where he should keep the files. Suffice to say I managed to lost files, work and time thanks to the dreaded catalogue which to this day I utterly abominate. 🤬

    Luckily Bibble 4.10 came out with support for my camera and soon I was an Ubuntu happy camper again. There was a little thorn on my foot however... LR clearly provided more resolution out of the E-510 files. 😐 But the speed and confidence at which my work flowed on Bibble made to much a difference for me to care about that little edge in IQ.

    Then came Windows 7 and a few problems with my Ubuntu upgrades... Back to Windows then. Bibble 5 came out with a big improvement in IQ and I never gave LR another tought. 😄

    But around 3 months ago I got a temporary camera (an E-P1) to hold me until the GH2 or the E-P3. I busted my head for long around Color Management but I eventually cracked. It just took too much work to get the colors on the E-P1 only half right in Bibble. ☹️ At this time with the MP increase I also began wondering about Bibbles claims of being the fastest RAW converter on the market. Well it's diabolically fast on defaults, no doubts, but when batching properly adjusted RAWs it wasn't all that much faster than let's say LR. Any heavy filter (like NoiseNinja, Pixie or especially Lens Distortion Correction) would bring it on it's knees on my recently retired Athlon X2 2GHz. Immediate feedback on edits was completely out of the question. ☹️

    Meanwhile came Xmas, unexpected money and with it I built a rig around an i7 860 with 4GB RAM and an 60GB OCZ Vertex SSD. Even though this rig has brought Bibble back to business (with almost immediate feedback on edits) the color problem was still giving me enough trouble. I tried Capture One 5 and colors were good! Astonishingly good. And detail too, even better than LR3v2! :O And the interface is even better than Bibble. And it also features a sidecar file approach! And blow me, it's nearly as fast when batching as Bibble with default edits! And it's pretty much instant on edit feedback! And unlike Bibble, it doesn't come to its knees when you introduce complex filters in the pipeline! And then as if the speed crown hadn't already changed heads, there it comes Capture One 6 with the OpenGL nail in Bibble's coffin. 🤓
    I fitted my rig with a lowest of basics 430 fermi GPU and it really flies! I could swear that I roll the mouse wheel on the Lens Distortion slider and I could swear it's doing 10fps on edit feedback! 🤓

    If I had to rate these 3 RAW developers which I used the most until this day, I guess it would go something like this:

    .....................LR3b2............C1v6.............Bibble 5
    Speed................4..................10..................5
    UI.....................4...................9...................8
    File mgmt...........3...................8..................10 (can't stand LR catalogue! C1 lost points for scattered cache)
    Color fidelity.......7...................9...................4
    Detail................6...................8...................4 (files a bit oversharpened on C1, but still way better)
    Filters................6?..................8...................9 (B5 wins on Open Plugin approach, C1 unbeaten in lens correction)
    Workflow............4...................9...................8 (Bibble 5 all Auto mode (Perfectly Clear) is the life saver)

    Thomas[/quote]
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  • tgutgu
    Thanks, Duratix, for the opinions of the three raw editors. While I have a completely different opinion about Lightroom's catalog (which I like) and Lightroom's UI (which I like more than Bibble's), your remarks about image quality let me believe that it is worth taking a closer look at C1. With my Panasoic bodies (G1, GH1, GH2) the color profiles in Bibble aren't really good, and worst of all BibbleLabs does not spend effort to improve them. The GH2 profile has been better than the GH1, but the release candidate had a bad color profile with strong magenta tint slipped through, indicating that quality assurance of camera profiles is not BibbleLabs priority.

    I am not too worried about batch processing speed, as I only process the images to RGB files, when needed. Lightroom is my current image browser, so most files stay in raw, and only become processed for printing in Qimage or for AV-Shows, when JPEGs are needed.

    According to your opinion, lens correction is better in C1 than in the other programs. Perspective correction seems similar to the UI of DxO (with drawing lines), which is better than Lightroom's slider approach. Do you have any opinion about metadata (especially keyword) editing? That is, where Lightroom is pretty good at. I know that Expression Media is now in the hands of PhaseOne (I owned iView), but C1 and EM seem not well integrated (yet?).

    Actually, I really do not like the plugin approach of Bibble too much, because that leads to a very cluttered succession of editing features. With each new version of Bibble it is potentially a hassle that all plugins are upgraded by the developers, and it seems that there are still quite a bit of Bibble 4 plugins, which were never converted to Bibble 5. The plugin capability is nice, but to what it leads now, is not. (Having a individual plugin for a "Blacks" slider, situated on the "Plugin 3" tab, is a joke.

    I'll see, I can get to test C1 either by Virtual Box or by something PhaseOne can offer (they should be able to do that, can't be that difficult, if they want my money).

    Thomas
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  • duartix
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    Thanks, Duratix, for the opinions of the three raw editors. While I have a completely different opinion about Lightroom's catalog (which I like) and Lightroom's UI (which I like more than Bibble's), your remarks about image quality let me believe that it is worth taking a closer look at C1. With my Panasoic bodies (G1, GH1, GH2) the color profiles in Bibble aren't really good, and worst of all BibbleLabs does not spend effort to improve them. The GH2 profile has been better than the GH1, but the release candidate had a bad color profile with strong magenta tint slipped through, indicating that quality assurance of camera profiles is not BibbleLabs priority.

    Yes it's a shame. It was my turning factor and I feel a bit sorry about it because Bibble is the only solid option for people on Linux.
    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:

    I am not too worried about batch processing speed, as I only process the images to RGB files, when needed.

    Even so I think you have nothing to worry about. I simulated your i5 on my i7 and live feedback is still fast enough (<1s) even though Bibble is on the verge (~1s) when you use heavy filters (like lens distortion and NN). Capture one is also very fast even though when distorting it will present a fast preview before it refines the image. Still all within 1 second which I consider close to instant.

    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    According to your opinion, lens correction is better in C1 than in the other programs. Perspective correction seems similar to the UI of DxO (with drawing lines), which is better than Lightroom's slider approach..

    I believe I should refine my opinion on this.
    Capture One is unbeaten when it comes to lens defects like CA and Purple fringing because the correction is automatic, you just click Analyze and check the option to apply it. This is one of Bibble's and LR Achilles heel because they rely on manual corrections via sliders (which in my case never really cut it all the way through Bibble 4.10 because when I corrected for one kind of aberration there was a point where I was introducing the opposite aberration before the offending one was completely gone, even though I have to say that Bibble 5 must have done something differently because it those same images I have a lot less CA to start with). I cant tell you about LR because lately I have rarely used it. I read some words that Adobe was supporting some kind of public database of Lens Profiles.
    Now on Distortion correction is where I think Bibble is ahead (don't know about LR and their new approach) because when a lens is profiled the distortion corrections in Bibble are really good. I haven't tested Capture One well enough in this department but at first sight there isn't an automatic lens Detection and Distortion Correction and you rely on the distortion slider which still works OK if the lens' distortion isn't very complex.
    But, since most of my issues are with CA and Purple Fringing I'm very happy to trade.

    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    Do you have any opinion about metadata (especially keyword) editing? That is, where Lightroom is pretty good at. I know that Expression Media is now in the hands of PhaseOne (I owned iView), but C1 and EM seem not well integrated (yet?).

    Sorry, no at all. My organization is 100% folder based as you might have guessed by my allergy to the catalog.

    [quote="tgutgu" wrote:
    Actually, I really do not like the plugin approach of Bibble too much, because that leads to a very cluttered succession of editing features. With each new version of Bibble it is potentially a hassle that all plugins are upgraded by the developers, and it seems that there are still quite a bit of Bibble 4 plugins, which were never converted to Bibble 5. The plugin capability is nice, but to what it leads now, is not. (Having a individual plugin for a "Blacks" slider, situated on the "Plugin 3" tab, is a joke.

    You're right, it is, but the Black & White filters on Bibble are second to none and have given me unique images. 😊
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  • LadyRainbows
    [quote="duartix" wrote:

    .....................LR3b2............C1v6.............Bibble 5
    Speed................4..................10..................5
    UI.....................4...................9...................8
    File mgmt...........3...................8..................10 (can't stand LR catalogue! C1 lost points for scattered cache)
    Color fidelity.......7...................9...................4
    Detail................6...................8...................4 (files a bit oversharpened on C1, but still way better)
    Filters................6?..................8...................9 (B5 wins on Open Plugin approach, C1 unbeaten in lens correction)
    Workflow............4...................9...................8 (Bibble 5 all Auto mode (Perfectly Clear) is the life saver)

    Thomas
    [/quote]
    FWIW
    Based on D700 NEF's
    .....................LR3b2............C1v6.............Capture NX 2
    Speed................4..................10..................3
    UI.....................4...................9...................3
    File mgmt...........3...................8..................2
    Color fidelity.......5...................9...................6 See below.
    Detail................4...................8...................7
    Filters................6?..................8...................9
    Workflow............4...................9...................2
    Support.............9.5..................6...................1 See below
    OTMMS.............3....................10..................2 OTMMS = Oh, that makes more sense!

    Color fidelity, in relative speaking. CNX2 fails, because of desaturated shadows, and strange skin tons around blown out areas.
    Support, there is near endless amounts of user support, books stores with nearly half their photography books based on LR and PS. On top of that, there is a bottomless pit of professional tutorials on LR and PS!

    As much as I give Phase one a hard time and some problems here and there. They are simply better than anyone else out there for my needs.
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  • duartix
    Cheers!
    Ben with his post got me thinking that I should state that all my opinion is based on processing ORF files from an E-510 and an E-P1.
    Olympus is possibly a kind of a special case because they have less relevance in the market and their camera JPEG engine is second to none! The proof is that nearly every RAW developer software struggles to achieve as much detail and rich color as the camera or Olympus Master/Studio. The problem with their software is that IQ is the only department where it shines but the point is that other RAW developers just might not invest the amount of effort needed to profile these cameras (as you can see by DxO Optics who took nearly 3 years 🤓 to support the E-510) so take my IQ opinions with the necessary grain of salt if you are a Canikon owner.
    Another thing that Ben got me thinking is that Bibble support (mostly through the forum community) is amazing considering the size of their team. 😄
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