gno2 wrote:
That's interesting. I checked it out a few months ago and talked with a nearby Phase One reseller. You're not going to believe this: He told me that if I wanted something similar to Aperture, I should go with Lightroom, not his own product. He was a really nice guy and seemed to know what he was talking about, and didn't want to lead me in the wrong direction. I was a little dis-heartened because is C1 Pro looked so nice. I told him that we have one huge library archive that we manage with Aperture. He said that C1 Pro works better for many different smaller projects - maybe more for professional photographers. He said it is not as good as a large digital asset archive, like would be the case for a family photo archive.
First of all, Capture One recently released Version 9, which added some missing functionality for managing bigger databases (esp. around keywording), so he may have been referring to an earlier version.
I think I understand where his comment may have been coming from. Both Aperture and Lightroom have been going side-by-side for so many years and have been leapfrogging each other in functionality, so the impression may be that they are both more equal than compared to C1. They are in a sense when it comes to having the DAM aspect of the application in the center of things and having everything else, developing, printing, sharing etc. attached to it.
In terms of pure DAM, in my opinion Aperture is still king and better than anything else out there. Lightroom is close but still has a lot of shortcomings. C1 lacks in this area but if you take a close look into it, you will find out that Phase One has added a LOT of functionality over the last two version releases (8 and 9) and is beginning to further implement functionality from iView Media Pro (which they acquired some years ago). At the end of the day, there is not really THAT much missing in C1. The basics are all there. Again, Apple set the bar pretty high in that area, so you'll have to adapt in some way.
One of the main issues for example I always had with Lightroom is that it is almost comically fixated on the folder structure in the finder. There is no way to have your assets "managed" by Lightroom, you will always have to do it outside and reference the files. You can't stack images which are placed across different folders in the finder (think about that for a moment) and so on. C1 is the only tool out there besides Aperture, which lets you choose if you want your images referenced or managed. It has basically the same functionality like Aperture: just throw your images into the application and have it handle it the way you have it set up in the beginning.
Similar to Aperture there is no "module" like interface. You can do anything to your image at any point in time.
Where C1 really shines and where it is LIGHTYEARS ahead of Lightroom is the customisation of the interface. It goes even further than Aperture here. You can set up several workspaces and choose between them. You can place any tool at any place on your screen(s), like the HUD in Aperture but for every single adjustment panel inside it. In Lightroom you can't even switch the side of the adjustment panel! It's always on the right. If you are left handed, bad luck. You can't use a dual monitor setup in any USEFUL way (it has dual monitor support, but just go ahead and try it....it's a joke) etc.
Sounds like you are very happy with C1 Pro. Do you think it would work for a single large archive?
I have currently 30.000 RAW files in a single C1 catalog and have no big issues with it. It is in no way as fast and nifty as Aperture (which really screamed in the end with Version 3), but I accept all the shortcomings because of the absolutely superior image quality for my Canon RAW files.
I spent a good part of three months of my life testing both Lightroom and C1 Pro side by side and wrote down every single bit of pro's and con's I could find. In the end the image conversions of C1 where THAT MUCH BETTER than both LR and Aperture, that it was no brainer.