Capture One 6 - 13 Best Changes

Capture One 6 includes dozens of enhancements and new features. As with any software the new features often get the most publicity, but often some of the smallest tweaks have the greatest impact on day to day usage. After working with betas for both tethered and untethered photoshoots, as well as reediting or reprocessing previous shoots I have compiled a list of the ten best changes, whether they be new features, revised old features, or even minor tweaks.

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“Selects” versus “Move-To”

Before Capture One 6

The Session Folder called “Move To Folder” was a great option to quickly separate “picks” or “selects”. However the name “Move To” was very confusing and non-intuitive to many users.

In Capture One 6

Now this session folder has been renamed “Selects”. This is ONLY a difference in semantics – all the functionality remains the same. The user can still send a file to this folder using the keyboard shortcut Command-J (the “move to command”). But by renaming this folder  more users will find and use this powerful workflow option and “secondary” users such as Art Directors and Assistants will find the folder much more intuitive. Moreover the entire idea of a “selects” folder has been largely superseded by the new “smart album” concept in Capture One 6 (see more later in this list).

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Open and Closed Brackets, [ and ], and right click for Resizing Brushes

Before Capture One 6

The very handy “Spot Removal” tool initially allowed the user to remove dust from one raw file, select the rest of the shoot and quickly remove the dust from all the other frames with a single click. Later “spot” mode which targeted any image content rather than just dust (e.g. for quick removal of a blemish), door knob, or fabric stain. However, the slider to change the size of the brush was located in the tool’s panel which was far away from the image itself.

In Capture One 6

Now the user can use the keyboard shortcuts open and closed brackets, [ and ], to make the brush smaller or larger. Alternatively the user can also right click on the image (with the cursor set to the ‘local adjustment brush’ or ‘spot tool’) and slide the size up or down.

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Instant Import

Before Capture One 6

When importing images from a CF Card (or other media) into a Session the user had to wait for all the preview-thumnbails to be rendered before you could import the entire contents of the card. This was not an issue for small and medium size CF cards, but for owners of, for instance, a 32gb CF card this was torture. Especially for digital techs who may have to import several large CF cards in a row while they are also trying to tag, organize, adjust, and process previous images.

In Capture One 6

The “Import Lll” is now immediately available when the import tool opens, when pushed “Import All” will import all the images/movies on the card regardless of whether the thumbnail has been drawn for them or not.

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Naming/Renaming by ‘Token’

Before Capture One 6

If the user preferred a naming system with an index number BEFORE the job name (so that if the name was truncated on a contact sheet any given image could still be easily identified) there was no ability to do this (easily) in Capture One 4 or 5. There were several very useful presets for naming and renaming in Capture One 6; however if there was no way to use any naming scheme outside of these presets.

In Capture One 6

Capture One 6 includes a very powerful naming and renaming system. Since it is ‘token’ based any variable (such as date, index number, job name, aperture, ISO, etc) can be used in any order. This gives the user complete naming flexibility.

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Import/Capture with Multiple Styles Pre-Applied

Before Capture One 6

One of the most powerful features in Capture One 4/5 was the ability to shoot tethered with a style applied before the image ever appeared on the monitor. By using “Next Capture Adjustments > Defaults With Style” and [Camera > Auto Select New Capture > When Ready] the image would be captured, styled, and then displayed with the style. For photographers with distinctive “looks” to their images this meant they didn’t have to make excuses to the Art Director or Client such as “I know those don’t look like the images you hired me for, but we’ll get the look right in post”.

In Capture One 6

This functionality is extended to importing images from CF Cards and now allows the user to select multiple styles to be stacked together (e.g. “high contrast black and white” stacked with “vignette and clarify”). This also makes it possible to finally use “metadata styles” in a sophisticated way – check back to captureintegration.com soon for a tutorial on using multiple “metadata styles” to allow an easy and powerful metadata workflow.

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Smart Folders for all Session Favorites

Before Capture One 6

The most tedious and time consuming parts of many shoots is editing down the shoot down to a group of “selects”. In Capture One 4 and 5 there were two major facilities for doing this: star-ratings/color-tags and the “Move To” folder (now called the “Selects” folder). The user could easily select-by a given rating or color tag, and could easily move them them to the “Move To” folder. However, for very large shoots it was very time consuming to compare the selects from different parts of the shoot (e.g. from three different models or several different locations), and even more time consuming to bring up one view of all the images from different shot folders.

In Capture One 6

The Smart Folder functionality of Capture One 6 will be extremely useful for digital techs on large shoots.

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Printing

Before Capture One 6

There was no printing capability in Capture One 4 or 5. All printing had to be done by first processing the image and then printing in another program.

In Capture One 6

The printing options in Capture One 6 are world class. The user can print single images or contact sheets (with or without annotation/captions), add watermarks (without effecting the raw file or needing to process the image), mix raws with processed/retouched images, and control print-sharpening, and create PDFs (mac only) all from within Capture One.

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Graphics Card Based Acceleration (a.k.a. Open CL / GPU Acceleration)

Before Capture One 6

While Capture One 4 and 5 did a great job of using multiple cores of the CPU, even on 12-core machines, it was not able to leverage the power of the graphics card.

In Capture One 6

Now many graphics cards are supported for GPU acceleration, including the majority of graphics cards included in most current and recent generation Macs. The (most obvious) result is drastically improved screen refresh times when making adjustments.

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Movie Import/Organize/Viewing

Before Capture One 6

Owners of 5D Mark 2 bodies and other Video Capable dSLRs that shot both video and stills (e.g. at a wedding) could only import the still images from their CF card using Capture One. That meant those users had to either manually find and copy the movies from the CF card or use another program to download their cards – greatly slowing down and complicating their workflow, especially if they were downloading many CF cards at once. Worse, it was possible that if the user didn’t realize Capture One 4/5 only handled raw files and not movie files that they might reformat the card before downloading their movies.

In Capture One 6

When importing from a CF Card (or other location) Capture One 6 now imports movies. Once imported the user can play through the movies (including multiple movies at once – helpful when trying to identify which movie is which), and easily rename and organize movies from within Capture One. While a dedicated application like Final Cut Pro is still where the ‘heavy lifting’ of working with movies will be, the ability to download, view, and organize/rename movies is an extremely welcome workflow enhancement.

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Loupe

Before Capture One 6

To check focus the user had several options including jumping to 100% within the main viewer (i.e. by double clicking with the hand cursor), using the focus tool in the sidebar (i.e. with the focus cursor, keyboard shortcut f), or using the focus mask.

In Capture One 6

One more tool is added for the very important function of checking focus: the on-demand Loupe. The keyboard shortcut ‘p’ changes the cursor to a loupe – simply click on any part of the image and a small loupe’d section of the image will appear with exact 100% detail (including sharpening, noise reduction, lens corrections, clarity etc). The best part is the loupe can also be used on thumbnails! This may be the best option yet for digital techs to check focus on a specific image without interrupting the photographers/art-director’s view of incoming/recent images. Note that this is a CPU intensive tool, so the better your laptop or tower the more useful this tool will be.

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Key Stone / Perspective Correction

Before Capture One 6

All keystone / perspective corrections had to be made by processing the image and then opening in Photoshop.

In Capture One 6

A very intuitive user interface for identifying what should be parallel lines (but are not because the camera was tilted up/down) are easily accessible and easy to batch apply to any number of images. Having Keystone Correction available during tethered shooting also means the user can see immediately how much of the image will be, by necessity, cropped after the keystone correction is applied. This will allow tethered architectural and product photographers to fine tune their composition and lens choice rather than having to guess at how much extra room they need to leave around the subject. While a high quality tilt-shift lens, or better yet a dedicated technical camera are still preferable to any solution based on post-processing, this tool will surely be very useful to a variety of product, architectural, interior, and landscape photographers.

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Applying Styles to More Than One Image

Before Capture One 6

The user could easily apply one or more styles to a particular image. Oddly though the only way to apply a style to a group of images was to first apply the style, then copy/apply the settings the remaining images.

In Capture One 6

Simply select a group of images and select a style. The style will be added to all the selected images.

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Reordering of Process Recipes

Before Capture One 6

The user could easily add or remove a process recipie. However the recipie list was fixed in order – new recipies always went to the bototm of the list. For power users on smaller laptops this was very annoying.

In Capture One 6

Recipes can be easily re-ordered via a simple drag-and-drop. A small touch, but it’s often the small touches that make a program easy, fast, and even enjoyable to work in.

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Full 64 Bit Memory Usage

Before Capture One 6

For power users the 3 gb RAM-limit for memory usage in Capture One 4 and 5 meant Capture One could not access the rest of their 8, 16, or even 32 gb of ram.

In Capture One 6

Running as a 64-bit application allows Capture One 6 to make use of a virtually unlimited amount of ram, meaning far fewer slow downs when working with large volumes of high resolution files.