10. Stability
Capture One Pro 8 is one of the most stable releases of Capture One ever. I tried to cause it to crash. I pushed it on new computers, and pushed it on older computers – Sessions AND Catalogs are more stable than ever.
9. Better HDR quality
The new Capture One Pro 8 color engine takes an already impressive HDR tool and makes it even better. It’s hard to quantify exactly what happens, but the localized contrast in corrected areas look more natural than in previous releases.
8. Session / Catalog Templates
We all like to set up our sessions a certain way with our own rating and filtering systems. My top picks are usually rated 5-Stars with a green color tag. Now with Session & Catalog templates, I can always have a smart album for 5-Star Green images, as well as a standard set of shooting sub folders automatically created with each new session. This is a killer time-saver!
7. More Robust Scripting
I’ve always been wired to put a little more effort in the short term to save me time down the road. Capture One Pro 8 has expanded their scripting abilities and options way above previous versions with new additions such as camera selection, abilities to call scripts when quitting live view or a batch of images finish processing, further processing controls.
6. Repair/Clone Layers
We’ve all tried to use the spot removal tool on a power line… admit it. Now you can fix those and other pesky things without having to take it to Photoshop. Rather than point and click a spot selection 100 times, you can select an area to clone or heal from (just like in Photoshop), and brush in the goodness.
5. Target Curves
You say “toe-may-toe” I say “toe-mah-toe.” You use Levels, I use Curves. Now you have the ability to do more with the curves tool than before, including the ability to change target highlight and shadow values. This gives you even more control over the look and feel for your images.
4. Film Grain
I’ve been a die-hard fan of Nik(Google) Silver Efex Pro 2 for a very long time. I loved the look and control it have, as well as the film grain it produced. Since I started beta testing Capture One Pro 8, I haven’t used it once. With the expanded adjustment controls it offers, and the extremely realistic film grain tool, I have recreated my favorite Silver Efex looks as Styles for use Capture One. The advantage here is now the adjustments are working with the raw files instead of a processed file, ensuring I am getting the absolute best image quality.
3. Original Crop Ratio
I like math, but I hated always trying to figure out what the correct image ratio was for the particular camera I was using. This is a severely missing feature of Capture One Pro in the past. Now you have the ability to crop to the Original ratio with no math involved! Hurray!
2. Local White Balance
Local Adjustments got a big bump in Capture One Pro 8 as well. There were several new options added in, but the ability to locally adjust the white balance using adjustment layers makes me very, very happy.
1. Local HDR
Just like Local White Balance, let the people rejoice that Capture One Pro 8 now includes an easy option for localized HDR. Partnering with the Gradient mask tool you have a quick and easy combination for fixing a sky, evening out a washed out scene, or bring up shadows in the foreground. It just makes it so easy now.
There are so many more features in Capture One Pro 8 to talk about, but these are my top ten favorite features for now. Keep checking out blog for more, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us!