Technology Corner
by Julio Palleiro

Lightroom or Capture One?

A few short years ago, before the commercial photography industry made a near complete conversion to digital capture, there was film. Film processing requires great attention to temperature, time, and choice of chemicals. In today's digital age, Raw processing takes just as much attention to detail if not more.

For several years the industry leading Phase One's Capture One software has been uncontested... until last year's release of Adobe Lightroom. Adobe is best known for leading the creative digital world in almost every category. For over a year, Rich Imaging has experimented with both Capture One and Lightroom and have made Adobe's latest Photoshop companion our RAW processor of choice.

Lightroom is a full workflow application and has many advantages over Capture One in this regard. However, because our concentration at Rich Imaging is post-production, we generally focus on Lightroom’s developing prowess. Lightroom's developing module is based on Adobe's Camera Raw, which is included with Photoshop but lacks some of Lightroom’s advanced features and is confined to a small dialogue box.

So Why Lightoom?
First off, it's an Adobe application. In Lightroom's first year, Adobe released FOUR major updates. Software is Adobe's bread and butter, and they know it very well.

Second, Lightroom has a more intuitive interface and added controls. Capture One has been the workhorse in processing for several years; it is powerful and simple to use. However, Lightroom's added color specific controls gives Rich Imaging the extra flexibility we prefer. We also happen to like the layout and its customizability.

Third, Lightoom has a vast RAW support. As of yet, there is no standard RAW format. Capture One supports a few dozen standard RAW formats. Lightroom supports over 150 formats!

Lightroom gives us at Rich Imaging, Inc. just what we need to process beautiful RAW images and deliver final work with that extra Rich Imaging attention.

April 2008

newsletter links
home
inside the big lie
technology corner
spotlight
archives

main site links
home
client access
about
client list
news
portfolio
contact

artist links
bert monroy
anne-louis girodet