On1 Photo Raw

[PDBreske]

New member here, but I joined after downloading and using the ON1 software for the past two days and wanted to share my views on this app vs Capture One Pro 10.

 

I've been using Capture One for less than a year after having to switch from my beloved Aperture. I used Aperture since its release in 2005 and was dreading the day I would need to give it up. (Damn you, Apple, for killing one of the best applications I've ever used!) Anyway, Capture One has what I consider probably the finest RAW engine available, but the limitations of the software are killing me. The asset management is horrifyingly bad and there are many tales of people losing access to their entire database of photos after something as simple as a crash of the app. (This happened to me ... several times.)

 

Someone suggested ON1 Photo RAW and I downloaded the trial version. So far, I'm pressed with the app, though it does have some limitations of its own. 

 

I opened the same RAW file in both apps and placed them side-by-side on my iMac's screen. Then I snapped screenshots as I worked in each app. At the end, I exported from each app to a 16-bit uncompressed TIFF. For sharing purposes here, I exported those from Apple's Preview app to full quality JPEGs so there would be no possible difference in the JPEG compression. At the end of this post, I'll link to the full resolution JPEG files so you can download them for your own perusal.

 

Upon opening the file, each app shows a very different version based on their respective RAW engines (Capture One on left; ON1 Photo RAW on right):

(Click me for full-size image)

 

Turning on the app's respective clipping features show just how much work we need to do:

(Click me for full-size image)

 

After a few adjustments to get the image looking normal in each app, we have this. No color adjustments so far:

(Click me for full-size image)

 

They look okay, but zooming in reveals some weird green halo issues around the white water tank in the ON1 image:

(Click me for full-size image)

 

I did away with ON1's main Tone & Color adjustments and used a Tone Enhancer filter with a Luminosity Mask in the Effects module. This may be ON1's greatest advantage for editing complex images as I could easily apply the toning to only the overexposed parts of the image without difficult manual masking. It mostly cleared up the green halos. At this point, I also applied the best available sharpening in each app. I turned up Capture One's halo suppression to 100 and used ON1's shadow protection in that app's Sharpening filter module. Capture One's sharpening is clearly superior, but ON1 is not far behind:

(Click me for full-size image)

 

Sharpening examples:

(Click me for full-size image)

 

Next, I tried to exactly match each image to the other using the respective color and effects adjustments. ON1 here is vastly better than Capture One, as it has just a better array of adjustable elements and masks. It was much easier for me to make ON1's image look like Capture One's than it was to make Capture One's look like ON1.

(Click me for full-size image)

 

This is the end result. You can see in the full-size images that Capture One has better noise reduction; ON1's noise is blotchy and leads to messy exports. If, like me, you use something like Silver Efex Pro for black and white conversions, you'll want clean files to work with. On the other hand, ON1 has a very efficient workflow and doesn't rely on a proprietary catalog to store photos. I love that. For now, I think ON1 is good, but I can't justify spending the money for a license when Capture One's output is just that much better. Lately I've been making some pretty big prints (forty-eight inches on the long edge), so I really do need all the resolution I can get, and Capture One gives me that. When ON1 catches up with the few missing features, maybe I will be able to overlook its RAW engine shortcomings, but not yet. 

(Click me for Capture One full-size image - 25.5MB)  (Click me for ON1 Photo RAW full-size image - 25.1MB)