[Leica] Capture One - the road less followed?

[Peter Klein]

Douglas:  What John says is correct, but there's a loophole.  You can 
still get a perpetual license for Capture One. It costs more than you 
will like. However, if you buy a perpetual license, you can use that 
version for as long as you want, providing your hardware and OS will 
support it.

Are you are the type who likes to get regular fixes and enhancements? 
Are you lured by the prospect of ever-smarter so-called AI tools for 
removing Comrade Outov Favoroff from photos of last year's May Day 
parade? Then going the Adobe subscription route makes more sense. But it 
you like Capture One and are OK with the version you have, a perpetual 
license can also make sense. Just upgrade every 3-5 years rather than 
every time they dangle a shiny new thing, which may not always be so 
shiny once you dig into it.

That's what I'm doing. I've used Capture One since it came free with my 
M8. I stayed with it because it did what I needed, and it kept me out of 
Adobe's "pay forever" model. Then recently, Capture One went to that 
same model. Many users  regarded this as a blatant betrayal (as did I) 
but hey, that's business. I fooled with both Darktable and Raw Therapee 
(open source alternatives), and decided it made more sense to stick with 
my old, perpetually licensed Capture One version 20. I think it's about 
five years old now.  I've invested a lot of time and knowledge in 
Capture One that I'd rather not throw away, even if their business 
practices offend me.

If the next version has a real improvement over v. 20, I'll probably 
upgrade and use that for the next few years. I'd rather do that than 
have to learn a less convenient and capable open source program. Or be 
assimilated by the Borg, I mean Adobe, and still have to relearn 
everything anyway.

OTOH, if you're already familiar with Adobe's tools and way of doing 
things, and are comfortable with them, then maybe just subscribing to 
Adobe makes sense. I did a sobering exercise recently, involving how 
much each software package would cost over my likely remaining lifetime. 
For those of us "of a certain age," the differences are not so great no 
matter what we do. So it makes sense to think about the value of your 
experience, skill and affinity with a particular product.

One Fuji-specific wrinkle is that Capture One has always handled Fuji 
files better than Adobe. Do some Googling to see how much that might 
matter to you.

Hope this helps!
--Peter


> Capture One has gone to the same pricing model (albeit more expensive) as
> Adobe AFAIK.
>
> john
>
> ?On 25/07/2024, 01:15, "LUG on behalf of Douglas Barry"
> <lug-bounces+john=mcmaster.co.uk at leica-users.org on behalf of imra at
> iol.ie> wrote:
>
>      
>      Incidentally, it comes with a free trial
>      of Capture One which I know little about. I use Lightroom 6 and PSE 15
>      which won?t work with the new Fuji raw files. Of course, I could go
>      Adobe monthly, but I?d be interested in hearing what people have to say
>      about the Capture One directional option. Has any one switched to it?
>
>
>      Opinions gratefully received.
>
>      Douglas
>