How Lightroom® has Phase®d Out the Competition
UPDATE: It was brought to our attention that there was an error in our evaluation process. Astute people pointed out that we were using an incorrect color profile within Capture One. (You can see for yourself in the C1 white balance panel screenshots.) So, we ran the test again with the problem corrected. See after the jump what our revised conclusion is.
We just thought we’d post a quick little article, in response to a recent shoot, about how much better Lightroom is at processing files than Capture One Pro. As always, the proof is in the images, so we took the same file, ran it through each program spending a similar amount of time on color corrections etc., and here are the results.
1,2,3,4…Tell me which one you love more.
Image #1 was processed through Lightroom and images #2 and #3 through Capture One 3.7.7. The first Capture One image was set to keep the hair tint neutral and the second was set to keep the skin tint neutral. It was not possible to acheive a neutral tint throughout the whole image similar to the Lightroom processing.
Remember, we don’t just do this for fun. As a company, Image Mechanics strives to give our clients the best possible image in the least amount of time and Lightroom has been the backbone of our workflow for the past year. So what do you think? Which image would you rather deliver to a client at the end of a long day? In addition to the fact that each Lightroom-processed TIFF took a mere 6 seconds to output as opposed to 45 seconds apiece for Capture One! Needless to say, I think it’s pretty obvious.
It all boils down to the fact that you can save yourself countless hours of retouching, tweaking and processing by using the best tool for the job from the start. That isn’t to say that Capture One isn’t an idiot proof program.. um, I mean… keep using it everyone! It sure does make us look good!
The next page includes the settings which we applied to the file in each program.
Lightroom
Phase #1 Green-tinted, Color Balance Panel
Phase #1 Green-tinted, Exposure Panel
Phase #2 Magenta-tinted, Color Balance Panel
Phase #2 Magenta-tinted, Exposure Panel
ADDENDUM
Now, here are the images again. The first one is the same Lightroom file, and the second is a new C1 file rendered with the correct color profile (Phase One P 45+ Portrait Natural.icm).
We stand by our original conclusion. Even with the appropriate profile selected, the results do not differ substantially. Did we mention that we spent over 20 minutes tweaking the image in C1 to get a good result? (Compared to 20 seconds in Lightroom). Even ignoring the visual results of this test, the bottom line, as we see it, is this:
- Lightroom gives you far more (and far more intuitive) control over achieving the visual look that you want to obtain. A color profile is just a starting point; some people think some profiles look better than others by default, but you’re inexorably going to want to make changes from there. How easy and efficient is it to make those changes in C1 compared to Lightroom? (Compare the two programs’ adjustment tools).
- Lightroom reads and processes Phase, Canon and Leaf files. As digital techs, we regularly need to deal with all three systems depending on the photographer’s preferences. Rather than constantly cope with each system’s proprietary quirks and flaws, we have a tool that can reliably do it all. This equates to a more efficient workflow which means a better experience for our clients, and that is, in our opinion, the most important quality.
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One Response to “How Lightroom® has Phase®d Out the Competition”
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April 10th, 2008 at 8:08 am
I ditched C1 8 months ago for LR, hated LR at first, but could never go back to that roach C1-thanks for confirmation.