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Fast-track guide from Lightroom to Capture One Pro

There are numerous great reasons to make the switch from Adobe Lightroom to Capture One Pro, like the powerful tethering and session workflow or the superior color editing features. Luckily, there is no reason to worry about it being a time-consuming transition, because many key concepts are very familiar. With this two-part fast-track guide, you will learn about the most important differences and be ready to enjoy Capture One Pro from day one.

In the grand scheme of things, Capture One Pro and Lightroom work the same. All changes to your images are done non-destructively by saving the edits in a database and keeping track of where your original photos are stored. This familiarity makes it easy to import your existing Lightroom catalog into a new Capture One Pro-native catalog so that you can continue to work on your image collection right away.

Importing your Lightroom catalog is easy.

Just select File > Import Catalog > Lightroom Catalog…. Capture One Pro will import key metadata like Rating, Color Label, Keywords and IPTC data and some basic image editing like White Balance, Exposure and Saturation.

Working with a Session instead of a Catalog.

Unlike Lightroom, you also have the option of working with a Session instead of a Catalog. Sessions is the preferred workflow for a lot of photographers when working on a project, because a Session by default comes with a portable and autonomous folder structure.

The key advantage is that everything from captured images to exported files are kept within the same main folder, and since all edits are stored in a database, you can import a Session into your main Catalog. That way you get the best of the fast Session workflow and the grand portfolio overview of the Catalog. It is also worth mentioning that you can have more than just one Catalog or Session open at any given time, giving you full flexibility.

Customize to your heart’s content

The biggest change that you will experience as a former Lightroom user is arguably the user interface. Gone are the different modules like Library and Develop where you can only do specific things. In Capture One Pro you have the freedom to do everything you want to do on the selected images because all Tools can be used at any given time.

Think of the way Photoshop is handling things with a toolbar and several selectable panels, and you get the idea. In Capture One Pro, panels are called Tools, and they are grouped in several Tabs to keep them organized.

If you want to get a quick and smooth transition, Phase One has built a Workplace that will make you feel right at home as a former Lightroom user. Just select Window > Workspace > Migration.

Feeling right at home with the Migration Workspace

Feeling right at home with the Migration Workspace

The cool thing to keep in mind about Capture One Pro is that all the Tools can be moved around as you wish. This gives you the possibility to set up a Tab with only those Tools you use the most. For example, you might want to move the White Balance Tool to the top of the Exposure Tab to mimic the way Lightroom is setup. Just right-click within a given Tab to add or remove Tools. It gets even better than that, because you can open any Tool as a floating palette, just go to Window and Create Floating Tool – or simply drag any Tool out from the Tool Tab.

A floating Tool gives you precise control over subtle adjustments.

A floating Tool gives you precise control over subtle adjustments.

This can be an extremely useful feature, because any Tool can be sized larger. Just imagine working with the precise control a bigger Curve Tool or Color Editor Tool will grant you. The flexibility also gives you the option to have more than one version of the same Tool open, so you can, for example, have access to the Red, Green and Blue channels on the Curve Tool or Levels Tool simultaneously. As a nice little bonus, you can choose to place the Tabs with Tools in either the left or right side of the screen. You find that option in the View Menu, which will also show you the shortcut keys to show and hide the Browser and the Viewer amongst other commands.

Save the Workspace that suits you.

Save the Workspace that suits you.

Once you can have customized Capture One Pro to your liking, you should take advantage of the ability to save your personal workspace under Window > Workspace.

One last, but very nice feature, is the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts. So, if you have trouble giving up on certain shortcuts from the Lightroom days, you might want to check whether those can be applied to an equivalent command in Capture One Pro.

Organize and sorting

By default, Capture One Pro always has the Viewer window open, so if you want to have the equivalent to the grid of thumbnails in the Library module from Lightroom, just hide it by pressing Alt + Command + V on the Mac or Alt + Control + V on Windows.

You need to be aware that Capture One Pro does not use the Pick or Reject commands, so it is recommended to use Color Tags instead. Most use Green for Pick and Red for Reject.

Another minor difference that might confuse people coming from Lightroom is that Capture One Pro doesn’t differentiate between an original imported file and a Virtual Copy of it – all images are called a Variant. They are the same, the wording is just different. When you want to create a virtual copy in Capture One Pro, you can either create a New Variant (without any adjustments) or a Clone Variant that copies all the adjustments from the selected image.

A Project needs an Album to contain images.

A Project needs an Album to contain images.

You have the same ability to organize your images in Album and Smart Album under User Collections in the Library Tab. The Project feature needs a bit of an explanation, however. It is a sort of a container that you create when you want to limit any search and filtering to images that are contained within that specific Project. Note that it cannot hold any images itself, you must create an Album or Smart Album first it put your collection into. Otherwise you can use a Group if you just want to organize many Albums.

There is one cool feature that you don’t want to miss out on when you are doing your initial assessment of your images. If you select View > Show Focus Mask, Capture One Pro will analyze the images and mark the areas in focus with a color. This will make it a breeze to reject those photos that are out of focus.

At first glance, the ability to filter through your collection of images based on metadata might seem a bit limited with the Filters Tool. Don’t despair, as there actually are a long list of filter options to choose from.

 

 

Adding additional Filters.

Adding additional Filters.

Just click on the three dots, select Show/Hide Filters… and mark any criteria that you want to add to the Filters tool. If you want to select more than one criteria in the Filters Tool – like a certain star rating from a certain date – just hold down Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) to enable several simultaneously.

Likewise, the Advanced Search dialogue box has a very large list of search criteria that makes it easy to narrow down exactly what you’re looking for. A very convenient feature that you should know about is the ability to create a Smart Album based on the chosen search criteria, or an Album based on the selected images right from the dialogue box.

The Compare View and Survey View from Lightroom are straightforward to enable. If you select more than one image, they will all be displayed in the Viewer. It can display up to eleven photos at once.

Taking advantage of the Next Set feature.

Taking advantage of the Next Set feature.

A nice little feature is that you can select, for example, four images and move to the next set of four images by selecting Edit > Select Next set. That is very handy way of assessing many images. If you instead want to select one favorite image to compare other candidates against, you simply select Edit > Set as Compare Variant.

Adjustments, Presets and Styles

Capture One Pro has the same expansive ability as Lightroom to copy metadata and image adjustments from one image to several other images. But there are a couple of subtle differences you need to know. The most important one is that you need to enable the option Edit All Selected Variants in order to make adjustments to all of the selected images and not only the primary selected image. You do this by either selecting Edit > Edit All Selected Variants, or by clicking on the Edit Selected variants icon so it turns orange.

Need to know: The Edit Selected Variants Toggle.

Need to know: The Edit Selected Variants Toggle.

If you want to copy the Adjustments from a certain Tool, you click on small double arrow on top row. You then click Apply to copy the selected adjustments to the other images.

Copying specific Adjustments.

Copying specific Adjustments.

If you instead want to copy adjustments from several Tools, then click on Copy and they will be transferred to the Adjustment Clipboard which is probably more familiar to you as a Lightroom user. Under the Adjustments Tab you can select which Adjustments you want to copy, and then hit Apply to copy them all to the selected images.

You also have the option to save certain adjustments for later use, but it’s important to note that Capture One Pro distinguishes between Presets and Styles. A Preset is saved per Tool, while you can think of a Style as a collection of several Presets.

Saving a User Preset or choosing a Built-In.

If you want to save the adjustments from a Tool, just click on the three lines icon and choose Save User Preset…. In the same sub-menu, you will also find built-in Presets depending on the Tool in question.

In Part II of the Fast track guide from Lightroom to Capture One Pro, we will look at all the key differences there are regarding image editing. You’ll also get a few tips on how to get the best out of some of the most interesting Tools on Capture One Pro.

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Switching to Capture One Pro

NOTE: This article discusses an outdated version of Capture One. To learn more about our latest version, click here.

For the past 6 months, I’ve been using Capture One Pro by Phase One as my RAW converter and image editing software. In this article, I am going to share How I switch from Lightroom to Capture One Pro. I won’t cover Why as many others have already covered this topic (see resource links at end).

With a long career in IT as my background, I put together a transition plan to assist me in moving to Capture One Pro. I’ve simplified the transition plan down to 4 Transition Stages and 2 Post-Transition Activities to help others interested in switching to Capture One Pro.

Disclosure: Since I am a Windows PC user (Microsoft Surface Book and Surface Studio computers), all my workspaces, keyboards shortcuts, etc. reference the Windows version of Capture One Pro.

Stage 1 – Mapping Out Workflow

My process began by reviewing my existing workflow (Figure 1) with the workflow pipeline Sascha Erni covers in his book: Capture One Pro 9:  Mastering Raw Development, Image Processing, and Asset Management (Figure 2).

Figure 1 – My high-level view workflow mapped to Lightroom Modules

Figure 1 – My high-level view workflow mapped to Lightroom Modules

Figure 2 - Overview of Sascha Erni's workflow pipeline using Capture One

Figure 2 – Overview of Sascha Erni’s workflow pipeline using Capture One

With a high-level alignment of workflows, I decided to follow Sascha’s detailed workflow pipeline as my Capture One Pro workflow.

Before setting up the Capture One Pro catalog, importing images, and beginning to process the images, I wanted to make sure my Lightroom catalog was in order. I didn’t have to do anything with my raw images because I was going to use my established raw file structure and location.

Stage 2 – Clean Up (Catalog Images, Keywords, Collections, and Metadata)

With almost 10 years of Lightroom usage and significant development in my photographic knowledge, I took advantage of this change to revisit my Lightroom image catalog and clean it up before switching.

Catalog Images

I separated out 9 years’ worth of my family and son’s soccer photos to their own Lightroom catalogs and chose not to bring them into COP. Instead I would only bring over to Capture One Pro my fine art landscape, travel and street photographs.

Keywords

They have never been a strength of mine and my keyword list showed it. There wasn’t any structure to my keywords, inconsistency in keywords usage, redundant words, and misspelled keywords.  Within Lightroom, I eliminated all unused keywords, fixed spelling errors, removed duplicates, and set up a hierarchical keyword structure based on Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. I exported the resultant keywords to a text file. With a text editor, I separated it into individual Keyword Library files to be imported into Capture One Pro (Figure 3) during Stage 3.

Figure 3 - My Keyword Libraries

Figure 3 – My Keyword Libraries

Collections

I cleaned up my Lightroom collections – rearranging and putting in place a simpler organization that I’d carry forward within Capture One Pro.  I arranged my collections in these groupings: Trips, Workshops, Deerfield Beach, Copyright, Portfolio, Prints, and Misc.

Metadata

The last clean-up activity within Lightroom was to make sure all metadata had been saved to xmp files (Ctrl+S). Using Lightroom’s Metadata Status Library Filter, I kept saving metadata to the sidecar files until the status ‘has been changed’ showed zero.

With my Lightroom catalog in order, it was time to configure and customize Capture One Pro.

Stage 3 – Configure and Customize Capture One Pro

Because I had been using Lightroom and its catalog structure, I decided Capture One Pro’s catalog would be my primary file organization structure. I set up a catalog, created user collections to match those established during Stage 2, and imported my keyword libraries. With a common foundation configured in Capture One Pro, it was time to customize Capture One Pro to help me easily transition.

Like learning a second language, you initially translate between the two languages. The same happened for me as I moved from Lightroom to Capture One Pro – I needed to learn the new Capture One Pro “language” compared to Lightroom’s “language”. Capture One Pro’s flexible user interface facilitated the translation by allowing me to create my own workspace. I set up a workspace that enabled me to mimic my Lightroom workflow as much as possible (Figure 4).

Figure 4 - My Lightroom-like workspace and workflow map

Figure 4 – My Lightroom-like workspace and workflow map

I arranged the Tool Tabs (columns depicted a Tab) with the Tools listed within each Tab/column. I color-coded them to show their equivalent Lightroom Module – assisting my transition.  My workflow went from left to right column and from top to bottom within each column. I moved Tool Tabs to the right side as most of Lightroom’s tools are located on the right side (Figure 5).

Figure 5 - My Lightroom workspace

Figure 5 – My Lightroom workspace

Since keyboard shortcuts are completely customizable within Capture One Pro, I printed out both Lightroom’s and Capture One Pro’s default keyboard shortcuts, created a tabular cheat sheet and began customizing Capture One Pro’s shortcuts to mimic Lightroom’s shortcuts. Testing them along the way, I settled on my own custom keyboards shortcuts for Windows (Figure 6).

Now I was ready to begin importing images and using Capture One Pro to process my photos.

Figure 6 - My keyboard shortcut list for Windows

Figure 6 – My keyboard shortcut list for Windows

Stage 4 – Importing and Processing Images

I had decided early on not to move all my existing images to Capture One Pro but instead (a) all new images would go directly into Capture One Pro catalog and (b) over time I would move existing Lightroom images into the Capture One Pro catalog when I worked on them. While this might not be a clean-cut shift away from Lightroom, I felt it was the right approach for me. I wanted to really focus using Capture One Pro on my new photos and not risk previous processing work.

With new images, I followed my workflow for import, selection, process, and output.

When transferring existing Lightroom images to Capture One Pro, I performed the following tasks:

Within Lightroom:

  • Create a new collection of images to be moved into Capture One Pro
  • Confirm Keywords and Metadata are correct
  • Export all Lightroom virtual copies and processed images as a TIFF appending ‘Lightroom’ to its filename, then import into the new collection
  • Export the new collection as a ‘new’ Lightroom catalog that I’ll use for importing into Capture One Pro (I don’t include the negative files since I’ve kept the same raw file structure and location)
  • Backup ‘old’ Lightroom catalog and open ‘new’ Lightroom catalog
  • Verify images I want to import into Capture One Pro are part of the ‘new’ Lightroom catalog
  • Backup up the ‘new’ Lightroom catalogs while existing Lightroom

Within Capture One Pro:

  • Open Capture One Pro and import the ‘new’ Lightroom catalog into it
  • Verify all images were imported into the Capture One Pro catalog
  • Confirm and cleanup keyword and/or metadata that might not have transferred correctly
  • Align images to appropriate Capture One Pro user collections
  • Backup Capture One Pro catalog

Once I confirmed the images were in Capture One Pro and backed up, I’d remove them from my ‘old’ Lightroom catalog and delete the ‘new’ Lightroom catalog and collection created for importing to Capture One Pro.  Sometimes I have to reset the image adjustments in Capture One Pro if all of my Lightroom adjustments didn’t transfer adequately or the image doesn’t look good.

Now that I’m using Capture One Pro for all new photos, I continue to do the following two activities:

Continuous Education

While using Capture One Pro, I continue to attend Phase One Webinars, re-watch older tutorials and webinars, monitor the Phase One Blog, re-visit Sascha Enri’s book, and seek out other Capture One Pro users for more tips, tricks, and insights. At the bottom of the article, I have links to resources I found helpful in my education and transition to Capture One Pro.

Working on images and continuously learning about Capture One Pro, helps me identify ways to refine and update my workflow.

Refine and Update Workflow

As I become comfortable with Capture One Pro, I make minor tweaks to my workflow and enhancements to my workspace. In January, after upgrading to Capture One Pro 10 and attending the new Webinars, I updated my workflow map and tool tab layout to reflect my Capture One Pro workflow.

Figure 7 and 8 show my latest workflow and workspace.

Figure 7 - My Capture One Pro 10 workflow

Figure 7 – My Capture One Pro 10 workflow

Figure 8 - My Capture One Pro workspace

Figure 8 – My Capture One Pro workspace

Summary

I am very pleased that I switched to Capture One Pro. I did not find Capture One hard to learn – the Webinar and Tutorials put out by the Phase One team are brilliant and extremely helpful.  These webinars were the tipping point for me – enabling me to transition to Capture One Pro. Sascha Enri’s book has been invaluable. My copy is filled with highlights, scribbles, and tab markers while sitting next to my computer.

You can download:

  • The workspace overview PDF [here] and workspace (for Windows) [here]
  • The windows keyboard shortcut overview PDF [here] and keyboard shortcut list (for Windows) [here]

For windows users:  copy workspace xml file to:

{drive:\Users\username\AppData\Local\CaptureOne\Workspaces}

and copy the keyboard xml file to:

{drive:\Users\username\AppData\Local\CaptureOne\CustomCommands}

Before you switch over to Capture One, I highly recommend you check out these resource links.

Resource Links:

Cameron Davidson Blog has a big list of links relative to Capture One

My Playlist of Capture One videos worth watching

Capture One Training and Support:

Capture One Pro Learning Hub

Book

Capture One Pro 9: Mastering Raw Development, Image Processing, and Asset Management by Sascha Enri

Blogs, Podcasts, and other Tips

Capture One Blog

Bob DeLellis – check out his YouTube video

Image Alchemist

Martin Bailey

Cameron Davidson (http://camerondavidson.com)

Presets & Styles:

Hdr-photographer.com

Image Alchemist

Capture One Styles

COPStyles

Digital Transitions

 

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Workspace: Personal

Nearly everyone has their own take on the “perfect” workspace and so far, I am sure this blog series has demonstrated that.

My changes to the default workspace are simple, but enough for me to be able to navigate in a way that I think is more logical.

Here are my recommended steps:

  • Remove the Capture tool tab as I rarely shoot tethered (simply right-click on the Tab and choose Remove XXX tab)
  • I always adjust Exposure and White balance first, so I move the Exposure tool tab in before the Color tool tab. If you hover over the Tool Tabs, a tool tip shows you need to press the modifier key to move them.  For the Mac, it’s a Cmd and drag.
  • In the Exposure tool tab, I add the White Balance tool by right-clicking on the tab and choosing Add Tool.
  • Next, I rearrange the order of tools in the Exposure tool tab to what you see in the screen grab.

Other than that, I am pretty much on the default. I quite often hide the Viewer Labels (View>Hide Viewer Labels) as I find them distracting. The Labels are the metadata indicators at the bottom of the image in the viewer.

Finally, I tend to have Proof View turned on (circled in the screen shot) as I like a little more space around the image for viewing.

David's Default Workspace

Download my Workspace

Mac:

Download my workspace for Mac here.

To install it, follow these simple steps:

  • Close Capture One Pro (if open)
  • Open Finder
  • Open the ‘Go to Folder…’ dialog (CMD + Shift + G)
  • Insert path: ~/Library/Application Support/Capture One/
  • Click ‘Go’
    • If you previously have created a custom workspace, go to ‘Workspaces’ folder.
    • If not, create a new folder and name it ‘Workspaces’.
  • Copy workspace file (.plist) to this folder
  • Start Capture One Pro
  • Select the new workspace from Window -> Workspace…
Windows:

Download my workspace for Windows here.

To install it, follow these simple steps:

  • Close Capture One Pro (if open)
  • Open Explorer
  • Go to /*user*/AppData/Local/CaptureOne/
    • If you previously have created a custom workspace, go to ‘Workspaces’ folder.
    • If not, create a new folder and name it ‘Workspaces’.
  • Copy workspace file (.xml) to this folder
  • Start Capture One Pro
  • Select the new workspace from Window -> Workspace…

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Workspace: Wedding

My wedding workflow is all about fine-tuning individual images and copying adjustments across many images. Capture One Pro offers the full range of tools in the default workspace, which can be overwhelming. Removing unwanted tools from the workspace helps ease the eye and strengthen focus. Re-designing the interface and assigning custom keyboard shortcuts also have their benefits.

Tools

  1.  The first thing I would remove for a wedding workspace is the Capture Tab. You don’t shoot tethered, so why have it take up space? Right Click > Remove Capture Tab.
  2.  Remove histogram from Exposure tab. It’s already present in Color Tab, and I don’t need it both places. In fact, clean up by removing all tools you don’t expect to use. For e.g. LCC Tool.
  3.  Move White Balance from Color Tab to Exposure Tab. I use that along with the other exposure tools all the time in wedding editing.
  4.  Create a custom tool tab; right click a tool tab > Add Tool Tab > Custom Tool Tab. Fill this up with three Color Balance Tools, allowing you to have Shadow, Midtone and Highlight open at the same time. Remove the original Color Balance Tool from Color Tab.

Keyboard shortcuts

My single most used custom keyboard shortcut is for the viewer:

Cmd + 1: Toggle Proof Margin – I often like to have some space around my image. I have changed this to 70 pixels in the Preferences.

The rest are memorized default shortcuts, mostly for cursor tools and copy/apply. 

Interface

Hiding viewer labels and the viewer toolbar quickly cleans up the workspace. In fact, I also hide the general Toolbar as well as Browser Toolbar (remember to memorize keyboard shortcuts, otherwise this might be tricky). The browser is to the right. All of this is done from ‘View’.

I also change the viewer background to white. Having to evaluate exposure on many shots for a bright white dress needs a good reference when editing, and a pure white background with a proof margin simply works wonders. All this leaves me with a clean, effective workspace with plenty of room for the image in focus and relevant tools at hand.

Read more about a full wedding workflow in this blogpost.

Download my Workspace

Mac:

Download my workspace for Mac here.

Installation guide for Mac:

  • Close Capture One Pro (if open)
  • Open Finder
  • Open the ‘Go to Folder…’ dialog (CMD + Shift + G)
  • Insert path: ~/Library/Application Support/Capture One/
  • Click ‘Go’
    • If you previously have created a custom workspace, go to ‘Workspaces’ folder.
    • If not, create a new folder and name it ‘Workspaces’.
  • Copy workspace file (.plist) to this folder
  • Start Capture One Pro
  • Select the new workspace from Window -> Workspace…
Windows: 

Download my workspace for Windows here.

Installation guide for Windows:

  • Close Capture One Pro (if open)
  • Open Explorer
  • Go to /*user*/AppData/Local/CaptureOne/
    • If you previously have created a custom workspace, go to ‘Workspaces’ folder.
    • If not, create a new folder and name it ‘Workspaces’.
  • Copy workspace file (.xml) to this folder
  • Start Capture One Pro
  • Select the new workspace from Window -> Workspace…

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