09 Dec Capture One Pro 12

Capture One Pro 12 is now available for purchase, or download (if you are on a monthly subscription package).  

Along with an update to the general look and feel of the product, they made some really notable changes to the image editing capabilities…some which I think makes it exceed that of Lightroom. 

The most notable change in the addition of luminosity masking capabilities, where the mask will automatically be applied to the image based on a selected luminosity range. In addition to darkening super bright areas of an image, you can also apply the mask to only the darkest part of an image and therefore pull shadow detail from one that section.  This is a function that used to require some complicated actions in Photoshop, especially for image editors that are not super technical.

In addition the the luminosity masking, there are enhanced gradient masks (both linear and radial). The beauty of these masks are that unlike Photoshop is that they do not overwrite the luminosity masking…so you can do these AFTER a luminosity mask, or in conjunction with the luminosity masking. 

One further feature is the ability to copy edits from one image to another, and ignore composition edits.  While this isn’t totally relevant for wildlife and nature photographers, as we are often editing different images, this could be really handy for photojournalist or portrait photographers. 

More about the updates can be found on the Capture One Pro website. Feel free to contact me, contact@wildelements.ca if you are looking for additional details on my experience with the update.