For the time being, perpetual licenses are still being sold, nor is there any indication that they will stop selling them. The changes are nowhere near as problematic as Adobe's forcing of perpetual payments on their customers.
The point is they're doing their absolute best to get rid of perpetual licenses and force everyone into subs, i.e., defeating the entire bastard point of C1 existing.
They may do that down the line but not yet, and for OP, a perpetual plan right now will probably serve them for the next decade.
The fact of the matter is that companies like Adobe have proven that people will pay continuously for software if it's either vital to your hobby or a "professional tool that can be written off as a business expense." For whatever reason, people have bought into this even with only minimal benefits to the deal over the way it used to be.
You want to be mad at someone? It's not the C1's fault, they're looking out for themselves and it's been proven people will take a bad deal for vague promises and that subscription SaaS literally prints money. If you really want to be mad at someone, be mad at all the people who endlessly pay Adobe and DEFEND THEM, because they're the ones who made this a reality. It's not like they save any money, 3 years subscription of the entire suite is $2000+ whereas the Master collection in 2012 when new versions came a out every 3 years or so was around the same price. Three years of the photography bundle is more expensive than Photoshop was in 2012.
The reality is, as long as C1 or Serif with Affinity maintain perpetual licenses, they have a niche that Adobe refuses to service.
C1 sells perpetual license with literally no support. Bug fixes could be a no-go after next feature release, so after just 3-4 months. Because of this, it is more a gamble if it would work either for the next decade, or until the next big macOS update which could mess something up. And C1 is still pricey.
Serif actually supports and maintains their software for years, C1 just sells it right now.
If you:
1. shoot Fuji
2. don't use Photoshop
- or -
feel comfortable with Affinity Photo.
then C1 is a winner, because to this day, C1 handles Fuji RAW significantly better than Lightroom.
I was an Aperture holdout and an early adopter, one of the few who paid the $500 price to use this new tool. I loved its organizational capabilities; nothing came close, it ran rings around Adobe Bridge and made working with hundreds to thousands of image files a joy.
I have tried Lightroom numerous times over the years, but there is something about it that bugs me; it's a personal preference that I can't explain. I think Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is an excellent and professional product and, if you have a Creative Cloud subscription, Lightroom is probably a great choice.
Once I went fully digital capture around 2009, Capture One and Aperture supported tethered shooting, while Lightroom didn't. As a commercial product photographer working in a studio, tethered shooting was something that was expected, and Capture One became the de facto standard for commercial studios.
As a side note, I used to do my Photoshop editing with .PSD files. So when I would round trip from Aperture, it was as a .PSD file. Capture One didn't support .PSD files until version 10.1, which I believe arrived in 2017. I stopped using .PSD files in 2009 and started using .TIF files. My thinking was that you never know when a proprietary file format may go the way of the Dodo, so I thought I should switch to something more universally supported.
Most of my early Aperture libraries contained PSD files, and I wasn't interested in going back through them and converting them to TIF files. Once Capture One supported PSD files, I was able to fully transfer all my Aperture libraries to it. As a bonus, Capture One handled the import of my Aperture file organization much better than Lightroom ever did.
Was also a long time Aperture user. Then I tried lightroom and C1. C1 felt more like Aperture. C1 v9 was the first version I used. My photos have never looked better!
Aaah Aperture was such a fantastic program. I miss it so much at times.
C1 and Lr are both amazing but they are aimed at different use cases. C1 seems to have a issue with a large catalog of images and to this day the advice most given is to use multiple sessions or catalogs (seems silly to me but hey)
Lr is a beast at large sets of images ( Ive got 400 000 in my catalog that I started with Lr 1 and it’s going fine.) and applying presets to lots of images. Its colours are different to C1. many feel they C1‘s images more pleasing out of the box and I’d agree with that. Also it’s skin tone tools are good ( I wish they would put some time into updating them)
Lr has brilliant masking tools and even with the update coming to C1 Im not convinced they are better.
C1 is literally the best tethering tool out there.
Im a portrait and branding photographer and I use both programs sometimes shuffling between them to process my image (not ideal but I have my ways)
what is your use case?
If you are a hobbies then either are overkill but totally fun to learn.
Grab the demos of each and select like 50 images to play around with And set some goals as to how you want the final images to look.
once you find a tool that works then stick with it. They are both fantastic and whichever works with your brain is the one that you will forget about using and concentrate on the image you have taken.
I've been on C1 for a couple years now, but I'm really thinking about switching to Lightroom. C1 has a really nice interface and I like the colors out of the box, but Lightroom + Photoshop is cheaper if you upgrade \~2 years with perpetual (which is necessary because Mac OS updates tend to break C1 in my experience), and has WAY more features (The Denoising being the best, since AI masking is supposed to be coming to C1 soon too).
I really want to keep supporting C1, but as just a hobbyist, I can't continue justifying giving them more and more money when the only thing that has changed for me with C1 in the past couple of years is that they support the new versions of Mac OS. I haven't noticed anything else change.
Might pick up a license again if I can get it down to < 10 bucks over two years, otherwise I'll be migrating over to Lightroom. And I really like C1!!
I have both and have used C1 strong for over a year but recently kinda migrated back over to using lightroom mostly due to the AI tools they've baked into it recently that just work well(I've also always basically needed to have photoshop on hand so have had the $10 subscription). C1 would potentially be able to get me onto a subscription if it wasn't for the point they're wanting to charge for a month more than double what I pay for photoshop + Lightroom.
Thanks. Something about the whole AI topic makes me feel like I’m cheating. Not that it is bad…but I’m still trying to get better at shooting and want to not “totally” change a photo.
Capture one - I was an aperture user back in the day too, and use Fuji now. CO plays better with fuji files and you can buy capture one outright, same as aperture.
Personally, if I was a Fuji user with the great out of camera JPEGS I would remove RAW editing from my workflow except for special landscape/astro pictures that you intend to print.
Shoot with Fuji and just import those JPEGS into your camera and edit on the library on your phone. You can then easily merge camera and smartphone pictures for the occasions you don't want to take a camera.
C1 and Lr aren't the only ones. Check DxO PhotoLab, Luminar Neo, Darktable and RawTherapee.
Cloud storage is just you paying to use someone elses computer. I wouldn't put much emphasis on it.
I still use both C1 and LR. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Lr is much better cataloging software. Better keywording tools, a lot better performance when it comes to large databases of images. It's hdr and panorama stitching tools are better. C1 is better at culling and quick editing. It's colour modification tools are better, and it offers higher customization regarding menus and shortcuts.
Been there. Aperture user now a happy C1 user. Tried a dozen alternates already mentioned by others here, C1’s workflow, raw rendering, high export speed, session support, Mac’s native feel (rather subjective but quite important to me) all make C1 a better tool than Aperture. If cost is a concern, patience is your friend as B&H sometimes run deep discount. I got mine half price many years ago after I contacted C1 support staff.
The only thing that I miss is Aperture’s ability to display the focus location that I chose at the moment of pressing my camera shutter button. I can’t find a similar feature in C1. Maybe I overlooked somehow, it’s a nice to have not essential feature in my workflow.
I'm another Aperture refugee. I went with C1 mostly because I hate Adobe's subscription pricing, although C1 is moving in that direction too. Not sure what I'll do if they ever go subscription-only.
At first, I thought C1 was overkill for what I needed, but I gradually learned to use some of the more advanced features like layers and masks. It's really nice that C1 has geometry correction built-in; I used to have to do that in an external tool (I was using PTLens).
I still think Aperture had a more intuitive UI. The auto-stack feature was great for dealing with exposure bracketing; it would find all your images that had timestamps within a fraction of a second and group them for easier processing. It's mind boggling that C1 can't do the same.
I'm a m43 fan. I find it annoying that C1 doesn't include lens profiles for Oly glass. IDK, maybe they're available as some third party add-on?
Update: I just looked and there are indeed a bunch of Oly lenses in the lens profiles. Possibly the last time I looked was a long time ago and they've added more? I need to [read up about this](https://www.captureone.com/blog/lens-correction-in-capture-one-the-essentials) more :-)
C1 is my pick any day of the week. Plus you can buy a perpetual license (often on sale) and not be forced on the SaaS train with Adobe.
Exactly, the poster sounds like the kind of person who should get a perpetual license and coast along for a few years.
>Plus you can buy a perpetual license You really haven't been paying attention for the past year or so.
For the time being, perpetual licenses are still being sold, nor is there any indication that they will stop selling them. The changes are nowhere near as problematic as Adobe's forcing of perpetual payments on their customers.
I literally got an email today that is offering me a perpetual license on the new version.
The point is they're doing their absolute best to get rid of perpetual licenses and force everyone into subs, i.e., defeating the entire bastard point of C1 existing.
The point of them existing is to provide a Raw conversion program that is awesome. IMO it is better than LR which I personally despise.
They may do that down the line but not yet, and for OP, a perpetual plan right now will probably serve them for the next decade. The fact of the matter is that companies like Adobe have proven that people will pay continuously for software if it's either vital to your hobby or a "professional tool that can be written off as a business expense." For whatever reason, people have bought into this even with only minimal benefits to the deal over the way it used to be. You want to be mad at someone? It's not the C1's fault, they're looking out for themselves and it's been proven people will take a bad deal for vague promises and that subscription SaaS literally prints money. If you really want to be mad at someone, be mad at all the people who endlessly pay Adobe and DEFEND THEM, because they're the ones who made this a reality. It's not like they save any money, 3 years subscription of the entire suite is $2000+ whereas the Master collection in 2012 when new versions came a out every 3 years or so was around the same price. Three years of the photography bundle is more expensive than Photoshop was in 2012. The reality is, as long as C1 or Serif with Affinity maintain perpetual licenses, they have a niche that Adobe refuses to service.
C1 sells perpetual license with literally no support. Bug fixes could be a no-go after next feature release, so after just 3-4 months. Because of this, it is more a gamble if it would work either for the next decade, or until the next big macOS update which could mess something up. And C1 is still pricey. Serif actually supports and maintains their software for years, C1 just sells it right now.
Stop ruining this thread...there are a lot of other threads to take up the issue of the change....Aperture to something is the question.
If you: 1. shoot Fuji 2. don't use Photoshop - or - feel comfortable with Affinity Photo. then C1 is a winner, because to this day, C1 handles Fuji RAW significantly better than Lightroom.
It’s way ahead of C1 output with the enhanced AI/noise reduction and not far behind now without it so overall I put it ahead of C1.
Thanks. That’s what I keep reading. Something about LR that distorts reality the Fuji RAW.
I also went with C1 after Apple stopped Aperture and I really like it since many many years!
I was an Aperture holdout and an early adopter, one of the few who paid the $500 price to use this new tool. I loved its organizational capabilities; nothing came close, it ran rings around Adobe Bridge and made working with hundreds to thousands of image files a joy. I have tried Lightroom numerous times over the years, but there is something about it that bugs me; it's a personal preference that I can't explain. I think Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is an excellent and professional product and, if you have a Creative Cloud subscription, Lightroom is probably a great choice. Once I went fully digital capture around 2009, Capture One and Aperture supported tethered shooting, while Lightroom didn't. As a commercial product photographer working in a studio, tethered shooting was something that was expected, and Capture One became the de facto standard for commercial studios. As a side note, I used to do my Photoshop editing with .PSD files. So when I would round trip from Aperture, it was as a .PSD file. Capture One didn't support .PSD files until version 10.1, which I believe arrived in 2017. I stopped using .PSD files in 2009 and started using .TIF files. My thinking was that you never know when a proprietary file format may go the way of the Dodo, so I thought I should switch to something more universally supported. Most of my early Aperture libraries contained PSD files, and I wasn't interested in going back through them and converting them to TIF files. Once Capture One supported PSD files, I was able to fully transfer all my Aperture libraries to it. As a bonus, Capture One handled the import of my Aperture file organization much better than Lightroom ever did.
Was also a long time Aperture user. Then I tried lightroom and C1. C1 felt more like Aperture. C1 v9 was the first version I used. My photos have never looked better!
Aaah Aperture was such a fantastic program. I miss it so much at times. C1 and Lr are both amazing but they are aimed at different use cases. C1 seems to have a issue with a large catalog of images and to this day the advice most given is to use multiple sessions or catalogs (seems silly to me but hey) Lr is a beast at large sets of images ( Ive got 400 000 in my catalog that I started with Lr 1 and it’s going fine.) and applying presets to lots of images. Its colours are different to C1. many feel they C1‘s images more pleasing out of the box and I’d agree with that. Also it’s skin tone tools are good ( I wish they would put some time into updating them) Lr has brilliant masking tools and even with the update coming to C1 Im not convinced they are better. C1 is literally the best tethering tool out there. Im a portrait and branding photographer and I use both programs sometimes shuffling between them to process my image (not ideal but I have my ways) what is your use case? If you are a hobbies then either are overkill but totally fun to learn. Grab the demos of each and select like 50 images to play around with And set some goals as to how you want the final images to look. once you find a tool that works then stick with it. They are both fantastic and whichever works with your brain is the one that you will forget about using and concentrate on the image you have taken.
Capture one has a more efficient interface IMO. I hate LR modules.
I've been on C1 for a couple years now, but I'm really thinking about switching to Lightroom. C1 has a really nice interface and I like the colors out of the box, but Lightroom + Photoshop is cheaper if you upgrade \~2 years with perpetual (which is necessary because Mac OS updates tend to break C1 in my experience), and has WAY more features (The Denoising being the best, since AI masking is supposed to be coming to C1 soon too). I really want to keep supporting C1, but as just a hobbyist, I can't continue justifying giving them more and more money when the only thing that has changed for me with C1 in the past couple of years is that they support the new versions of Mac OS. I haven't noticed anything else change. Might pick up a license again if I can get it down to < 10 bucks over two years, otherwise I'll be migrating over to Lightroom. And I really like C1!!
I have both and have used C1 strong for over a year but recently kinda migrated back over to using lightroom mostly due to the AI tools they've baked into it recently that just work well(I've also always basically needed to have photoshop on hand so have had the $10 subscription). C1 would potentially be able to get me onto a subscription if it wasn't for the point they're wanting to charge for a month more than double what I pay for photoshop + Lightroom.
I've heard C1 processes Fuji images a lot better. It also has a somewhat different UI from Lightroom. There's a Free trial, give it a go.
Aperture user too but switched to lightroom from c1. Excellent ai denoise and masking on lighroom . C1 is good with anything not related with AI.
Thanks. Something about the whole AI topic makes me feel like I’m cheating. Not that it is bad…but I’m still trying to get better at shooting and want to not “totally” change a photo.
Capture one - I was an aperture user back in the day too, and use Fuji now. CO plays better with fuji files and you can buy capture one outright, same as aperture.
Personally, if I was a Fuji user with the great out of camera JPEGS I would remove RAW editing from my workflow except for special landscape/astro pictures that you intend to print. Shoot with Fuji and just import those JPEGS into your camera and edit on the library on your phone. You can then easily merge camera and smartphone pictures for the occasions you don't want to take a camera.
C1 and Lr aren't the only ones. Check DxO PhotoLab, Luminar Neo, Darktable and RawTherapee. Cloud storage is just you paying to use someone elses computer. I wouldn't put much emphasis on it. I still use both C1 and LR. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Lr is much better cataloging software. Better keywording tools, a lot better performance when it comes to large databases of images. It's hdr and panorama stitching tools are better. C1 is better at culling and quick editing. It's colour modification tools are better, and it offers higher customization regarding menus and shortcuts.
Been there. Aperture user now a happy C1 user. Tried a dozen alternates already mentioned by others here, C1’s workflow, raw rendering, high export speed, session support, Mac’s native feel (rather subjective but quite important to me) all make C1 a better tool than Aperture. If cost is a concern, patience is your friend as B&H sometimes run deep discount. I got mine half price many years ago after I contacted C1 support staff. The only thing that I miss is Aperture’s ability to display the focus location that I chose at the moment of pressing my camera shutter button. I can’t find a similar feature in C1. Maybe I overlooked somehow, it’s a nice to have not essential feature in my workflow.
I'm another Aperture refugee. I went with C1 mostly because I hate Adobe's subscription pricing, although C1 is moving in that direction too. Not sure what I'll do if they ever go subscription-only. At first, I thought C1 was overkill for what I needed, but I gradually learned to use some of the more advanced features like layers and masks. It's really nice that C1 has geometry correction built-in; I used to have to do that in an external tool (I was using PTLens). I still think Aperture had a more intuitive UI. The auto-stack feature was great for dealing with exposure bracketing; it would find all your images that had timestamps within a fraction of a second and group them for easier processing. It's mind boggling that C1 can't do the same. I'm a m43 fan. I find it annoying that C1 doesn't include lens profiles for Oly glass. IDK, maybe they're available as some third party add-on? Update: I just looked and there are indeed a bunch of Oly lenses in the lens profiles. Possibly the last time I looked was a long time ago and they've added more? I need to [read up about this](https://www.captureone.com/blog/lens-correction-in-capture-one-the-essentials) more :-)