Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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The Digital Photographer's Software Guide
Among the dozens of features in Capture One are instant high-res preview, multiple
side-by-side preview, white and color balance adjustment, exposure/contrast correction,
level/curves adjustment, histograms, cropping, IPTC templates, and acceptance of thirdparty
ICC color profiles. It lets you correct unwanted color casts, has an overlay feature
for easy alignment, a banding tool to suppress digital banding, Moiré suppression, and
various sharpening and noise reduction tools.
Version 4 represented a major upgrade, allowing the user to open 12 images simultaneously
at full resolution. You can also make multiple variants of a single RAW image without disk
or performance overhead. Usefully for professionals, the licensing is transferable, enabling
you to install the software on two computers with the option of using one or the other.
Comments
Capture One 4 is hard to beat for high volume processing of RAW files in a professional
setting. It is not inexpensive but it comes with two free major updates. Its output quality
is excellent, with fine details clearly rendered, and it generates large thumbnails and
working images very quickly. However, it requires time to learn how to use it properly.
The light version is much more suitable for beginners.
Version: Capture One 4.1.1 (2008)
OS: Windows Vista; Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher
RAM: 512MB
Supported file formats: RAW (nearly all); JPEG and TIFF
Price level: Approx. $500
Address: Phase One A/S, Roskildevej 39, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phase One Inc., 200 Broadhollow Road (Suite 312), Melville, NY 11747-0983
www.phaseone.com
LightZone
Vendor: Light Crafts
Purpose: RAW processor and image editor with zonal editing capability
Description
LightZone is an image editor that has a set of masking tools based on Ansel Adams’s
zone system. It supports all major camera RAW formats with native custom processing,
uses small files to store image edits, and in these and other respects is not dissimilar to
Adobe Lightroom.
The key feature of LightZone—and where it differs from other image editors—is the
way in which it allows you to create regions by drawing lines rather than by painting.
This means you can adjust the boundary of the region at any time: much more convenient
for editing landscape photographs. You can blend the region smoothly into the