March 12, 2025

1

capture one, lightroom, special effects

Lightroom VS Capture One in 2025 – The Best Photo Editing App

I’m back with my annual review of Lightroom VS Capture One pro in 2025, and we have a lot to compare this year. In fact, I skipped last year waiting for features to iron out and boy, did they.

C1 VS LR. They are King and Queen of editors. But who is King?

When using presets I used as many free pack as I could like the Silver 5 and FIlmist 2 samplers. For speed masks I used Elegance 4.

Capture One VS Lightroom – Use the one that works for you.

In the video we test new features, noise and look at the whole picture. But in the end this is not like my DXO Photo Lab review or my Luminar Neo review where both fell short on basic pro features.

My review is finally here and in putting LR and C1 head to head what we see is competition is fierce this year and other apps like DXO, Luminar and OnOne need to step up.

In the war of RAW editors, both Lightroom and Capture One are top notch in their process and feature,s and you can feel good going with either if one makes you feel more creative or productive than the other.

Are the new features a game changer?

No, nothing this year is a game changer. But there are improvements coming from both lightroom and Capture one. More subtle in Lightroom and in Capture One, things like Match look and Ai crop.

The most game-changing thing in Capture One is actually what they are not focusing on that much and that’s that they have finally almost caught up in masking tools and layers and I’ll show you that in the video.

I do say almost, because there is still no sky mask and this is actually a big lack. I didn’t get into it the video, but I’m hoping Capture one will add this soon.

What about Capture One Studio and other app options.

Capture One Studio has also been added with a few extra features that are mostly collaborative, a few extra Ai tools etc. And it costs nearly twice as much. Making C1 alone nearly as spendy as the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Most won’t need this and it’s a bad look for C1 as these features should be in the pro version. They already cost more than Lightroom.

What about Lightroom instead of Lightroom Classic. The develop and base features are the same and with Lightroom you get both and the mobile app for one price. You can can switch around as needed, but in general I use Lightroom Classic and it has more features. I do compare that in this video.

There is also an App for Capture One but it’s still IOS only. I have not done a review of it, but compared to the Lightroom Mobile app which actually doe nearly everything and can even simply sync with a collection on from LR Classic, the Capture One mobile app is pretty limited.

Conclusion – Which photo app to choose…

In the video I’ll give my opening and final conclusion for the best photo RAW app of 2025 and whether you should use Lightroom or Capture One. Either way you’ll still need a pixel level editing app like Photoshop, even if you use an older version like CS6. I’ve touched on this in the video.

What I am confident in saying is that both meet my own high standards and can create world class images. But in short, Lightroom Wins again overall.

But that does not mean it wins for you.

Watch the video, leave your thoughts in the comments and please share – Gavin Seim

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February 15, 2025

0

film presets and styles, Film Presets for Lightroom, Film Styles for Capture One

Kodachome 64 was amazing. I spend years making it for Lightroom and Capture One

This film is long gone but it was the true legend of color films and one of the hardest to reproduce digitally. So I spend years refining it to this this new KodaChrome 64 preset.

I combined all my experience to make the perfect Kodachrome recipe.

You can get Kodachrome 64 Gen.3 the new Velvia 100 and more in Filmist 2.4 complete. If you have Filmist 2 go to the update tab. I’ll also show you my settings during the video.

Not orange or green. This is important.

If you watched my recent video on color science in your camera or on How to use White Balance better, you know that a little cast can easily be correction with a quick slide right or left.

But the iconic look of Kodachrome 64 is something more. As what is considered the most iconic Kodachrome by most, Kodachrome was the defining look of legends like Steve McCurry.

One of the patterns I found and something especially hard to defeat on digital is that is always has this rich coffee chocolate sort of brown. This is not as simple as a white balance slider. It goes against what most digital camera produce.

The cocoa in Kodachrome.

If you’ve ever held up a strip of film you know it’s not all roses. As light changes the color shifts and most digital cameras fix this on the go with auto white balance.

Because of this and many other factors there s no one single look that is Kodachrome, Velvia etc. When I design film presets (and this is especially true in Kodachrome) i looked at hundreds of tests to find the balance. What did this film look like in it’s best moments.

But camera sensors also vary. So if you apply this and it feels a little red leaning or too cool. That’s where the white balance comes in. You don’t need to rework the curves or the color of the recipe itself in the presets. Just nudge that white balance a little bit and that cocoa undertone shines thru. That is Kodachrome 64.

Making film profiles in camera

I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a perfect recipe. I’ve never found any Kodachrome recipe that gets this close. It’s rich look works digitally on portraits , streets weddings and anything else.

There are many you make recipes in camera. The problem is that these are very limited. If you see how I made this recipe it’s with complex color controls and a lot of detail. Detail you can’t get in camera. For in camera profiles I don’t usually recommend trying to really emulate a film. If you really want a film look, shoot RAW and add presets or styles after the fact.

Also As a positive film it did not have the dynamic range we have today. That can be good. It give you those rich shadows I teach you about in Shadow Hackers. Don’t push setting up just because you can.

That said. I often use the chem kit mods in Filmist 2 to add a little more range while still retaining the rich color. Nothing wrong with mixing it up. But the preset itself trues to remain as true as possible to Kodachrome 64

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November 15, 2024

1

Fine Art, special effects

Mochochrome photography. Make stand-out black and white with any camera.

Monochrome cameras let you shoot in ONLY black and white. But they are not what makes your photos jaw-dropping. I dug into this as I worked on the new Silver 5.5 preset update and the new L Monochrome preset I crafted for it.

If you own Silver 5 login here and get the free 5.5 update. If not get Silver or the FREE mini Silver Pack here and try some of these monochrome methods.

Do you need a monochrome camera?

Last night I was shooting a roll of Delta 3200 and thinking about what makes a black-and-white photo work and why many color photos converted to black-and-white fail. The problem is not the camera. It’s the tone. Like we talk about in Shadow Hackers.

Customers using a Mohchrome camera often ask me if my black and white tools like Silver and BlackRoom will work on these files. The answer of course is yes, it still lets you edit tone you just don’t get the color channel info. The process is still the same.

If you take a color Leica VS a Moncrhome for example and simply switch the color to BW mode there is very little difference. Monochrome does not make you better just because you paid more.

Use the camera that inspires you…

Just don’t think a cool camera will make you a great photographer.

In today’s video, I’ll show you the best secrets to amazing black-and-white images and it’s not the monochrome camera. But if that’s what makes you shoot and lobe your work, use that.

If you love this camera use them by all means.s Monochrome camera due to being made only for black and white has a unique feel and is also amazing at high ISO being less vulnerable to noise. Here’s a good video on that.

While the low grain of a monochrome camera is great it does not mean “better” photos or more authentic. True black and white film has grain and it’s one of its artistic characteristics. Neither choice is wrong.

Even that does not make a good monochrome photo

The gear is not what matters the tone is. Stay to the end of the video because I will close with some valuable tips to test and see if your tone is special or boring.

In studying how monochrome cameras render and making the new L Monochrome and S monochrome presets for Lightroom and Capture One I was struck by how flat and even monochrome fields were. They rely on you finding that contrast in the camera and challenge you.

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July 7, 2024

1

lightroom, lightroom vs capture one, special effects

DXO Photo Lab vs Lightroom tested. Can you switch from Lightroom?

People are sick of subscriptions and hate Adobe right now (they really deserve it). Subscriptions were never for us. So today I compare Lightroom vs DXO Photo Lab.

LR vs DXO Photo – An alternative to Lightroom and C1?

Maybe, but it’s complicated. Quality tools like Capture One (that I reviewed here) are also turning against their users by going virtually subscription only. So I am going to start testing. Today we look at DXO Photo Lab vs Lightroom.

I mentioned Filmist which includes LUTS you can use right now in DXO! For my LR and C1 users, I used Silver 5, Natural HDR, and my Speed Masks.

Last year I compared Lightroom to Lumiar Neo.

It was not there at a pro level. Luminar Neo got a D in terms of pro-level ability in my review. Lets hope in improves but in the last year much has changed.

It’s a fun tool. But not a serious choice for a pro. We need better integrations and better process quality. But with Lightroom vs DXO Photo Lab 7, there’s a smaller gap.

Lightroom vs DXO Photo Lab – Speed

DXO also has some unique tools and it’s snappy. Something you can’t say for LIghtroom and barely for Capture One. Both are resource-intensive apps.

It’s DXO Photo Lab is not without faults.

The 20 minutes of the video is worth it because I’ll cover the important things that make a pro-level app usable for actual pros. Not just cool features that look good in a sponsored review.

Zero sponsors. This is my honest DXO Photo Lab Review

None of these apps sponsor me and I have no affiliate links here at this time. This is just an honest comparison from 20 years of professional experience doing real sessions. No shilling.

Rather than write the results of DXO nouse reduction vs Lightroom and extra tests like how it handles processing against Neo, Capture One, etc. It’s all in the video.

If you want more hard tests of these apps let me know and I will not hold back. DXO Photo Lab Vs Lightroom seems to be a real option. But with limitations that I hope they can improve.

Gavin Seim

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November 15, 2022

0

capture one, lightroom, lightroom vs capture one, special effects

Will this End Photography as we know it?

Photography has seen many transitions. Glass plates to film, black and white to color. One of the biggest was the film to the digital which saw many photographers unable to transition.

Will we photographers be needed in a world of Ai?

I’ve shown you in recent videos how the Lightroom Ai with tools like Elegance Speed mask presets makes advanced retouching of portraits unreal. Watch that video here. But while we can’t do this in Capture One yet, it’s perhaps not as big a deal as it looks. I’ll show you why…

(or watch on YouTube)

There’s more than one way to develop a photo.

I’ve always started edits with presets like Filmist or Natural HDR. These work across LR and C1. Then I would go into Photoshop and use Alchemist or BlackRoom and others to refine. I still do all of this, but the new Ai tools make me do more in Lightroom.

We need to stay ahead of the curve but we don’t need to let every new tool change our look. Artificial intelligence is the buzzword. But tools like the Lightroom Ai masks are still not really that intelligent. They do however bring a sign of what’s to come.

For now, things like Lightroom Ai are about saving time. But do we really need the Ai, Is Lightroom really better than Capture One because of it? Is it the best way to edit or should we still use a little Photoshop or Affinity to refine our photos?

It’s pretty amazing what the Ai masks can do. This transformation was virtually instant using my Elegance Speed-Masks which define the parameters and stack the LR Ai masks in one click. But as we see in the video, other methods might take a tad longer but can yield nearly the same result.

In the end, it’s what we create in the camera that defines our photos. Let’s not get blind-sighted. But I also think software can be overhyped. A focus on creating with emotion and soul comes before the edit. The shadow hunt. I think those things are still king.

Don’t miss my next live Shadow hackers workshop so we can talk more about this. Also, leave a comment to share what you think about all these Ai tools such as Lightroom Ai.

Keep creating – Gavin Seim

Add on’s I used in today’s edits… Elegance Speed Masks, Filmist Presets, BellaDonna presets, Alchemist Actions.

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