As I said in my other pst, I had a little setback which made me postpone starting steaming again. The setback is easily explained: I started importing my images to my Lightroom library and as soon I did a back-up of my library, the software did all kind of funny things. Turned out that inadvertently Lightroom updated itself to LR CC (I was somewhere at v6.3.) Long story short, I didn't have a way to go back to the previous version and when LR also began putting my library on the cloud - I can only imagine how long a migration of 1TB worth of images would take to put on the cloud! - that was the final straw. No more Lightroom for me - and frankly I put up too long with that sh*ty piece of software much too long.
I was already a long time C1pro user when I bought the Pentax K10D, just to discover that C1pro didn't support the camera. The K10D was then already several months out, so I figured that Phase One wouldn't support it at all (I was wrong, because several months later they added it in their new version.) Lightroom had just launched and a friend of mine was already using it, so I switched to LR (the switch was swift, because my library wasn't as large as it is now.) While Lightroom certainly had it's advantages (ease of use, for one), I always had a love/hate relation with it; the hate relation was mainly IQ related.
I know many people are looking for a switch from LR, that is why I figured that an article about C1pro would be welcomed. If there is some interest, I may publish some tutorials to get you on the way (just ask in the comments.) So with no further ado, here is my little review.
Let's get this out of the way first: C1pro certainly has it's disadvantages, and I will sum them here.
It's expensive. This is the major boon. If you keep a watching eye, you can find it sometimes @ 270€. That is price without VAT (which is different according the country where you live.) That is not cheap. Then again, we buy camera's and lenses that cost sometimes more. In that perspective, you have a good camera, why not spend some money to have a good software? At the very least, it is a one time investment that you can use for several years...
It needs a powerful computer. Phase One advices a dual core with 8GB RAM as a minimal configuration, but says some i5/7 processor with 16 GB RAM is more advisable. That said, my MBP (i7 with 4GB RAM) runs the software just fine, so it's doable on a less than stellar computer.
It's not user friendly. I have to reframe that, common' from Lightroom you will sometimes feel lost. Once you get the hang of it, it's not bad (and even got some fine idea's, which Lightroom should look at.)
It doesn't feature some stuff that Lightroom does (no face recognition for one, no geotagging next.) If you need those, then you will have to look further.
It doesn't support some camera's (some of my files are not recognized, so I will have to keep LR a little longer.) Most, especially the major brands are covered though.
And then the pros:
If image quality is what your after, I can't think of any software that does it better - and frankly, I would have a hard time telling any software that does it as good. In any case, it is miles ahead on Lightroom.
It's fast. While it's power hungry, with a good computer it does it and it does it fast. Rendering are a little RAM intense, so just use a PC with lots of RAM (I am going to upgrade my RAM.)
It's user friendly. Just a little tutorial: on an image, press CTRL-L and you have fairly accurate settings. Try that on Lightroom...!
Did I already mention IQ? One issue that Lightroom has is that level settings affects color. Although it's subtle, it's there and it's annoying. No such thing on C1pro...
Also, while LR has greatly approved on X-trans sensors of Fuji camera's, it's still very difficult to get the right NR and sharpening settings. While we are at it, C1pro has better NR and sharpening algorithms anyway, even on plain Bayer sensors; so noise and sharpening is better on C1pro regardless of camera you use (bit especially so on X-trans sensors...
I will leave it at that. C1pro is a very powerful RAW converter you just have to try...
