Abbott Schindl
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 p.1 #7 · C-One goodbye. Now LR, On1, DXO or Luminar? | |
You don't say what you do, so it's hard to tell whether another product would satisfy you. As mentioned above, the options you're considering have trials you could try. Unfortunately, though, complex software may take longer than the trial period to really understand whether it will do what you're looking for. Doing "landscape and travel" doesn't help me much. For example, are HDR, focus stacking, and pano stitching important? Is the ability to smooth skin tones important? What are you doing with your images?
My take on Capture One (I've got a perpetual license): First, you're not forced to update or to buy every new version. The only reasons I upgrade are 1) compelling new features (v23 lacks those for me); 2) you get a new camera that isn't supported in your current version and you don't want to convert to DNG; 3) an OS upgrade breaks you current version—as macOS Ventura may be doing for some users. For me, if none of these reasons are met, I'll skip the upgrade. Frankly, C1 23 is the first one I'm going to skip since I bought my license at v8.
As for cost, Capture One and Adobe's bundle aren't all that different in cost if you're subscribing, and Capture One's less expensive if you have a perpetual license and skip an upgrade every now and then. It just looks bad when you compare C1's annual perpetual upgrade cost with Adobe's monthly subscription charge. That's not apples-to-apples.
But Adobe includes PS. I used to use PS and have found that Affinity Photo does everything I used to do in PS, about equally well, and that Affinity's main drawbacks are its UI and that its workflow is a bit odd for PS users. But if you stick with it, Affinity is pretty darn good. I also bought the other two Affinity apps, and the three together (actually, Photo and Publisher) do more for me than PS used to. But the learning curve can be tough.
I personally prefer perpetual licenses, so Adobe lost me when they went subscription. C1's been great, and you seem happy with it as well—although you also use PS. Also, at least since C1 20, the new features that most interest me are introduced mid-year, and the at-release new features left me cold. Frankly, an important thing holding me back this time is that v23 won't run on the old OS I'll be using at least most of the coming year (I'm waiting to see IF Apple's going to announce a new Mac Pro before deciding which desktop machine to replace my aging ones with).
Of course an immediate question that only you can answer is, "what new features do you feel you need". For me, for example, I want their DAM reworked as it's looking pretty creaky (search, sort, metadata organization, other things), and I think the Print module could use a major overhaul (printer selection isn't saved, dialog screen is overly complex), and handling video (C1 currently still can't even export video files, or add metadata or anything other than catalog them). None of these seem to be important to the developers, and the lack of them isn't a show-stopper for me. You're likely different, but thinking about these sorts of things may help you decide whether your divorce really is nigh, or if you're simply in a state of new feature envy.
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