Product Reviews

Among professional photographers Phase One is a well-known and highly regarded manufacturer of digital backs for medium-format cameras. It has been developing raw processing tools for several years and, as you'd expect from a company whose hardware products cost thousands of pounds, they produce high-quality results.

Capture One 4 is the long-awaited successor to Capture One 3 LE, which contains a subset of the features available in Capture One Pro - Phase One's Raw conversion and digital workflow software that supports its digital backs as well as many DSLR Raw formats.

Capture One Pro users are still waiting for their version 4 upgrade - bizarrely its LE programme boasts tools and features that aren't yet available in its Pro offering. For now Phase One is offering Capture One 4 free to Capture One Pro users; Capture One LE 3 users also get a free upgrade.

In addition to the Phase One Raw format used in its P and H range of backs, Capture One 4 supports Raw formats from among others Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, Sony, Pentax and DNG (see phaseone.com/content/support.aspxk for a complete list).

A newly designed interface puts the emphasis on images rather than controls. The viewing window can display up to 12 full-resolution images at once, though ordinarily it is used to view a single selection from a film-strip browser below or a couple of alternatives for comparison. It takes a little while for Capture One to process a folder with a couple of hundred images but once it's done, everything zips along fairly swiftly.

Capture One's primary purpose

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is to produce the best possible quality images from Raw files - and its extended toolset includes new highlight and shadow recovery functions. Highlight recovery is first-rate at restoring detail to apparently featureless expanses of white. The shadow tool likewise does a good job without catastrophic loss of contrast. An exposure warning overlay provides visual feedback of clipping at either end of the histogram.

The histogram display, along with white balance, exposure and High Dynamic Range tools - as the new shadow and highlight controls are misleadingly referred to - are all available on a single Quick tab panel on the left-hand side of the screen. This organises tools in a workflow-orientated fashion. Next comes Colour followed by Exposure, Composition, Details, Metadata, Adjustments, Output and Batch processing.

The idea is that you go through these tabs in chronological order before finally outputting images in the desired format. You don't have to do things in this order though and in most cases, the Quick panel will provide everything you need. Copy and Apply Adjustments tools apply settings from one image to a selection of others - you can define presets for individual adjustments.

Another new feature, Variants, allows you to create versions to which adjustments can be applied without producing additional files. All of this information is stored in the folder along with the original Raw files.

Capture One 4 isn't an end-to-end workflow tool; it provides tools for ratings and you can create albums - also a new Web Contact Sheet feature has been added. But on the basis of its adjustment tools alone, it is likely to be found wanting.

Its exposure, curves and colour adjustment tools look a little pedestrian against Lightroom's Targeted Adjustment and Aperture's Vibrancy among others - although its price is well below these fuller-featured, more capable rivals. With camera manufacturers offering ever more capable Raw processing software, it's in real danger of being squeezed from both ends.

This is a major upgrade and a step in the right direction. But if Phase One is to maintain and add to the base of Capture One users, it will need to travel further and with greater speed than in the past.