Capture One

I've been a long time user of Apple's Aperture program (remember buying a new graphics card so I could run Aperture 1.0), and with it's imminent demise, I've been casting about for alternatives. The Obvious Answer is Adobe Lightroom, but I found myself cringing everytime I was about to open it up.

I find the UI quirky, unintuitive, and inconsistent.  While its multiple monitor support tortuous (if you switch to another program, both windows snap back to one monitor. Amusingly, you can't drag the window back to its "home" monitor -- the only way I found to get it back in it's proper location was to quit Lightroom and start over).

Prompted by reading this detailed post on PhotoApps.Expert I gave Capture One a try. Happy I did.

The dual monitor support is fine. The UI is a bit quirky, but very consistent. The controls are very intuitive (once you get past the initial quirks) and, to me a least, give you a good sense of how the image is going to be impacted, e.g., keystone correction is something I never had a lot of use for in Photoshop. I never found the controls that easy to use and the results left me with a solid feeling of meh.  Capture One, is easy and I find the results to be a significant improvement (note: I'm not bashing Adobe's algorithms here.  User Error for sure, but minimizing user error is the mark of a program that's not only a productive tool, but also doesn't make you cringe when you're about to use it).

Anyhow. The end result is that I found it easy to go from this

to this

in a couple steps.

Simple corrections, done simply, making for a better image. An optimal process.