Should You Upgrade? / Capture One 22 Review

Capture One 22 adds support for HDR (High Dynamic Range) image blending, panoramic image stitching, a new wireless camera tethering mode, and other usability/performance improvements. If you own Capture One 21 or older, should you upgrade? Is 22 worth buying?

In this video, I demonstrate the new features and share my thoughts on the positives and the negatives of Capture One 22 to help you make a more informed purchasing decision.

Note: Capture One 22 Beta 3 was used to create this video. According to Capture One, this is the last beta and is representative of the final version.

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Reference Links
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Free Trial of Capture One

My blog post review

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Chapters
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0:00 Intro
1:14 HDR Merge
8:23 Panoramas
15:15 Wireless Tethering
18:02 Final Thoughts

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Gear Used to Create This Video
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⬇️ My C-Log to Rec.709 LUTs for the R5/R6

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Music
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Affiliate Disclosure
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[creative.lights]

From a user perspective I have three main issues with C1:
1- they encourage you to make early purchases without actually telling you what new features will be added to the product.
2- eventually when they do reveal the features, it’s old features that competitors have had for years and they justify this as worthy of a new version instead of a minor dot update.
3- the new features (as behind as they are) are yet still not ready and full of flaws.

[ianmurray]

How refreshing to see an honest appraisal of Cap One 22. I luv using Cap One, but 22 is a disappointment.

I am so thankful I waited to see the performance of panorama stitching before I upgraded. This really is an ill informed and amateurish implementation of panorama stitching. Were actual panoramic photographers involved in the development of this new feature? Where are the tools required to edit the panorama prior to rendering? Not only do leaves, water and clouds move between frames, but so do people and so do dogs, as illustrated at time 14:23. I don’t know any photographer, professional or amateur who would believe this is acceptable.

I would luv Cap One to have a meaningful and workable panorama function, but sadly, until it does I will continue to create my panos in Affinity. Affinity allows me to to brush in/out objects from overlapping frames. This level of control is not optional - for me.

[nayaberenguer]

You're the best! I've been watching many of your videos and learning constantly from your reviews and informations shared. Just want to thank you for doing this! Wishing you all the best in your journey!

[FDunst-xjrn]

Thanks for the honest review. Unfortunately, it is standard to bring something out quickly and improve it afterwards. The customers are the beta testers. C1 is a very good RAW developer, only the pricing policy is excessive in my opinion.

[_Name_]

I'd like to say Thank You so much for this real, objective review for an important piece of software for any photographer. As it's well known, some other "genius" photographers and ambassadors prefer not to mention the obvious software disadvantages, mistakes or lossless functions.

Guess, it wood be better for C1 authors to nail the program to make it faster, stable and more colour accurate instead of racing with Lightroom.

Please keep going with Your reviews with the well-regulated grown-up and classic manner, You have.

[MattSpaugh]

Great video. Your style and delivery are a breath of fresh air: actually getting to the point??? unheard of! No 5 minute b-roll sequence of you making a coffee??? Absurd! As far as v.22 goes, I will definitely not be upgrading. The HDR and Pano features are useless given the glitches. As a location headshot (and Sony) shooter, having to rely on a local network makes the wireless tether a deal-breaker. These issues make this release feel like it was rushed to market - not something I'd expect from Capture One. Disappointing overall. Keep up the great work!

[ovidijuspocius]

I use capture one for my files but man adobe lightroom with this auto masking and invert techniques it's just absolutely amazing it saves so much time. Capture one really needs to make those new features work better.

[herwarthaug]

Wow! Thank you so much! You saved my money, because I wanted to purchased C1. Now I am looking for something else.

[bioliv]

Thank you for your hard work! I'm on a subscription plan, but plan to buy the software, and thought now I finally got all that I need in C1. But I think I'll wait another year or so to see these new features perfected.

[AmorLucisPhotography]

Great review!
It looks like I wasted my money - at least until they fix these issues with an update. (I bought it in advance at a discount -- last time I do that.)
The panorama issues you were having are not anything to do with moving leaves. In some test panos I've just done you can see the jitteriness along the "seems" of the joins, including through rocks. Granted, I've just tested it with images taken on a 14mm lens, which is a bit of a stress test, but the problem occurs for distant and central objects where wide-angle parallax issues that can afflict such panos really should not be a problem. To be fair, I've just run the same images through Lightroom, and though a lot better, it too struggles in a few places. But I also ran the images through Autopano Giga (sadly defunct) and that stitched them perfectly.
Fortunately, these things can in principle be fixed with an update, but as it stands this is a very disappointing release.

[JohnMagnoski]

Hey Todd! Great video. I have the same issues with C1 22 - and I am an architectural photographer... Sad to say, this update was not ready for primetime.
I make mention of it in my own video that will be available on my channel soon. Well done and well said.

[robertnystrom]

I'm using CO 22, and I did see a few of the glitches with moving leaves. Oddly, moving water was fine. It was somewhat related to lens focal length (35 mm seemed to be least glitches). It was also important to set the lens corner correction to 100% before stitching. I think you are right in the good enough versus perfect (I'm also from software/hardware world). One really needs feedback and different images with different cameras/lenses to fine tune it. That said, If I already have external apps to do pano and hdr, there's no reason not to do v22. The round trip stitch to PS is still baked in, but does result in a tiff, so RAW is crippled at that point. I do like the multi image auto level, so far that's worked well. And it seems faster on my M1. I think the bottom line is a pixel editor (PS, Affinity, On1, etc) versus a RAW editor. IMHO, once one gets a taste of RAW editing, it's tough to go back to full time pixel. Pixel editors absolutely have their place, it's just for my photos there's so much better results with the RAW edit. I'm sure the gnomes in Denmark are working on it. On another note, I'm not a HDR fan; I would much rather have had focus stacking. For what it's worth.

[mjfalcon]

Thank you for the review, I think I will save the money as those features are not something I plan to use enough to warrant the upgrade. Providing the new mobile feature coming soon supports v21 I will hold off. Thank you 🙏

[ianyorke]

Using those images and comparing LR and dedicated software like Photomatix and Ptgui would be very useful.

[bartslaman]

Thanks man! I'm still on C1 20, The HDR would be the only option for me to upgrade, but since its not implemented correctly I will wait for the fix and get a it with a discount later on

[ugrandolini]

Thank you for your honest review! I was also in the software business before (30 years) and I would never released a new version of a software working like this. I gave it a try and found out that they also changed the way to export and now it is not possible anymore to set a separate main folder per session - at least I couldn’t find a way to.
So I keep using an old version and every now and then trying to use Lightroom (that is included in photoshop bundle).
It is true, in software is difficult to get to perfection, but releasing something like this is a joke.
Thank you again! 🙏🏻

[CrotZari]

I love Capture One but I haven´t been able to motivate an upgrade from version 20 to 21. I will not upgrade this time either. There´s no problem with speed for me as it is, and I have a camerasystem from 2016 that is well supported in version 20. No need to upgrade. But I follow Capture One with great interest. Some day they will release something that will be a must have for me. I like your honest take on this version. Great job!

[scrollop]

Thanks, it would be interesting to see how LR handles the ghosting in the trees.

[carlreidphotography]

Thanks Todd I've been with Capture One now for a few years and others comments are right they don't always let you know exactly what you're paying for upgrade wise and push the upgrade price and I've gone ahead regardless to keep my costs down, but for this release I'm going to hold off as I thought at least they would've added blending of some sort. Quite a few comments on them catching up and I have to agree, I've turned to using MSICE for stitching and GIMP for blending both freeware.

[EdKrisiak]

Final thoughts" Glad I passed on the update. Thanks for the video!!!!