Capture One Pro 7 vs. Lightroom 4: File Handling

Prodo123 said:

Hi!

It's been a couple months since I've moved from Aperture to Lightroom. The image quality boost is immense; I have far greater control over my images than before.

But I recently gave Capture One Pro a go and that's even better that Lightroom in terms of RAW performance. Tethered shooting also comes in very handy, so I was considering switching yet again.

Aperture's referenced library structure is nearly identical to Lightroom's catalog structure, but I'm unsure about Capture One's file management system. How similar are the two? Will it be simple to switch?

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I think that Capture One has a different thought process to file management that appeals to many professionals. Candidly, I don't like any of the file management/cataloging formats used by all three but if you are doing a great deal of RAW work, LR and Capture One are better choices than Aperture. The advantage of LR is in two areas (over Capture One) - plug ins and the natural relationship to Photoshop.

I used long ago Capture One Pro and DXO softwares. They remain both for very serious photographers. At the present, I just use Photoshop for everything and skip over the rest as I don't do much shooting but more about image restoration and retouch.

It might be prudent if you not only tried them all out with some file management complexity but went to some photo related web sites and checked out the forums. As for those that use Aperture and love it, I say more power to them as it really comes down to what you want in a work flow.