Here are the six new features in Capture One Pro 23

Capture One Pro 23 is available now. The latest major release of the popular all-in-one raw photo editor includes many new tools and features. Let’s take a look at six major changes introduced in this year’s release.

Smart Adjustments

Smart Adjustments help automate part of the editing workflow for portrait, wedding and event photographers by using faces and skin tones to determine automatic adjustments to achieve a consistent look across a large group of photos. If you shoot many images under different lighting conditions, Smart Adjustments will help make all the images look more consistent.

The most critical adjustments for consistency are Exposure and White Balance. To use Smart Adjustments, edit one image using Exposure and White Balance. Navigate to the Smart Adjustments Tool in the Adjust Tab and select ‘Set as Reference.’ Then select the other images you want to adjust and hit ‘Apply.’ You can also save your reference as a Smart Style, which could then be used to adjust exposure or white balance on images you import later. Smart Styles can include other adjustments, too.

Smart Adjustments differ from copy/apply adjustments because copy/apply makes the same changes to every image, no matter the lighting conditions. Smart Adjustments include active changes to how adjustments are applied depending on how the image you’re editing already appears, so each image may be adjusted by different amounts to ensure a consistent look.

Faster culling and upgrades to Capture One’s importer

Culling is tedious, especially for photographers who import thousands of images at a time. Within a new dedicated Cull view and the existing importer, users can enjoy zero-day browsing, view similar images as a group, apply star rating and color tags, zoom to 100%, filter, and even change the capture time of the images. You can view images directly on your card within Capture One 23’s importer, allowing you to add only the images you want to your computer.

It’s worth drilling down on viewing similar images as a group. When using this option, Capture One Pro 23 analyzes your images and groups images it determines are similar to one another. The user can increase or decrease similarity to make groups larger or smaller.

The new Cull view includes the same grouping functionalities as the importer but promises faster performance when importing everything into Capture One. This view requires that your images are already in your library but makes it fast and easy to remove photos after the fact. This is also a good choice for photographers who shoot tethered.

Additional control using Layers in Styles

When Capture One introduced Styles in a prior version, they offered a fast and easy way to dramatically change the appearance of your photos using preset looks. There are a lot of Styles users can purchase and download. Capture One Pro 23 improves the flexibility of Styles by adding the option to include Layers within Styles. This has been an oft-requested feature by users.

With layers, you can combine multiple Styles. Plus, with customizable opacity for each layer and the ability to localize the impact of individual layers, there’s a lot that photographers can achieve now with Styles.

Changing capture time

We mentioned this feature earlier. If you’ve ever shot with multiple cameras and dealt with unsynchronized clocks, you know how frustrating it is to see your photos out of order when culling and editing. While digging into a specialized EXIF editing program to adjust metadata has always been possible, Capture One Pro 23 lets you easily do it through the app itself.

From the Image menu, Metadata Tool or File Info Tool within the importer or new Cull view, you can change the capture time on selected images. The updated capture time isn’t embedded into the raw file but will be applied as a sidecar setting. It may not appear in other apps, but it will apply when you export images from Capture One.

Variant redesign and improved Albums

Within Capture One, you can make different edits of the same image called ‘Variants.’ When you have tried to put these into different Albums in prior versions, the variants stick together. You needed a workaround to organize individual variants. You can individually manage each variant in the new version of Capture One Pro.

Capture One Live is now free for everyone

Capture One Live, a real-time remote collaboration tool, is now free for everyone. The free version includes limitations, including session duration and how many simultaneous sessions you can run. Still, it allows users worldwide to view shared Capture One sessions and photos at no cost. Click here to learn more about Capture One Live’s new free version.

Summary and pricing

There’s much more in Capture One Pro 23. For the full breakdown, visit Capture One. Capture One Pro 23 is available now to subscribers and anyone who preordered. Capture One Pro 23 is available as a subscription or lifetime license. Subscriptions start at $24 per month or $179 per year. With this option, as long as you’re an active subscriber, you’ll receive all updates, including major new releases. For new users who want a perpetual license, it’s $299. Special upgrade pricing is available to existing users. Capture One Pro allows installation on three different computers regardless of ownership path.

A fully-featured 30-day free trial is also available.