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🦉 WE READ 227 OWNER COMMENTS
Capture One Pro 23: what owners actually say
Portrait and wedding photographers love the new AI retouching and people-masking tools for saving hours of batch editing, but the software still lacks body skin retouching and JPEG XL export, and Adobe remains superior for high-ISO noise reduction.
What owners complain about
- No JPEG XL export FEW
A user who loves Capture One says the absence of .jxl export is the one thing holding them back from fully committing.
- Weak high-ISO noise reduction FEW
Owner reports Adobe still leads in high-ISO noise reduction, which keeps them tied to Bridge despite preferring Capture One overall.
- No body skin retouching yet SOME
Several portrait photographers note that face/neck retouching is great but Capture One still needs a skin brush for the rest of the body; they say Capture One told them body retouch is being worked on.
- Beauty mark protection imperfect FEW
The new spot tool lets you mark blemishes to keep, but one user reports they sometimes still got removed regardless.
- Still need Photoshop for some tasks FEW
Even with the new retouching updates, a portrait photographer says they still have to round-trip to Photoshop for certain work.
What owners love
- Massive time savings for portrait/wedding workflows
Wedding photographers call it a 'GAME CHANGER,' saying the new face and neck retouching cut their editing time dramatically when batch-processing 2,000+ photo sets.
- Advanced people masking with fine-grained selection
Users can auto-detect and select specific facial features—pupils, iris, lips, eyebrows—and create separate layers for each, which impressed long-time photographers.
- Smart focus-aware face detection
The software selects faces that are in focus and ignores those softened by depth of field, making batch retouching more accurate.
- Catching up to and surpassing Lightroom features
Users note Capture One now supports syncing masks across images and intersecting masks, features that match or exceed Lightroom's workflow.
- Fast tethered shooting workflow
A viewer observed a photographer whose shots appeared instantly in Capture One as they were taken, calling it 'such a fast workflow.'
Surprising patterns
- Some photographers are round-tripping from Capture One into Evoto AI for even more robust portrait retouching, then exporting back—suggesting Capture One's built-in tools, while improved, aren't always enough for power users.
- Users report Capture One's new retouching tools have 'destroyed' dedicated plugins like Retouch4me, disrupting third-party retouching software.
- There's a genuine concern among some photographers about over-retouching—losing freckles and imperfections that make photos look real—indicating not everyone sees automation as pure upside.
WHO SHOULD SKIP IT
Photographers who need best-in-class high-ISO noise reduction or require JPEG XL export should look elsewhere, as Capture One still lags Adobe in those areas.
Synthesised from 227 real owner comments across 3 platforms. Every point is grounded in the comments — no marketing, no AI guessing. How we do it →