For years, the manufacturers have told journalists to use Capture One instead of Adobe products. It could be that it’s because they pay for the license for Capture One to be able to edit their images. But it could also be that professionals have long considered it the best option to get nicer colors from your images. Though Adobe has most of the market, the shift has been stark in some areas at the higher end. Colleges and universities these days are teaching Capture One to their students so that they’re better equipped to do the jobs they need when they get into the real world. Make no mistake, Capture One’s largest user base is by far, folks who read this online magazine. At the same time, they’re also the industry standard in high-end studios — with some paying tens of thousands to the company.
The Differences
The jist of the differences are that with the Pro license, you pay for it outright on the desktop. For the Pro subscription, you’re paying for future desktop updates as well. With that said, it’s almost like Adobe Lightroom where everything is always being tended to and you’re just paying to keep using it. The studio plan is where things get more pricey — and that’s not even showing the bigger option: Enterprise.
Capture One Studio for enterprise has a whole lot of other things that high end studios need:
- A minimum of between 2 to 5 users, depending on which configuration you go for
- A barcode scanner feature, which is useful for retail studios
- All the features of Pro
- All the features of Studio
- Livestreaming
- Training
- Prioritized Support requests
- On demand support
- Client Viewers, which have been much improved
- A more advanced AI crop tool; one that’s incredibly useful
- Multiple Compare Variants
- Image Parent Folder Name and Image Grandparent Folder Name Tokens
- More advanced Guides Tool
- Next Capture Metadata
- Next Capture Keywords
- Next Capture Backup
- Tool Locks
- A new interface for the iPad so that clients can follow along with the shoot.
Capture One is Still the Standard
You might think that Adobe also offers all of this — but Capture One is still the industry standard for shooting tethered in a studio setting. Studio settings are where still much of commercial photography takes place. Most people reading this online magazine wouldn’t necessarily need it; but there are lots of folks who would. If you’re a working professional photography studio with a busy client list that treats the process like a factory-farm operation, then Capture One Studio for Enterprise is probably majorly worth it. Companies that have their own studios in-house (think major clothing and retail brands) might use this.
For security, Enterprise also has the ability to work in what they call “Company mode.” This allows large companies to white list users so that they have to give out license codes for individual computers. This protects confidential information about products, too.
One of the most useful tools is the AI Crop tool. Though it’s arguably near useless in Capture One Pro, it’s quite smart in Enterprise. Specifically, it can apply AI Crop settings on capture. “…it can do like a 4×5 crop, and track the subject as it moves around the frame, gets larger, smaller, or even if the subject changes,” a Capture One rep told a crowd at an event late in 2024.
Otherwise, Capture One Studio for Enterprise includes all the things that standard Capture One Pro has — like Match Look, which essentially can render Fujifilm’s unique Film Simulations to be not exclusive at all. You can also remove the settings from the specific area of a scene and add content credentials, which is still in beta but actively in use by our website as of 2025.
Also contained in Enterprise is Capture One Live for Studio — which can make a photoshoot a shareable link where folks can follow along even on the iPad. The link, which lasts for 30 days, can require a password for extra security. From there, your client can add feedback and comments while you can only ensure that select images from the shoot are shared. Note, pixel peeping is also kind of limited depending on the device that you’re using. Further, you can replace backgrounds using generative AI in collaboration with PhotoRoom.
