I currently have CS3 with Adobe Camera RAW, but there is a lot of hype around Phase One's RAW processing software, Capture One Pro. Has anyone converted from Adobe to Capture One? If so, do you feel that it's worth the extra dough? Thanks.

Michael – I use PhaseOne most of the time – it really is the best I have seen and have tried it against several other rivals. Capture one 4 Pro isn’t out yet but the regular version is. One of the main differences with pro is tethered shooting which I also tend to do a lot on commercial jobs,

The only time I really use the Adobe option is when I have a LOT of catalogue shots that are going to print small and need to be processed fast. Camera RAW is good but is also prone to destroying pixel data if you get too ‘enthusiastic’ with the alterations that it offers you – in particular, opening up shadows.

The only thing I have used that can match the PhaseOne product really is the Flex suite from Hasselblad but they are specific only to Hasselblad products :-)

EDIT: I just tried Lightroom 2 out of curiosity and the results were pretty scary. Even though it’s pretty much based around the camera raw tech it managed to degrade the image even more. The trial I used was a high res 16 bit original and the exported Lightroom file looked dreadful with lots of data lost and lots of unwanted digital artefacts gained. Truly awful product.

I use Capure One LE 3.7 all the time for my Canon photos. I find that it preserves fine detail much better than Adobe Camera Raw especially in the shadows.

Thanks guys, just one other question. When saving the output file after making changes can you save to .PSD or do you usually just save to .TIF since it is also a non-lossy format?

usually an uncompressed tif for me.

I save to 8 bit tiffs because they can be used by just about any program on any platform.