Similar to how Lightroom presets work, styles in Capture One allow you to apply many adjustments to your RAW photos all in one swoop. You can, therefore, give your photo a specific creative look with only one click.
I've been doing a lot of my RAW editing in Capture One lately, and this has given me the chance to create some interesting styles. Here I decided to share them for free so that you can use them in your edits. For now, you'll find 25 Capture One styles, but send me a message here if you'd like to see more added over time. These styles are compatible with the latest version of Capture One (Capture One 20).
Some of these styles create quite a drastic effect, so don't hesitate to apply them to a new layer instead and reduce the opacity of the style layer so that it fits your photos just right. To learn more about styles in Capture One and how to use them, refer to this post.
Finally, here's another postI wrote if you're interested in learning how to create your own Capture One styles.
Here lies 2 biggest problem with Capture One. You buy C1 on Feb 2020. You buy a new camera in August 2020. You get zero support on that raw file on C1 unless you buy C1 ver 21. You bought an old 645Z camera, it's DNG but C1 refuse to open it because they are selling Phase One. Capture One 21 (14.0. 2) is a service release for Mac and Windows including: Bug fixes; New camera support; New file support; This release is recommended for all users and is a free update to all existing Capture One 21 owners and subscribers. Download the Capture One styles. Installation instructions. You're free to use these Capture One styles for both personal and commercial projects. No attribution is required. However, if want to give Purple11 a shout-out, that's always really appreciated! 😄 You cannot sublicense, resell, share, transfer, or otherwise redistribute these.
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You cannot sublicense, resell, share, transfer, or otherwise redistribute these Capture One styles.
Free Capture One Styles
Here's a preview of the 25 free Capture One styles included in the pack. Drag the slider on the images to get a before and after preview:
Bright
A style for a bright, contrasty and highly saturated style look.
Cityscape
A film-inspired style with film grain a magenta color tone.
Cowboy
A very warm look throughout.
Denim
Crisp and sharp with a blue tone.
Capture One 21 Pro
Desert
Contrasty and highly saturated. Most of the time you'll want to use that style on a separate layer and reduce the opacity.
Exotic
A vintage style with lower contrast and a matte feel.
Exotic 2
A vintage style with a warm color grade.
Funky Nature
A wild take on colors. This one will only work on very specific images.
Future Old School
Very high contrast and a cool color grade, with an undertone of a vintage feel.
Gloomy
Capture One 20 Db
A strong vignette and greenish color grade.
High-Contrast Black and White
Create very graphic black and white images with this style.
Intense Black and White
A black and white style for very dark blues and cyans.
Power Black and White
A black and white for light skin tones that pop.
Ultra Black and White
Capture One 21
Another take on a high-contrast black and white.
Vintage Black and White
A high-contrast black and white with film grain.
Vintage Black and White 2
Yet another take on black and white styling.
Nature
A green and contrasty style perfect for nature and vegetation.
New Day
Capture One 2021
Bright and saturated. Perfect for those shots that have a lot of shadows to be recovered.
Pop
A saturated styles to make your images pop.
Soft Pink
A slight pink grade.
Solitude
A soft, contrasty and desaturated look.
W-01
A vintage brownish look.
W-02
Another take on a vintage and saturated look.
Whoosh
Crisp details and a mild HDR look.
Your Typical Color Grade
Blue/teal shadows with yellow/orange highlights.
Capture One Styles Installation Instructions
Easy as pie! 🥧 Just unzip the downloaded file, and then in the unzipped folder you'll find a file named Purple11-Capture-One-Styles.costylepack. Double click on that file and the style pack will be installed automatically into Capture One.
You'll find them in the Adjustments Tab under User Styles:
Capture One Pricing continues to be a subject that keeps popping up in my In Box this week.
People want to know 'why' the pricing and promotion seems to be so heavy handed with Capture One. Basically, equity capital. PhaseOne, the originator of Capture One software, turned into one of the most Western style companies in the camera business in terms of management. Phase One took on equity investors in 2004 (Silverfleet Capital), and were pushed hard to become more efficient and growth oriented. Silverfleet themselves point to Phase One as one of their more successful investments, and claim that the software side had at an annual growth rate of 38% when Silverfast sold their investment in 2019 to Axcel (and Phase One managers). While Silverfast pushed Capture One hard, Axcel is doing so harder, as they have to justify their purchase.
The real complaint I keep getting is the old 'value for money' one. Simply put, many Capture One users are feeling like new features, performance, and camera/lens support lags what they expect for what they're paying.
Just to be clear, here's the current situation:
- Full Capture One Pro — US$19/month (annually) or US$299 for version 21 perpetual license
- Full Capture One — US$19/month (annually) or US$179 for version 21 perpetual license
- Capture One for BRAND — US$14/month (annually) or US$199 for version 21 perpetual license
The company also promotes a lot of +Styles packages that increase the confusion and prices, and the monthly subscriptions cost more (US$24 and US$19, respectively) if actually paid monthly.
It's a lot to decipher.
Personally, I don't have a lot to say about the prices. Yes, they're aggressive, but you can be the judge of whether they present real value return for you. And, of course, Capture One is very likely to keep running promotions as they did (excessively) in the 2021 holiday season, so there's that.
The real problem I see is the confusion that Capture One has sown. In December I had no idea what the actual price of upgrading my license really was. I received three different offers (that were as much 2x apart in savings!) and had already heard rumors about upcoming price changes. I had no idea how to value their product, and thus did not upgrade.
What I find ironic is that Capture One is doing the micromanagement of pricing changes (mostly upward) that everyone was sure that Adobe was going to do with the Photography Plan. As it turned out, no. The Photography Plan has been stable, and we're now getting a reasonable stream of new features and performance along the way, as well. Jumping from Lightroom/Photoshop to Capture One just because of Fear of Creative Cloud (FOCC) turned out to be a false escape.
Businesses want your money, as they need it to survive. You vote with your money, determining their survival. It's really a simple proposition. The way I call it: Capture One has gone out of their way to make it not so simple, confusing to understand, and with pricing getting more attention than the features of their product. I see exactly why everyone is complaining.
Meanwhile: Capture One 21 version 14.0.2 was just released, and it has the official support for the Nikon Z6 II and Z7 II cameras as well as the Panasonic S1M, S1RM, and S5 cameras, the GFX 100 pixel shift files, and some bug fixes.