Phase One just released a new version of Capture One yesterday: http://www.phaseone.com/software.aspx

I'm on the road for work this week, but I decided to give the demo a try last night. It installed fine, but it bluescreened almost immediately when I started to use it. Then to make things even more fun, the computer wouldn't reboot back into windows, not even in safe mode.

After an hour of trying to recover my windows install, ended up spending the next three hours backing up my important files through a PE command prompt because I don't have all my normal tools with me. I can think of a thousand different things I'd rather be doing than rebuilding my laptop in a hotel room until 2am because of some shitty demo software.

Thanks Phase One!

 

Damn! That bites big ones.

 

Ouch Dan! That sucks!

 

"Lo, that sucketh."
-William Shakespeare

 

I've since found out that several other people nuked their boxes with this software. There's some kind of copy protection "driver" that gets installed when you install capture one. That driver seems to have some major compatibility issues and might actually modify a system file, which would explain why I couldn't boot even in safe mode.

Definitely avoid this demo for now!

 

oh geez! sorry to hear man!

 

that's f'ed up...sorry to hear

 

Flashbacks of Sony protection eff up, when will they learn.

 

Since I had to completely rebuild my machine from scratch, I had nothing to lose, so I tried the demo again on a bare Windows 7 image. I have to say, if they get the "corrupt all your data and kill your computer" details sorted out, this will be a very good application.

It's certainly not as intuitive as a lot of RAW converters out there, but the results are very good. I think it's the best converter I've used for colour correction. It's reasonably quick too.

Here are some images I've processed from my brief visit to Gros Morne in Newfoundland yesterday:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/acurazinedan/4058651203/" title="Grass and Sun by AcuraZine Dan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2548/4058651203_27edfe25a1_b.jpg" width="1024" height="682" alt="Grass and Sun" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/acurazinedan/4059837910/" title="The road to Trout River by AcuraZine Dan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2572/4059837910_bdfd6e8892_b.jpg" width="1024" height="682" alt="The road to Trout River" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/acurazinedan/4059877196/" title="Lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head by AcuraZine Dan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2598/4059877196_96a75ef535_b.jpg" width="1024" height="768" alt="Lighthouse at Lobster Cove Head" /></a>

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/acurazinedan/4059215951/" title="Untitled by AcuraZine Dan, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2719/4059215951_2111724c4b_b.jpg" width="1024" height="682" alt="" /></a>

Side note: I don't know if it's just me, but I think Flickr seems to have become a little more aggressive with their JPG compression and sharpening lately.

 

A copy protection driver for a demo? That's really obnoxious.

- Frank