We are just testing Capture One at work because our Adobe stopped supporting discounted EDU access to its products here in Germany a couple months ago. For a university that runs about 5,000 Adobe licenses, paying on a per month basis for these is pretty much equal to bancruptcy. Lightroom is one of the very few exceptions in the Adobe product pallet that is available by paying a one time fee but we're still looking into alternatives.
I've been using Capture One for a few weeks now and I have to say that in my department, I am advocating going back to Lightroom. I am not sure if it's because I have been using Lightroom for so many years and am just used to how the program works but I have a hard time getting used to Capture One. My workflow takes a lot longer now than it used to take on LR, again probably due to the fact that I don't find things that I need as fast as I would in LR. It's also not compatible to many plugins we have bought and still used from Topaz. I find it pretty inconvenient and time consuming to first export the file from Capture One, then use the standalone Topaz filters and then import it back into Capture One when LR lets me do this all in one go.
Qualitywise though Capture One is an outstanding program. At work though, I don't have the liberty really to invest working time into a new program that costs 3 times as much as LR does. If I was to use this in my personal time, I probably would have invested both money and time into learning how to use it properly. The only extra plugins I used were Topaz Denoise and Photomatix since LR5 couldn't handle HDR fusion. Since LR6 now supports HDR fusion and I found this awesome program called NeatImage, I think I will upgrade to LR6 rather than getting Capture One. Again, this is not because Capture One creates crappy quality pictures and is limited in its functions - it certainly is a superb program in both areas - I just think I will stick with what I've been using for years.
