Capture One’s iPad App will Cost $4.99 a Month, is Coming June 28

Capture One will launch its long-awaited iPad app on June 28. The company says it isn’t intended to replace the desktop experience but work as its “best companion.”

The company originally teased its iPad app almost exactly a year ago and expected it to come to market in “early 2022.” That date clearly got pushed back, but Capture One has finally solidified a launch date as well as revealed more information on what to expect from this mobile offering.

The app will be available on June 28 at 1 PM CEST and will cost $4.99, announced via the company’s Instagram:

The company has also explained what photographers can expect from the app in a detailed blog post on its website. Capture One says that it spoke with professional photographers about what they would want in an app experience throughout its entire development cycle and combined that with usage data to see what tools were considered “must haves” for mobility.

“With the Capture One iPad app you can plug your camera directly into your iPad, import hundreds of photos, organize them and get to culling,” the company explains. “See your images in all their glory on the iPad screen, quickly swipe through them, and rate or color tag them. Filter your best ones and start editing using either Styles or manual adjustments.”

After photographers finish editing, Capture One envisions them showing images directly on the iPad screen to team members or clients while together on location. The app will also be able to export JPEGs.

“If you would like to refine your images even further when you get home, upload your album to the cloud, import it into Capture One Pro on desktop, and continue working exactly from where you left off,” Capture One adds.

The design and interface are also a departure from what Capture One users might expect and the editing company explains that its developers had to make an entirely new interface for the best user experience on the mainly touch-based system.

In an interview with PetaPixel last year, Capture One’s CEO Rafael Orta explained:

“We recognize the form factor of the iPad is different, so we were able to innovate around how that looks. We wrapped a completely new UI around it which is well suited for using on a tablet. It doesn’t allow you to do everything you can do on Capture One for Mac and Windows, and we will be very thoughtful about the tools and editing capabilities that we bring into the tablet because of that.”

The result is a user experience that has support for hand gestures, long presses on the screen, and changes to how much space objects take up on the display.

One major note is that the iPad app won’t be as fully featured as the desktop experience, mainly because Capture One says that it wanted to release something good, quickly rather than something fully complete that would take years to put together.

“We have chosen to launch the iPad app with a reduced set of features that we are confident in. The first version is not the final version, but it is a version we are proud to share and that we think will bring a lot of value to our community of photographers,” the company explains.

“We are happy about the features it will offer you, and we are proud of the quality, reliability, and performance of the app. It is a great starting point for the future, and we have tons of things in the pipeline for you.”

At launch, the app will feature:

• Import via camera role, files, attached camera, or SD card
• Culling
• Quick edits with support for styles and presets
• Geometry such as cropping and rotating
• A limited set of editing tools: White balance (wb & tint), Exposure (exposure, contrast, brightness, saturation), Dynamic Range (highlights, shadows, whites, blacks), Clarity and structure, Dehaze (auto and manual), Basic color editor, with color picker, HSL, B&W conversion, Vignetting, Sharpening (amount, radius, threshold, halo), Noise reduction (luminance, details, color, single pixel), Film grain (modes, impact, granularity), Moiré, Histogram
• Workflow tools: Before/After viewer, undo/redo/reset, basic metadata display, copy and apply (selective adjustments)
• Send to Desktop and Export: Add to cloud albums, import to Capture One Pro on desktop, export JPEGs, export EIPs, Watermarking, Airdrop

Capture One says that the next features to be added will be tethered shooting, masks and layers, and cloud improvements for file transferring and synchronization. That said, the company hasn’t provided any expected timeline for these additions.

Image credits: Capture One