Capture One first announced an iPad version of its popular photo editor a year ago. Since then, we’ve seen snippets and teases of the iPad app, including in March when Capture One shared its roadmap for 2022. At that time, Capture One CEO, Rafael Orta, said, ‘Our plan, as we bring Capture One Live, Capture One for iPad, and Capture One for iPhone to the table alongside Capture One Pro for desktop, is to give photographers the most powerful ecosystem of creative and collaborative tools that give them the liberty of working anywhere in the world, anytime, and with anyone. And further equipped with easy file transferring, you’ll be able to pick up where you left off on your creative process across devices.’
At that time, Capture One said that being able to edit and export images on the go was a critical part of the iPad app. Users will be able to have Capture One’s image processing engine on the go and use select image editing tools on their tablet.
Capture One has now announced that the new iPad app will be available from the App Store on June 28 for $4.99 per month. Capture One has also shared some details about what users can expect when the app launches later this month and in the coming months via free updates.
It’s important to understand off the bat that Capture One for iPad is not intended to replace the desktop version of Capture One, but rather, it’s a companion. It’s part of a larger ecosystem where you can organize, edit and export your images across multiple devices. You can simply plug your camera into your iPad, import your images and begin organizing and culling. You can swipe through your photos, and rate or tag them.
You can then edit your photos in the new user interface, specially designed for iPad, using Styles (presets) or manual adjustments. Once you’ve finished your edits, you can export your images as JPEGs or upload them to the cloud, where you can then pick up where you left off on Capture One for desktop. Of the user experience on iPad, Capture One writes, ‘Our team of user researchers, UX designers, and UI designers has studied when, where, and how you would use the iPad app and made an interface to fit. The result of this research is features like our two-handed UI, and more subtle elements like hand gestures used to control the tools, such as long pressing on the screen to see a before and after of your photo, or the amount of space dedicated to your images on the screen.’
To release the app this month, the Capture One team has had to leave out some features, including tethering. Capture One is working closely with Apple to bring tethering to iPad and hopes to have the feature available soon. There’s plenty still in the app, though, including a suite of editing tools, like white balance, exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, clarity, structure, dehaze, sharpening, basic color editing with HSL, black and white conversion, noise reduction and more. You can also crop and rotate your photos in the app.
Alongside tethering, future updates to the app will add masks and layers and improved cloud support. Ultimately, the app will support image synchronization over the cloud.
To learn more about Capture One for iPad, click here. Again, the app will launch on June 28, and it’ll be $4.99 per month.