From Lightroom presets to Capture One styles

Today’s blog post is about converting Lightroom presets into Capture One Styles. About two years ago, I gave up Lightroom in favor of Capture One, which seems to be a better raw file processor. In particular, in Capture One can shoot more light and shadow without appearing a significant noise in the image. Also, color grading is better in Capture One. That’s after you get used to the interface, which is fundamentally different from Lightroom.

Also, regarding presets and styles, in general, I avoid them. It seems that I waste more time trying to find the most suitable preset than when it does all the processing of a picture starting from scratch.

But there are situations when presets can save an image. There are situations when I look for a particular look and feel — as with Instagram-like pictures. The presets can be a starting point; I will apply minor adjustments later.

Slowly, I managed to gather a relatively large collection of Lightroom presets over time, some paid, others free. I currently use about 10% of them.

Unfortunately, my presets could no longer be used in Capture One. Capture One Styles are fundamentally different from Lightroom presets.

Trying to create Capture One styles similar to Lightroom presets is only feasible for a few presets, as it takes a lot of time.

I finally found a small program that converts Lightroom presets to Capture One: the Preset Converter from Picture Instruments. There is a time-limited trial version, or you can buy the full version for $47 + VAT.

With this program, I have so far converted most of my presets, and the resulting styles are incredibly close in results to the Lightroom version. There are also some limitations: the functions that are missing in Capture One cannot be converted — for example, dehazing. Some preset that used extreme values ​delivered strange results after the conversion. Presets that rely on split toning also don’t convert well to Capture One, as you can see in the images below.