Capture One vs Lightroom Apple M1 - Import and Export Speed Test
Recently both Capture One and Lightroom have been released as Apple Silicon native versions. I have covered both of these in videos on my YouTube channel recently. For Capture One I showed you how the interface responds with the new version, and for Lightroom, I did a test comparing import and export speeds for the M1 native version compared to the older version running under rosetta. Since I had the benchmarks for this, I figured why not run the same test for Capture One.
For my Lightroom benchmarks, I ran two tests. I imported 70 Raw files from a memory card into my Lightroom library. My computer is an Apple MacBook Pro 13” M1 with 16gb ram and a 1tb drive. I have the memory card connected to the computer via a thunderbolt dock with a built in SD card reader. I imported and exported all file to the internal SSD. For the import test, I included the time to generate 1:1 Previews on Lightroom. On Capture One I set the preview size to maximum to match the 1:1 setting in Lightroom as much as possible. I left the settings at defaults for both applications.
Fort the export test I had applied some contrast and grain in Lightroom, so I set the same settings in Capture One, and I also turned luminance noise reduction off in Capture One as it isn’t applied in Lightroom. I tired to match the settings as best I could. I exported all the files as Jpegs scaling to 2400px on the long edge.
Here are the results:
Import and generate previews (minutes, seconds):
- Lightroom: 01.17
- Capture One (Previews set to 5120): 01:58
Export Test (minutes, seconds):
- Lightroom: 01:08
- Capture One: 01:09
So the interesting thing here is that Capture One is quite a bit slower importing and generating previews than Lightroom. However, at the default settings, it should be noted that Capture One is applying more adjustments than Lightroom does by default. Specifically, it applies a high amount of Noise Reduction by default, and it also generally sharpens a lot more.
To see if this actually makes any difference, I made a style for Capture One that matches Lightroom’s settings more closely. I tuned off the Luminance noise reduction, and set the sharpening to settings that more closely match Lightroom’s defaults. (Turning the amount down and turning off the threshold, and setting the radius to 1). The result was basically the same, so it doesn’t really make any difference. If anyone is curious running the test at the default preview size takes 56 seconds (so much faster).
It should be noted though, that Capture One’s previews are different from Lightroom’s 1:1 previews. They are not Jpegs - they actually behave more like Lightroom’s smart previews. If I was to generate smart previews on import in Lightroom, it would take longer, but they also don’t generate at the same size as Capture One’s. So it’s difficult to get an accurate comparison. For the sake of completion though, I ran the test in Lightroom again, this time with smart previews turned on and it gave me a time of 1:48 - which is near enough to the Capture One time (and the size of Lightroom’s smart previews are smaller), so take from that what you will.
In the end, comparisons like this are interesting but not necessarily all that useful. You don’t spend most of your time importing and exporting - you spend it editing (well, most people don’t) and in that case, both applications are pretty responsive in their Apple Silicon incarnations. In terms of overall responsiveness, I’d have to give the edge to Lightroom, but only just. Both are faster than they were under rosetta. Lightroom however does seem to use more RAM - but this has always been the case. There were also some reports of Lightroom causing an excessive use of swap space, but I can’t replicate this problem. I do however have the 16gb version of the MacBook Pro, so perhaps its only an issue on the 8gb version.
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