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Software

The New Capture One Beta Will Fundamentally Change Retouching

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 05/09/2025
05/12/2025
3 Mins read
Three smiling people pose for a photo at a lively indoor event, with some motion blur on the image.
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Last week, Capture One announced a few new important changes to their program. The company, which has always been a bit slower and more careful about making changes that photographers hope won’t replace their services, made a new update involving AI, retouching, and doing it in one of the most ethical ways that I’ve ever seen. While it’s still in Beta, I’m thoroughly surprised at just how good it makes retouching and at how nearly effortless it is. On top of that, Capture One does face detection even better than many of the camera manufacturers out there.

I’ve been a dedicated Capture One user for nearly a decade now. Here are my findings in brief.

A woman smiles while eating, shown in a close-up shot on a photo editing software screen.
Editing in Capture One Beta
  • At first, it didn’t seem like it was doing face detection. But then I started scrolling through various images and I realized that it just took a bit more time to load up than I wanted it to. For the record, I’m on a 2019 iMac — the last one before the M1 processor came out. After some time, Capture One found all the faces in the scenes, even ones that I didn’t even think it would find.
  • Capture One is doing a better job with face detection than most camera companies. This is especially the case with people of color and in group settings. They could teach something to Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Leica, and others. However, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, and Leica are much better than Canon at this.
  • It nailed the face detection even with special lens filters being used to throw off the camera. At times, I like shooting with prisms, and even then, Capture One was able to find faces in the scenes.
  • The parameters that I used the most were fixing dark circles and blemishes and evening the skin out. After trying contouring on a single image, I didn’t bother with it.
  • A while ago, a retoucher told me that to become a better retoucher, you basically just need to really hate your work. But it’s hard when you don’t hate your work. But Capture One’s new retouch tab is doing a really solid job of balancing the use of AI, traditional editing, and ethics. It’s truly assistive AI and not generative at all.
  • It fixes dark circles, blemishes, and evens out skin incredibly well, much better than I would want to do. Retouching these images in Capture One would otherwise take me a while. Plus, I can sync the edits across various photos.
  • It doesn’t look at beauty marks around the lips. So if someone has those, you’ll need to manually retouch them.
  • I tested it with various skin colors. Honestly, Capture One did a fantastic job of making the skin look better while retaining texture.
  • Even with Fujifilm’s skin smoothing — which is arguably some of the best in the industry — Capture One still finds a way to create a more aesthetically pleasing image.
A person smiling and taking a big bite of food, holding it close to their mouth, in a lively setting.A person smiling and taking a bite of pizza, wearing a light-colored cap and red wristband.
A comparison of the original and edited image

For years, photographers have been using Capture One to edit and then finishing up the retouching in Photoshop. Granted, photographers who retouch jewelry and products will still need to do that. But if you’re shooting portraits, the new Capture One Beta is showing us that photographing people and then needing to do retouches is going to be really simple. Honestly, I’m very excited about this.

I often shoot events involving people eating, and have a very unique/specific way of making people look. Everyone enjoys the process and loves the images. But I never wanted to retouch. With these, I could apply a preset across the images, do minor retouches to a single photo, sync the edits to all of them, and then do final touch-ups to each photo if I even need to do so in the first place. Since I rate my images in-camera and not on the computer, my workflow is even faster.

I’m really, really hyped about this. And we encourage you to try the beta if you haven’t already. Phoblographer’s members get a 20% discount on Capture One. However, Capture One Beta is free. After conversations that I’ve had with a lot of camera reps recently, there’s really no good reason not to be editing with Capture One right now.

A smiling man with short brown hair and a beard, wearing a maroon shirt, facing the camera.
Edited
Smiling man with short brown hair and beard wearing a maroon shirt, photographed against a dark background.
Original
A woman in glasses drinks from a green and white can under a white canopy tent.
edited
A woman wearing glasses tilts a can of Hudson beer to her mouth under a white tent.
Original
A man wearing a cap is eating a sandwich outdoors, holding it with both hands.
Edited
A man wearing a black cap takes a bite from a sandwich outdoors.
Original
Young woman with wavy brown hair smiling, wearing a black top, silver necklace, and nose ring, indoors.
Edited
A young woman with wavy hair smiles, wearing a black top and silver necklace, with a blurred background.
Original
A smiling woman with glasses and layered necklaces, wearing a plaid shirt, stands in soft indoor lighting.
Edited
Young woman with glasses and a plaid shirt smiles in soft, warm lighting with a blurred background.
Original
Smiling woman with long brown hair, wearing glasses and a black top, with a dark blurred background.
Edited
Smiling woman with long curly hair and glasses in a dark setting, wearing a black top.
Original
A man with a beard eating a sandwich outdoors, holding it with both hands, and looking at the camera.
Edited
A man with a beard is eating a sandwich outdoors, looking directly at the camera.
Original
Man enjoying a bite of food outdoors, holding a taco with a small flag toothpick, eyes closed in savor.
Edited
A man with closed eyes eats a taco outdoors, holding it up to his mouth with one hand.
Original
capture one capture one beta editing retouching review
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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