It is unusual for a company to show off new software features before the are released. The Capture One Pro team were apparently too excited about the new features to hold off showing off the new stuff. So in early May, David Grover, at Capture One published a You Tube video on the new features which were healing tool layers and clone tool layers. They were so excited (and so was I). At the end of May the new version of Capture One Pro 20¹ came out and the new healing and cloning tools were really quite good.

I’ve been using them for a while now and I’m really quite pleased with the results i am getting. I’ve become braver and braver with the touch ups I’ve been doing. I started with just healing the dust spots that seem to be permanently attached to my sensor. Previously the did have a spot removal tool that did work but not on big ticket items ² and basically on the background layer. The new tools put the healing or cloning on their own layer.

I’ve using the healing brush on the below image to clear up what has become a standard sight at the theme parks over the last 10 years where they keep adding more and more rides and features. These new rides mean a long time with construction equipment in the parks and in your images. Not much you can do about it. Here is an image of Bluto’s Barge Ride and Islands of Adventure that I took at the annual pass preview when the Universal reopened in June.

And here is the image after adding a heal layer to hide the construction equipment in the back ground.

The new tools do a very good job in this case. Also got rid of some wires under the left crows nest. Nice not having to go over to Photoshop to clean up images. You can get a 30 day trial if you wish to explore Capture One. There are also less expensive versions for specific camera manufacturers

¹ For some unknown reason the first version of Capture One Pro 20 was 20.0.0, then 20.0.1 then switch to 13.1.0 then another release at 13.1.1. Latest is 13.1.1.

² It was good for spot healing but was not great for removing anything bigger such as a power line.