Avalanche lets you move photo catalogs to Capture One
Like all versions of Avalanche, Avalanche for Capture One allows you to transfer photo catalogs from one application to another while preserving your modifications and settings made in the original editing software. It also preserves the organization of your catalog, through the migration of albums, projects, annotations and tags.
Avalanche for Capture One features the same ease-of-use and migration quality that Avalanche is now renowned for, but it provides some specific features for Capture One users.
Preserve the retouching done on your original photos
Complex presets preserved
New: When migrating, Avalanche preserves new complex and advanced presets like HSL mixing, Color correction, Clarity conversion, and Dehaze conversion. Specifically, this means that Avalanche can now convert images using Lightroom Presets to Capture One with much higher accuracy.
Migration from Lightroom to the new Capture One 23 has been vastly improved by training AI to accurately convert advanced presets on Colors, Black & White, Clarity and Dehaze (operations that Capture One migration doesn’t manage perfectly without the help of Avalanche’s AI).
Preserve your catalog architecture and much more
Preserve your organization structure
Keep your Metadata from your photos
C1 variants in Capture One
Support videos transfer to Capture One
Avalanche for Capture One has been designed from the beginning to preserve as much as possible of all the organization of your catalogs.
Metadata management is also at the heart of Avalanche. All Exif and IPTC metadata will correctly flow from your source catalog to Capture One.
Flags and color labels are properly handled.
Faces are not supported in Capture One, but Avalanche will preserve the faces labels as Keywords.
Avalanche for Capture One also smartly migrates the GPS information present in your source catalog.
Avalanche for Capture One will, as you’d expect, create C1 variants for all versions of a given master it encounters during the migration.
It will convert collections/albums, projects, collection sets and preserve the hierarchy of your original catalog.
It supports videos with all their metadata and will properly add the videos in their albums, projects,… It supports versions for videos(with metadata) but does not support transferring edits made to videos.
Simple, efficient and powerful way to transfer your catalogs
Comparison between Capture One and Avalanche photo import
If you have tried to transfer your photos directly into Capture One, you may have experienced crashes, loss of your metadata or even loss of the edits to your photos. That is why CYME has created Avalanche for Capture One, the best tool to migrate your photos with the valuable adjustments you created in the original software.
The table below compares importing a photo library directly into Capture One or via Avalanche.
Import with Capture One |
Import with Capture One | Transferred Features |
Import with Avalanche for Capture One |
Import with Avalanche for Capture One | ||
No | X | White Balance of JPEG images | ✓ | Yes Uses AI | ||
Estimated | X | White Balance of RAW images | ✓ | Yes Uses AI | ||
Basic conversion | X | Black and White from Aperture | ✓ | Advanced conversion with color mix | ||
... | ... | Black and White from LR | ... | ... |
Import with Capture One |
Import with Capture One | Transferred Features |
Import with Avalanche |
Import with Avalanche for Capture One | ||
No | X | White Balance of JPEG images | ✓ | Yes Uses AI | ||
Estimated | X | White Balance of RAW images | ✓ | Yes Uses AI | ||
Basic conversion | X | Black and White from Aperture | ✓ | Advanced conversion with color mix | ||
No | X | Highlights, Shadows, Blacks, Whites | ✓ | Yes Uses AI | ||
Yes | ✓ | Edited GPS information in images | ✓ | Yes | ||
Yes With hierarchy | ✓ | Keywords | ✓ |
Yes With hierarchy | ||
Yes | ✓ | Aperture Projects, Albums and Folders | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Versions in Albums | ✓ | Since C1 v23 | ||
No | X | Smart Albums | X | No | ||
Yes (Flip, Rotation, Crop,…) | ✓ | Geometrical effects | ✓ |
Yes (Flip, Rotation, Crop,…) | ||
No | X | Curves | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Color Grading | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | HSL Color | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Clarity | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Dehaze | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Complex adjustments | ✓ | Estimation of Vignetting, Levels, Sharpening,... | ||
No | X | Presets Conversion into C1 styles | ✓ | Optionally convert all LR presets into C1 styles | ||
Does not allow to move managed files out of their parent library | X | Managed vs Referenced Files | ✓ | Full options to control what happens to referenced files. | ||
No | X | Copy master files to a new location | ✓ | Full control | ||
Yes | ✓ | Videos | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Options | ✓ | Yes Many options | ||
No | X | Conversion of Previews | ✓ |
Yes Many options | ||
No | X | Conversion from Luminar 4, AI | ✓ | Yes | ||
No | X | Conversion from Photos | ✓ | Currently in beta Migrates catalogs structure, image metadata and geometrical adjustments only | ||
Yes | ✓ | Conversion from MediaPro | ✓ | Yes (more version supported) |
Going beyond the inbuilt import options
Capture One features an inbuilt function to import Lightroom or Aperture catalogs. Yet, Avalanche for Capture One goes beyond that feature in a number of key areas :
More accurate conversion of RAW settings
Avalanche for Capture One has been trained to understand how to best migrate your settings to Capture One. It goes way beyond what Capture One does when using the inbuilt importer.
More accurate conversion of JPEG settings
Capture One ignores the white balance settings applied on JPEG files, where Avalanche tries to accurately reflect the original setting in Capture One.
Include GPS information
The inbuilt migration loses the GPS information as Capture One requires GPS information to be included in EXIF file itself. Avalanche gives you the option to burn the GPS information in your masters during your migration.
System requirements
Avalanche for Capture One require macOS 10.14 or later and run fine on Catalina.
Avalanche for Capture One is compatible with:
- Aperture catalogs from version 3.6
- Lightroom Classic catalogs from version 5
- Luminar catalogs from version 4.2
You need around 145 MB of free space, 4GB of memory (8GB recommended) and enough space to accommodate the converted libraries.
A working copy of Apple Aperture or Capture One is not required to migrate libraries as Avalanche opens those libraries natively.
Limitations of Avalanche
(*) Not all edits can be converted due to the complexity of the proprietary formats of the catalogs. Avalanche for Capture One will not convert mask based edits, or local adjustments (spot removal, healing brushes, etc…). Advanced color grading is not handled either. All images that have adjustments that are not supported, will be placed in a dedicated album for easy review.
Technical support
If you’re on this page, chances are you’ve already compared the different software, be it Capture One vs Lightroom or Luminar AI vs Luminar 4 or Aperture.
In any case, we hope the above page has helped you answer the question: “How to best export your photos from Apple Photo, Google Photos, iView Media, Lightroom, Luminar or Luminar AI to Capture One”.
You can find more information about photo library migrations on our website and in our community area.
You will also find on our Youtube channel video tutorials about photo conversions using Avalanche. They will help you export your photo catalogs from Lightroom to Capture One.
Since the first version of avalanche, we keep on improving our migration software to offer you better products every day.
Avalanche Unlimited
Do you know the Avalanche Unlimited software? You should! 😉
Avalanche Unlimited includes all the features of Avalanche for Capture One, while also adding the functionality of exporting your photo libraries to Luminar and to Lightroom.
This means you no longer have the headache of comparing Capture One vs Luminar or Lightroom vs Capture One. Instead, you can take advantage of the best features of each editing software and export, transfer or migrate your photos from one editing solution to the other according to your needs, without fear of losing your changes.Avalanche Unlimited manages, like Avalanche for Capture One, the import of your photos from Aperture, iView Media and Google Photos.
Frequently Asked Questions
Avalanche needs macOS 10.14 or newer, running on any kind of Mac bought around 2015 or later. Avalanche runs natively on Apple M1 macs and takes full advantage of the Apple chip for increased performances.
Yes. It never expires, and all features are available.
Only the first 100 images and videos will be converted.
Avalanche for Capture One preserves all your collections as well as folders and projects, if the source catalog supports such concepts. Hierarchies of collections are reproduced using CollectionSets.
Yes. Avalanche for Capture One preserves all supported annotations in Lightroom (IPTC, flags, color labels, Keywords). Some annotations without equivalent (for example : the favourite flag) are converted using appropriate Capture One concepts.
Avalanche also preserves the GPS annotations when they have been edited (Aperture).
Not in the foreseeable future.
We are sorry for our friends on Windows but porting Avalanche to Windows is currently out of scope.
At CYME, we offer a very advantageous upgrade policy where you only pay the difference between the version you own and the unlimited version.
Simply contact us using our support desk and we will arrange it for you.
The size-on-disk of the catalog does not always matter. The speed of conversion is more dependent on the number of images in the catalog and on the conversion options. In particular, the number of files that need to be copied from one place to another.
As an example, if all your images are referenced in the source catalog and you are happy to leave them in their current location, the conversion time will not be affected by the copy of files. If on the other hand, you choose to relocate your masters, copy time will become an important contributor to the migration time.
As an example, we regularly get reports of very large migrations (100k, 250k or even 600k images) that went smoothly in a few hours.