For decades, studio photography has been a paradox: a deeply collaborative craft trapped inside software built for one person at a time. Capture One’s latest release, version 16.8.2, takes a swing at that bottleneck with Multi-User Sessions — a feature that lets entire creative teams work inside a single session simultaneously.
The pitch is refreshingly direct. As Capture One puts it, studio work has always been a team effort, “but the software around it has forced work to move in handoffs: capture, export, send, wait, repeat.” Multi-User Sessions strips those steps out. The photographer, the digitech, the art director and the editor can now all dive into the same session at once, each on their own machine.
Crucially, this isn’t watered-down collaboration. Every participant can view and edit full-resolution RAW files on their own computer, covering the whole pipeline from tethered capture through to final selects and post-processing. To keep things from descending into chaos, there’s a single session owner who holds the keys to imports, tethering, folder organization and access permissions. Collaborators are then granted controlled access to editing, retouching, cropping and rating — enough freedom to be useful, with guardrails so nobody steps on anyone else’s toes.
Here’s the part that separates Capture One’s approach from the usual cloud-everything trend: this is not cloud-based remote editing. Multi-User Sessions run over a local network, which means your images never leave the building. That’s a meaningful detail for studios handling sensitive client work, and it also keeps things fast — no small thing when you’re feeding high-resolution tethered cameras into the mix.
The feature launches in beta on macOS first, with Windows parity and support for even larger teams promised down the line. Capture One says it deliberately shipped early to get the tool into real photographers’ hands and shape it around actual shoots. “We’re launching in beta because we want this shaped by real shoots, and we’re listening closely to what studios tell us next,” says Mathieu Bourlion, Director of Product Management at Capture One.
Multi-User Sessions headline the update, but 16.8.2 brings a couple of other welcome additions. The release adds file support for over 20 legacy Panasonic cameras on both desktop and the mobile app (version 3.3.3), and folds in support for the brand-new Leica SL-3P, which shares much of its hardware DNA with the Panasonic S1R II.
As for cost, Capture One plans start at $18 per month. The catch for collaborators: Multi-User Sessions require the offline collaboration tools bundled into the Studio subscription, which runs $48.50 per month. Full purchasing options are listed on Capture One’s website.
