Those of you in the mostly-wonderful and sometimes-exasperating world of capture, teching, and editing with Phase One's Capture One (like myself) probably noticed that a new version of Capture One, 10.2, dropped earlier in the week. I've just finished one of the busiest weeks of the year (10-12 hour location days, at different locations, every day!) with a combination of the late 10.2 betas, for which I'm a tester, and the release version of 10.2, and...I'm uninstalling it and going back to 10.1.2. Phase, you let this one go half-baked. (And before you asked: yes, all of these issues save one, which is new in the 10.2 release version, I've reported to Phase, on the last beta release. Hopefully they'll be fixed in 10.2.1, whenever it comes out).

What's busted?

• Undo/redo on dual monitor Macs. I edit with the Browser on one screen and the Viewer on the other. Undo and Redo only work on the Browser window's screen (and focus), not on the Viewer. In past releases, key combos including undo/redo would work on both screens; having it work on the browser screen only is exactly bass-ackwards because that's the window you will probably be most unlikely to use. (Note that if you've turned off 'Displays have separate Spaces' in your Display Preferences, this works fine; but that's not the default for most of us).
• Custom key combinations randomly don't respond. On my laptop, I have Live View mapped to the forward slash key, which I can usually hit with my big toe if I'm in socks on location and my laptop is on the floor (both of which are often the case). During this morning's shoot, about half the time, this didn't work...causing me to have to bend down and hit the Live View button on the Camera tab. Ecch. (10.1 broke the ability to map Space in live view to take an exposure, which is annoying enough, particularly when you're one-handing your laptop because your other hand is steadying a pole with your camera flying 16 feet above you).
• No forward slash in watermarks. I run a business called Martin Knowles Photo/Media. This one's a near deal-breaker. I can work around it by using the Unicode fraction slash, but still...
• Sleep/wake tethering instability. I shoot a P45, tethered to a MacBook Air 2011 with the Thunderbolt-FireWire dongle. It may well be time for me to replace the dongle (but given that C1 shows the same misbehaviour on both my dongles and on my main and backup cables, I'm given to think it's a software issue). Back in the bad old days of C1 7, you'd have to be very careful to disconnect your camera before closing your laptop's lid, because you'd often cause CaptureCore to blow, leaving you with no other choice than restarting Capture One in order to re-tether. Guess what annoying behaviour is back in 10.2? It gets worse: half the time when this happens, I actually have to reboot the entire machine. I've sometimes even had this happen when I pull the dongle before closing the laptop lid, which is doubly horrible when you're running outside because you're in the last few minutes of usable light at dusk, and Mother Nature won't wait for a reboot.

So, my conclusion: unless you need to be running 10.2 because your camera isn't supported in 10.1.2, skip this update and wait for the next one to come out. They've fixed a number of niggling annoyances (zoom controls in Live View being one, which I've reported in every single release since the 10.0 betas), but at least three of these issues are major showstoppers in my workflow. Thankfully, Phase makes it really easy to downgrade to previous releases.