Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Capture One Q&A => Topic started by: wanderingimages on December 21, 2016, 06:34:12 am
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Hi there - I'm planning to organize pictures in Capture One by folders instead of albums or collections.
So far it seems to me that the way to do it is to use Sessions because that allows me freely browse folders in my storage disk instead of having to manually add each folder and sub-folder (which seems to be the case when using Catalogs). Sessions also allow to keep previews and other C1 metadata inside the folder containing pictures, as opposed to some other centralized location.
This makes it very easy to backup pictures or move them between disks, because all I need to backup is the folders with pictures, which also include C1 edit data. As long as I don't bother with Albums or Smart Albums, I don't need to backup the actual session data.
Does this workflow make sense for someone who prefers to organize things in folders directly in file system?
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Exactly how I have been using C1 for the last three years.
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Hi there - I'm planning to organize pictures in Capture One by folders instead of albums or collections.
So far it seems to me that the way to do it is to use Sessions because that allows me freely browse folders in my storage disk instead of having to manually add each folder and sub-folder (which seems to be the case when using Catalogs). Sessions also allow to keep previews and other C1 metadata inside the folder containing pictures, as opposed to some other centralized location.
This makes it very easy to backup pictures or move them between disks, because all I need to backup is the folders with pictures, which also include C1 edit data. As long as I don't bother with Albums or Smart Albums, I don't need to backup the actual session data.
Does this workflow make sense for someone who prefers to organize things in folders directly in file system?
Bingo. This is why sessions rock.
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Beautiful!
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I can't get my head around the advantages of this process. Sessions never clicked with me. I have my images in a regular Catalog. Originals and edit data are stored in that same CO Catalog. What am I missing?
The only thing I can see that I'm missing is the CO does not back up the originals from within its own back up workflow. I get around this with simple, free file sync app that puts the actual originals in the CO Catalog on my back up drive.
If I use Sessions do the actual original files get backed up using CO's back up utility?
That would be nice, but even then, I don't like having my images organized only by date in CO. I have them in categories and I'm assuming that's not possible with Sessions?
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George
In sessions you can name folders by your categories. You can then move your photos into these folders within CO. Be sure to always do this within CO (as opposed to doing it in the finder), so all the date connected to your individual photos stay connected. I've done this for many years now.
Funny, I could never befriend myself with the catalog workflow. But it also took me a while to learn about the behavior of sessions. I found the explanations and tutorials about sessions vs. catalogs to be very confusing. In my understanding sessions are essentially the way we learned to work on computers with files and folders. Except you can open as many sessions as you like (I interpret them as "desktops" or "top folders"). I usually create one session per year. But you can create sessions by the criteria of your preference.
Martin
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Funny, I could never befriend myself with the catalog workflow.
In my understanding sessions are essentially the way we learned to work on computers with files and folders. Except you can open as many sessions as you like (I interpret them as "desktops" or "top folders").
Exactly how I feel. I'm an old school computer nerd that grew up on CPM and then PC/MSDOS - sessions just makes sense if that's your background.
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N80: I also prefer the simplicity of organising things directly using the storage File System. I started using catalogs in Lightroom, then in C1. Never managed to see the benefit since all I want is to organise pictures by a single topic (e.g. location). Thus I never managed to feel at ease with the fact that I needed an opaque DB to handle picture organisation. Catalog DBs also require their own backups because they're prone to get corrupted.
But the most important reason I want to manually organise pictures in folders is to have the ability to have a simple backup workflow. I can now easily move pictures between the computer's internal storage, external disks and Amazon Cloud Drive. I don't need to worry about reconnecting missing pictures with the catalog whenever I move things around. Edits and previews move along with the pictures seamlessly.
I also don't need to worry about large catalogs that slow things down.
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I guess the other issue for me is that I do not have tens of thousands of images and I'm not a pro. I have thousands of images. They are in folders with categories like "Vacation", "Art and Landscapes", "Travel". I can usually find any image I want with a few clicks. No searching ever, even though I do keyword most images. If I "Travel" on "Vacation" and take a "Landscape" image, a version may reside in all three folders.
There is still a part of me that wants to get my head around Sessions but right now I'm not sure what the point would be. My backup strategy is simple and redundant and my images are easy to find.
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If you prefer to apply multiple tags/keywords to pictures, then you need some sort of database like a catalog or even sessions allow for that. I tend to either shoot projects or very specific subjects repeatedly. I never go back to previous photos looking for some sort of topic. Once I'm done with a project, I export the final output and don't browse that anymore in C1. If I was interested in tagging and rating, and coming back to RAW pics relatively far in the future, then I'd possibly use catalogs.
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Sessions are just small catalogues with a predefined set of folders. In both the session and catalogue mode, the metadata and edits are stored in a SQLite database (the same as in LR, with a simpler data schema). You could achieve the same with catalogues and defining your own folders, but it is much more convenient to do so with sessions.
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Sessions are just small catalogues with a predefined set of folders. In both the session and catalogue mode, the metadata and edits are stored in a SQLite database (the same as in LR, with a simpler data schema). You could achieve the same with catalogues and defining your own folders, but it is much more convenient to do so with sessions.
I think the convenience factor depends on what you do. I have about 8 broad categories with specific subfolders in some of them. I import and direct them into the proper category or subfolder. Fairly simple. Again, not pro, low volume shooter and brutal editor (I cull like crazy and don't keep what I cull.)
Of course, the moral of the story is that in CO you have the option, which is great.
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Exactly how I have been using C1 for the last three years.
Same here. I will never hold my photos in a proprietary database and run the risk that the program goes out (i.e. Aperture), thereby, necessitating a time-intensive conversion process.
Bud James
www.budjames.photography
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Same here. I will never hold my photos in a proprietary database and run the risk that the program goes out (i.e. Aperture), thereby, necessitating a time-intensive conversion process.
Bud James
www.budjames.photography
I'm confused. How does any of this keep that from happening? You still have to deal with your edit data. And your original RAW files are always available. This was true in Aperture as well. You could always access your original files in the Aperture library. And if you wanted your 'versions' you had to deal with the edit data somehow. I'm not sure how using folders in CO will make this any different unless you are saving your 'variants' as a something like a tiff.
But admittedly, I'm still struggling to get my head around all this and I missed the point of the original post, which seems to me has less to do with sessions and more to do with using folders. I'm wondering if I can just set up folders the same way I have my user collections set up and use neither user collections (which has a few glaring file management weaknesses) or sessions (which don't appeal to me).
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I'm confused. How does any of this keep that from happening? You still have to deal with your edit data. And your original RAW files are always available. This was true in Aperture as well. You could always access your original files in the Aperture library. And if you wanted your 'versions' you had to deal with the edit data somehow. I'm not sure how using folders in CO will make this any different unless you are saving your 'variants' as a something like a tiff.
But admittedly, I'm still struggling to get my head around all this and I missed the point of the original post, which seems to me has less to do with sessions and more to do with using folders. I'm wondering if I can just set up folders the same way I have my user collections set up and use neither user collections (which has a few glaring file management weaknesses) or sessions (which don't appeal to me).
Yes you can, just launch C1 in a single untitled session and just navigate to whatever folder whenever you want and do whatever you want - basically works identically to Bridge. You can move stuff outside of C1 in the Finder or Windows explorer or however you feel like moving stuff (Photo Mechanic, Breeze Browser, any file manager of any kind) and it won't mess up anything. When you go into C1 and navigate to the folder, the photos are just there. Like I said, no different than Bridge if you run it that way.
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Yes you can, just launch C1 in a single untitled session and just navigate to whatever folder whenever you want and do whatever you want - basically works identically to Bridge. You can move stuff outside of C1 in the Finder or Windows explorer or however you feel like moving stuff (Photo Mechanic, Breeze Browser, any file manager of any kind) and it won't mess up anything. When you go into C1 and navigate to the folder, the photos are just there. Like I said, no different than Bridge if you run it that way.
Be careful with this. The edits you perform to an image are stored in the session catalogue. If you move the images outside C1, you will lose the edits, unless you pack the image as EIP before moving it.
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Like I mentioned in my earlier post, and like frankdisilvestro pointed out: never move your pictures to a different folder in your finder. Always do this within the CO application: mark the pictures you wish to move and drag them to your desired folder. Otherwise the connection to the edits you've made gets broken.
Martin
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Like I said, no different than Bridge if you run it that way.
I used Aperture and now use CO just so I can avoid multi-program 'solutions' like bridge. But again, with CO you have a lot of options.
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Be careful with this. The edits you perform to an image are stored in the session catalogue. If you move the images outside C1, you will lose the edits, unless you pack the image as EIP before moving it.
That is true. If you want the edits to move with the files you have to move them within C1. I should have mentioned that :)
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That is true. If you want the edits to move with the files you have to move them within C1. I should have mentioned that :)
solution is very simple - move folders, not files... then "CaptureOne" subfolder containing further subfolder ("Settings*", * for version) with *.cos files / as if P1 was not able to use regular .xmp sidecars / will go along - others are not important can be rebuilt based on *.cos... session does not matter much (unless you delete files using C1 into session's "Trash" subfolder, etc) - I for example simply create a dummy session on a RAM disk, it goes away each reboot.
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After performing several tests on sessions and checking what happen to the session catalog, I found that what really happens when you browse the system folders (outside the session) is that C1 actually adds all the images to the session catalog without moving the original files, for every folder and subfolder that you browse.
This means that if you just browse a folder with 1000 images, they will get added to the session catalog. Personally I don't like this approach, and as much as I like sessions for specific projects, I will make sure I stay inside the session folders and never browse system folders.
If you move the files or folders outside of C1, then it is even worse than doing it in catalog mode. When you open C1 after moving files or folders outside C1, it will not notify you of missing files and when you browse the new location, it will add again new records to the session catalog, meaning that the information will be duplicated and you keep filling the session catalog with useless data. At least when you are in catalog mode, C1 (like LR) will notify the files are missing and you can locate them.
It happened to me that moving back and forth files outside C1 (just for the test) at some point it did not keep the edits, even if I moved the images along the .cos files. I'm not sure what is the cause, but I'm not interested in finding out because I don't like this method at all.
Finally, one of the advantages IMHO of sessions is that you can move the entire session from one computer to another just by moving the session folder. You will lose this if you edit files directly in the system folders.
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If you move the files or folders outside of C1, then it is even worse than doing it in catalog mode. When you open C1 after moving files or folders outside C1, it will not notify you of missing files and when you browse the new location, it will add again new records to the session catalog, meaning that the information will be duplicated and you keep filling the session catalog with useless data. At least when you are in catalog mode, C1 (like LR) will notify the files are missing and you can locate them.
it won't be any issue if you move your folders with C1-created subfolders (just like for ACR you move raws and XMP sidecars) and as I suggested kill/recreate the dummy sessions on a regular basis (which I do every reboot automatically or you can simply create a batch file to do invoke C1 with all necessary operations for dummy session before started the executable)... I am using C1 since v3.7 only as a standalone converter (means I use other image browsers and only invoke C1 for conversion of a particular file) and never had issues since the current "sessions" were imposed on us... granted if you /not you personally/ are such an idiot to move a raw file alone then the things can be worse.
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DAM is really my only dislike of C1.
I would like to see a preference when opening, of turning off the DAM and making the input to JUST read the folders. Like DXO or PS. I only have about 45,000 images. Folders which are Raw Images>year>month>day-subject. A decent computer with an I7-6700 can search about as fast as an SQL for home use. At least fast enough to make up for the other problems a DAM creates.
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DAM is really my only dislike of C1.
I would like to see a preference when opening, of turning off the DAM and making the input to JUST read the folders. Like DXO or PS.
You can do exactly that by using the session mode and not importing anything. You can browse the folders directly and the session catalog will work similar to the Adobe Bridge cache.
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I have used OS system folders and subfolders to organize my photos by year/month/date since the beginning of my digital photography in 1999. When LR came along, it was easy to adapt to the new software because is support referenced files instead of requiring photos to be ingested into a proprietary database like iPhoto, Photos or early Aperture required.
When I sold all of my pro Canon DSLR gear and switched to Fuji-X cameras 3 years ago, I became disappointed with the RAW conversion of Fuji files from LR CC. This caused me to switch to CaptureOne Pro last year.
Because I have always used a standard folder structure, it made the transition to different DAM/RAW processing software much easier than if I had used the respective software's proprietary database for my images. The standard folder structure protects your images from software obsolescence (i.e. Aperture)
The only feature that I miss from LR is that my photo database contains 145k+ images. LR's catalog handled this number of images easily. C1P chokes on large image databases, therefore, I had to split my image catalogs in C1P to three to reduce the number of images in each catalog. Even with limiting my C1P catalog to 50k RAW images, when I click on "All Images", it can take 3-4 minutes before the program becomes usable. Once I do this once, I can move between folders and sections in the program without delay. I have to remember to select a specific folder instead of "All Images" when I quit C1P or it will take 3-4 minutes the next time that I launch the program before it becomes usable (I get the spinning beachball until then).
This solution was endorsed by C1 tech support as the tech I corresponded with stated that C1P's database contains more image specific information than LR and larger previews. It was recommended to reduce the image preview size, but I found that this made no improvement in performance on my maxed-out iMac 27" 5k. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon in a future release of C1P.
Most pros that I spoke with that use C1P, use sessions for each shoot to avoid any performance hits with large catalogs. That does not fit my user profile as an amateur. I want my RAW processor to also be my complete DAM solution.
Regards,
Bud
www.budjames.photography
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Now ! How do I get rid of all of the unused catalogs and sessions that are created in C1 when I remove the drive they were created in? C1 is trying to open them as soon as the program opens.
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Now ! How do I get rid of all of the unused catalogs and sessions that are created in C1 when I remove the drive they were created in? C1 is trying to open them as soon as the program opens.
Hi Paul,
Library tool, expand the Library pane, click the drop-down selection menu, and at the bottom of it select 'Clear items'.
That will clear the list.
Via ' Open...' or 'Open Recent ...' you can then select another already existing session. It helps to have a clear subdirectory structure to find the other *.cosessiondb files to open sessions. You can also open them through the File Explorer (in Windows) since the extension is typically linked to Capture One.
Cheers,
Bart
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Thanks Bart, I'm slowly finding my way through the C1 maze.
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Phase One published a three part blog post on Sessions recently. It may be of interest:
http://blog.phaseone.com/sessions-101-discussing-the-concept/
http://blog.phaseone.com/sessions-102-power-user/
http://blog.phaseone.com/sessions-103-expert-knowledge/