Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Capture One Q&A => Topic started by: msbc on September 13, 2015, 08:54:04 pm
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Interested in how experienced and new C1 users are using Capture ONE. Has the Catalog functionality matured to be stable enough for a professional workflow? Are session(s) the most reliable option?
I tried catalogs when they were first introduced but found them slower and prone to crash/corruption. This may all be fixed with the current 8.3.3 release?
I don't shoot tethered - the traditional reason for using C1 sessions - but use a single master session and browse/add new folders as needed. I use Lightroom for DAM so don't need the DAM features of C1 Catalogs. The main advantage of Catalogs over Sessions for me would be the central storage of image adjustments in a single DB instead of the additional folders/files a session creates in each image folder.
- Mark
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I use both Sessions and Catalogs regularly. I have had no problems with Catalogs since 8.3. I haven't tried more than 3000 photos in a Catalog, but I'm ready to do that experiment.
--Matt
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Interested in how experienced and new C1 users are using Capture ONE. Has the Catalog functionality matured to be stable enough for a professional workflow? Are session(s) the most reliable option?
I tried catalogs when they were first introduced but found them slower and prone to crash/corruption. This may all be fixed with the current 8.3.3 release?
I don't shoot tethered - the traditional reason for using C1 sessions - but use a single master session and browse/add new folders as needed. I use Lightroom for DAM so don't need the DAM features of C1 Catalogs. The main advantage of Catalogs over Sessions for me would be the central storage of image adjustments in a single DB instead of the additional folders/files a session creates in each image folder.
- Mark
I use C1 as a stand alone raw converter, so one default session for me... I wish we had an option to use C1 simply as ACR with sidecars, but alas.
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I use both ???. Catalog by year and use Sessions for events. In the end I move the Session images into the Catalog. Not sure this is the best workflow, but I've always used Sessions, so this is a hybrid method. 40% of my shooting is scheduled events, the other is personal stuff.
No vote since you don't have a category for a scatter-brain like me.
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Scatter-brain option added :-)
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I moved over to Capture One from Lightroom at the beginning of this year so setting up a single catalog for my new images was the obvious choice.
Having watched several tutorial videos I can, however, see the benefits of sessions in certain situations so they remain an option if required.
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Session only, just prefer it.
Paul
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I use one default session because i have a DAM external to CO, Photo Supreme. CO is "just" a raw converter for me, albeit my prime one. I also use LightZone and PhotoNinja.
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I use C1P v8 in catalog mode. I find it remarkably faster than Lightroom for ingesting, tagging, and rating. I also happen to like the flexible workflow. For example, it's nice to be able to edit more than one photo at a time. There's certainly room for improvement. Lightroom is definitely more polished, but I like the way C1P works and I like the direction its development is going.
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I use catalogs: individual for various trips for example, and mainly for my Fuji raws. I use LR for DAM, and thus leave the files in their original location when importing into C1.
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I'm trying it out and just using one catalog for all my images (about 45,000 of them).
Unfortunately, on my retina iMac, 8.3.3 is so slow it's almost unusable. I'm unsure if it's because of the preview size (5000 x whatever, which is about 230 GB for previews), or the 45,000 images, or what. But the UI generally crawls, and worst of all it takes 25-50 seconds to open the catalog, which is unacceptable to me.
I absolutely LOVE Capture One's raw processing but the performance on my iMac isn't workable. I could try making more, smaller catalogs but coming from using Aperture (and now Lightroom) for the past 9 years, I'm used to a single catalog for everything, and splitting it out by shoot is nonsensical to me. I don't do commercial studio work for paid jobs so that's now how I'd use the product at all.
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I'm trying it out and just using one catalog for all my images (about 45,000 of them).
Unfortunately, on my retina iMac, 8.3.3 is so slow it's almost unusable. I'm unsure if it's because of the preview size (5000 x whatever, which is about 230 GB for previews), or the 45,000 images, or what. But the UI generally crawls, and worst of all it takes 25-50 seconds to open the catalog, which is unacceptable to me.
I absolutely LOVE Capture One's raw processing but the performance on my iMac isn't workable. I could try making more, smaller catalogs but coming from using Aperture (and now Lightroom) for the past 9 years, I'm used to a single catalog for everything, and splitting it out by shoot is nonsensical to me. I don't do commercial studio work for paid jobs so that's now how I'd use the product at all.
Hi Cat,
You shouldn't be experiencing a slow down with relatively few images. However without knowing the full specs of how you are using your catalog its hard to diagnose.
Have you made a support case?
David
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David, since this issue about slow performaces is a recurring one, may I suggest to publish a specific note about what to do and what to preferably avoid to get the best performances out of Capture One? BTW I personally have nothing to compalin but many others do.
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Hi Cat,
You shouldn't be experiencing a slow down with relatively few images. However without knowing the full specs of how you are using your catalog its hard to diagnose.
Have you made a support case?
David
No. I will do so. I really do want to use Capture One as the image quality is so great.
My machine is a late 2014 retina iMac, 32 GB of RAM with the (~250 GB of previews) catalog on a 1 TB SSD. I also have the upgraded video card. I have about 45,000 images in about 300 different folders. Images are mostly Canon 1D, 1Ds Mark III, and 1Dx RAW files. So the catalog is not trivially small, but it's also not that large compared to what I know some people use, at least with Lightroom.
If you think performance in this case should be good, I'm hopeful. But it's definitely pretty laggy on the iMac, perhaps due to the resolution (I think 16 megapixels on screen)? Testing on my MacBook Pro is better.
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ONLY sessions. I just use Bridge for cataloging then run a session in the desired folder. Cataloging is why I can't stand Lightroom. But anyway it would be dumb to use LR for processing Phase One back files.
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Sessions and Catalogues more or less as per David Grover's method:
http://blog.phaseone.com/sessions-catalogs-get-the-best-of-both-worlds/
Somebody asked if catalogues were reliable enough for professional use - certainly not in my experience - support case in progress. I'd say if your income depends upon it, keep live work in sessions then consolidate to a catalogue once you've been paid.
d.
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I've been experimenting with both. I thought of using Session for my professional portrait and commercial work (shoot, edit, output, done), and catalogs for my stock images, fine art and personal projects which are an ongoing process. My problem with sessions however, is that I really don't need all those separate folders. Capture I understand if you're shooting tethered. Deleting images to only end up in the Session's Trash folder just means I have to delete them again at some point. If I delete them once, I shouldn't have to again. I only keep the ones selected by clients, so don't need to keep a Capture folder. If they're not selected, they're deleted. And as far as output goes, I prefer to stack the images as per LR rather than place them in a separate folder. In a LR stack, I can have the original RAW, a "Master" retouched tif or layered PSD, and then clones or variants of the Master. With one click on the stack, I can see all the versions without having to jump from folder to folder. When I output a file, it is only for delivery. I don't need to keep these as I can easily export the image again, as David says in that blog post.
So, the jury is still out a little on the Sessions, as much as I'd like to use them, I wish I could just get rid of the canned folder system and have my images in one folder, but stacked if need be.
As far as the cataloging goes, I haven't used it much. I love the RAW processing of C1, but there's a few things missing in the Catalogs that I'm not sure I want to live without and keep going back to LR. One, is the simple fact that I can't use the Julian Date as a naming token. All my images since going digital in 2000 use the naming convention, YYxxx (with YY being the current year's last two digits, and xxx being the Julian Date of that year) and the original numeric suffix of the image. So, an image taken today would be 15264-1234 with the "1234" being taken from 4 digits at the end of the filename. I can't do this in Capture One.
There's a couple of other things I'm working through, but don't have time at the moment to test it further. After Christmas I'll spend more time and try to make it work again.
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Let's just say that if C1 required the use of Seesions, I would never use it. I have my own folder structure for organizing my files, and I insist on the the software I use adapting to me, not the other way around.
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Let's just say that if C1 required the use of Seesions, I would never use it. I have my own folder structure for organizing my files, and I insist on the the software I use adapting to me, not the other way around.
Sessions do not restrict you to any folder structure. There is a suggestion, but that is it. You can design a session however you like.
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Is there a video or instructions on designing/customizing a session?
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Is there a video or instructions on designing/customizing a session?
Hi Mike,
Sessions are quite flexible, so you can design them almost any way you want. By following the basic setup you will get the benefit of being able to copy/backup everything that is needed in a single folder for each specific project or theme you are working on. But that doesn't mean that a less organized collection of files is not possible, it's just that it may not be the most clever thing to do (from a management point of view).
Here (https://www.phaseone.com/en/Imaging-Software/Capture-One/Tutorials.aspx?) is the introduction tutorial, and there is probably more on YouTube, either from their PhaseOne channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOLETlGWG_E) or also other contributors (https://www.google.nl/search?q=capture+one+8+pro+sessions&newwindow=1&ei=7twtVq_kAcj_aIDmnfgN&start=10&sa=N&biw=1145&bih=640).
I use my own file structure to store the Camera Raws, because that fits my type of work, and I create sessions in that structure at a (higher or lower) level that makes sense to me. It also allows me to start an existing CaptureOne session from the Windows Files Explorer. Others may have a different structure that works best for them, and that's allowable as well. Just keep in mind that it helps to be able and backup a coherent set of files in one go, if everything is 'physically' grouped logically in one folder/subfolder structure. It can also occasionally help in fixing things when e.g. previews get corrupted and only the specific previews can be removed and automatically rebuilt.
It can also speed up things if not all previews have to be loaded for one monster session, but only for a smaller session.
Cheers,
Bart
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Is there a video or instructions on designing/customizing a session?
I made a series of blogs on sessions. Maybe it helps you too.
http://imagealchemist.net/tag/session/
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Thanks guys... that helps quite a bit!