Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Capture One Q&A => Topic started by: Gandalf on April 29, 2014, 06:17:55 pm
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Like a lot of people, I want to get away from Adobe software because I don't like what they are doing with the Creative Cloud, but I'm not sure what is a reasonable alternative to Lightroom. Right now I shoot in Capture One sessions, and process final images in Photoshop CS5. Once upon a time, iView was good, but it seems to be mostly abandoned (first by Microsoft, now by Phase One), not sure if Acdsee is still around or any good. I could upgrade to LR5 I suppose.
What is a reasonable alternative?
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Have you tried building your Catalog with Capture One Pro 7?
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I like Media One. It integrates all manner of media files across many programs
very stable and somewhat intuitive to use but does have a few quirks,not insurmountable
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David,
I have been advised to avoid using catalogs in C1 by people I trust.
allegretto,
I'm trying Media Pro now. Well, trying to try it. I uploaded about 50,000 images to see how it works last week. It is still importing them and has a very long way to go.
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I have about 16TB cataloged using Phase One's Media Pro (http://www.phaseone.com/Imaging-Software/Media-Pro.aspx) and recommend it. I began using it way back when it was a run by a couple Brits and it was called iView, and it ran only on the Mac platform (Motorola & PowerPC chipsets back then). They sold it to Microsoft, who did nothing to it except charge for upgrades. Then they sold it to Phase One a few years ago (2005?), who has tried to integrate it with their Capture One software. It's a solid program. Using keywords I can find one image among 100,000 within seconds. You can try before you buy, too!
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I have about 16TB cataloged using Phase One's Media Pro (http://www.phaseone.com/Imaging-Software/Media-Pro.aspx) and recommend it. I began using it way back when it was a run by a couple Brits and it was called iView, and it ran only on the Mac platform (Motorola & PowerPC chipsets back then). They sold it to Microsoft, who did nothing to it except charge for upgrades. Then they sold it to Phase One a few years ago (2005?), who has tried to integrate it with their Capture One software. It's a solid program. Using keywords I can find one image among 100,000 within seconds. You can try before you buy, too!
I too own Media Pro and the only issue I have with it is that it doesn't support my old Sigma SD9, SD10 or SD14 raws. It will display a thumbnail but that's as far as it goes. Works great for everything else. Photo Supreme doesn't support the Sigmas either. Lightroom on the other hand does but AFAIK doesn't support the newer Sigma offerings.
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David,
I have been advised to avoid using catalogs in C1 by people I trust.
allegretto,
I'm trying Media Pro now. Well, trying to try it. I uploaded about 50,000 images to see how it works last week. It is still importing them and has a very long way to go.
Hi Gandalf,
Fair enough, but often that advice may have come from a singular bad experience with a non current version of Capture One.
Why not try? You have nothing to lose in testing it?
David
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David, I am trying Media Pro right now with 90,000 images importing as we speak. I tried C1 catalogs when 7.0 came out and calling it buggy is being nice. I may give it another go. So far I have found a few things in LR5 that I really like over Media Pro. LR5 is very fast, I like the stacks feature for organizing the files that go into composite images (i.e. I can have the final and all the build files organized together), and I like how it handles variants better. I would love to see those last two features integrated into Media Pro or C1 catalogs.
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Hi Bill,
Well, 7.0 was the initial release and some months ago! A lot has changed since then as we are now on 7.2.2!
David
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I'm new to C1, and maybe I'm being a bit dim, but why is it necessary to have a separate program like Media Pro when there's a cataloging function within C1, which I thought should do the same thing (performance issues aside). In other words, what would Media Pro do that the C1 catalogue in theory can't? What am I missing?
Ian
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Because Media Pro catalogues a wider range of assets. Imagine you do photo and video projects, for example, and they have related documents as audio, PDFs, Word, Excel etc which you want to control.
Then Aperture and Lightroom showed that a lot of people wanted raw converters which were integrated with catalogues which only handled photographs. That's why C1 added its cataloguing features.
John
ps the dim ones are those who don't ask (or think they know it all)
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Thanks John. One wonders why Phase didn't just incorporate Media Pro into C1. It presumably would have avoided all the adverse comments about C1's cataloging performance, given that MP seems to be well regarded.
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I have about 16TB cataloged using Phase One's Media Pro (http://www.phaseone.com/Imaging-Software/Media-Pro.aspx) and recommend it. I began using it way back when it was a run by a couple Brits and it was called iView, and it ran only on the Mac platform (Motorola & PowerPC chipsets back then). They sold it to Microsoft, who did nothing to it except charge for upgrades. Then they sold it to Phase One a few years ago (2005?), who has tried to integrate it with their Capture One software. It's a solid program. Using keywords I can find one image among 100,000 within seconds. You can try before you buy, too!
Is it more stable than the C1 Pro catalog? (OP, the people you trust: continue trusting them. They are right).
Also, in the C1 catalog keywording images is so awkward I'm simply not doing it. Is keywording in Media Pro as easy as in Lightroom (highlight, type, deselect, and you have given images keywords).?
I still have a license for Expression Media - is there an upgrade path to Media Pro?
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Hi Bill,
Well, 7.0 was the initial release and some months ago! A lot has changed since then as we are now on 7.2.2!
David
My latest corrupted catalog was in 7.1.6 - never knew what destroyed the catalog. One day, I simply closed the program, next day it wouldn't open again.
So, no, it's still not prime time ready.
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Imatch by phototools.com
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No word on the reliability of Media One as an alternative to the C1 catalog?
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So here are where things are at this point. Short story is back to Lightroom.
Media Pro: Not much has changed since it was iView. All the good and all the bad still apply. It is very slow, but it will catalog anything. What surprised me was that finding a range of photos was surprisingly unintuitive (for example, all the photos from a single shoot that are three stars and red label). My hope is if nothing else I could use the database to work with capture one.
Capture One Catalogs: I need to clarify that I still use and love C1 as a raw processor using sessions. However, every way I can dice the catalogs is a big steaming pile of fail. Import from Media Pro kind of works as long as all images are where the database says they are and are connect to the computer at the time of import. You can import about 20,000 images before it bogs and eventually crashes. Import images directly from files doesn't work either because it can only enumerate about 20,000 images before it bogs down. You can either add files one at a time or by larger directory (but one by lower level folders). I won't add files one at a time and it can't take a directory at time. So that failed. My final attempt was to import a Lightroom 5 database. It seemed to be going OK for about 16,000 images, then it began to bog down. When I tried to quitting the application took 15-20 min. It asked if I wanted to backup the database and it crashed, corrupting the database it just made. I may give it another go, but I'm not too excited to try something that continually fails.
Bottom line: when two Phase One dealers tell you that none of their software is really up to the task to use as a catalog, trust them. Media Pro has capabilities far beyond other catalog apps, but if you just need fast access to your photos, and a catalog that has some capability to work as a browser, it seems time has left it behind. If I could get the image quality from Lightroom that I get from C1, at this point I would just use it.
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So here are where things are at this point. Short story is back to Lightroom.
Media Pro: Not much has changed since it was iView. All the good and all the bad still apply. It is very slow, but it will catalog anything. What surprised me was that finding a range of photos was surprisingly unintuitive (for example, all the photos from a single shoot that are three stars and red label). My hope is if nothing else I could use the database to work with capture one.
Capture One Catalogs: I need to clarify that I still use and love C1 as a raw processor using sessions. However, every way I can dice the catalogs is a big steaming pile of fail. Import from Media Pro kind of works as long as all images are where the database says they are and are connect to the computer at the time of import. You can import about 20,000 images before it bogs and eventually crashes. Import images directly from files doesn't work either because it can only enumerate about 20,000 images before it bogs down. You can either add files one at a time or by larger directory (but one by lower level folders). I won't add files one at a time and it can't take a directory at time. So that failed. My final attempt was to import a Lightroom 5 database. It seemed to be going OK for about 16,000 images, then it began to bog down. When I tried to quitting the application took 15-20 min. It asked if I wanted to backup the database and it crashed, corrupting the database it just made. I may give it another go, but I'm not too excited to try something that continually fails.
Bottom line: when two Phase One dealers tell you that none of their software is really up to the task to use as a catalog, trust them. Media Pro has capabilities far beyond other catalog apps, but if you just need fast access to your photos, and a catalog that has some capability to work as a browser, it seems time has left it behind. If I could get the image quality from Lightroom that I get from C1, at this point I would just use it.
Thanks. That's what I feared it would be. Phase One doesn't seem to get a handle on bringing their software up to speed. I still use Capture One as a RAW processor because I love it, but I wished someone would finally wake up at Phase One and bring the catalog to what Lightroom's catalog is: reliable, fast, and and keywording works.
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Imatch. It's one of the most power tools for image cataloging. Blows the pants off of any of the others. http://www.photools.com/
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Imatch. It's one of the most power tools for image cataloging. Blows the pants off of any of the others. http://www.photools.com/
I think it's PC only, no Mac support.
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I've been using C1 since v3 and don't think I would ever consider using their catalog feature. By the time I accumulated my first thirty CD's of backup material in 1995, I knew I had to do something. At the time there was Canto Cumulous or Extensis Portfolio. At the time, Portfolio had a much friendlier interface and that's what I've been using every since. Nineteen years of taking everything I could toss at it from Xpress to InDesign to movie files and everything imaginable in-between. Extensis has been a bit slow on updates for the latest raw file previews but they do get there and the program is rock solid. I love - and my clients love it more - that I can find and have open on screen practically any file from the last twenty years in a matter of a minute or so. Yeah, well, sometimes, I do have to go downstairs and fish out an old disc, so that takes an extra minute.
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I checked out Extensis Portfolio.
Extensis' website doesn't say what version is current, and what it costs. All I found was the server version for $ 2000.00
Extensis Portfolio standalone has been discontinued since version 8.5, the server version is version 11.
Are you sure this software still exists for individual? The server version seems to address big companies.
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I checked out Extensis Portfolio.
Extensis' website doesn't say what version is current, and what it costs. All I found was the server version for $ 2000.00
Extensis Portfolio standalone has been discontinued since version 8.5, the server version is version 11.
Are you sure this software still exists for individual? The server version seems to address big companies.
The standalone Portfolio had strengths, but for a few years Extensis Portfolio has been very much targeted at the multi-user market. I wouldn't recommend considering it nowadays.
John
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John, what cataloging software are you mainly using now? I used to follow your posts about iView/Media Pro on The Dam Forum, but that site seems to be pretty moribund these days.
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Lightroom, pretty well since it began, although I ran it and iView in parallel for a period.
Yes, Peter's forum is moribund. It needs him to participate - I don't want to run it on my own!
John
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I like Media One. It integrates all manner of media files across many programs
Could you please give a sample workflow built around Media Pro?
I'm an Aperture refugee. I decided not to wait for the Apple's final solution to Aperture and, after some hesitations, bought me both Media
Pro and Capture One 7 (OSX). And now I'm looking for advices/recommendations on how to use them. Aperture workflow was extremely simple and
straightforward: I used to import my NEFs into some Aperture library, organize the photos inside of it to albums, check the previews, deleting the
bad pictures and rating the good ones. Then I handle the selected photos by Aperture tools as well as third-party tools, like Nik Software and
Portrait Professional. Both raw files and the TIFF/JPEG versions were kept in the same library and I was able to export or upload them
directly from Aperture.
Now I have to decide where to keep my raw files, as well as TIFF/JPEG. Should I use MP for maintaining all and every file and not to use C1
catalogs at all? Or it's better to keep only processed images in MP, importing raw files into C1 catalogs? I tend to MP, but still need advice on a suitable workflow.
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In my opinion, Media Pro is the lesser of two evils.
However Media Pro hasn't seen any updates in quite a while, so that can be kinda scary.
Ironically, I hate the way Media Pro interacts with Capture One. Not as smooth as the interaction between LR and Photoshop.
So, personally, I keep all my stuff in Lightroom and edit in C1
LR's catalogue is really good, and I love the printing and soft proofing.
I made me template to send stuff from LR to C1.
If C1 had a good catalogue and could soft proof/print like LR then I'd be all in with C1.
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I have not used C1 in years, but I continue to use Media Pro. I have about 16TB of images (raw from six different cameras, & layered, compressed TIFF files with thumbnail), PDF files, Adobe Illustrator files, InDesign files, video footage from four different cameras and audio files in AIFF & mp3 formats. This is broken up into about twenty Media Pro catalog files, based on current client and studio use.
All media files are tagged with metadata & keywords—in Bridge—that is unique to the media. This is typically done on the job. This is critical. If it's not done, then finding any media file would be almost impossible.
Offline drives are catalogued by Media Pro before storage. Those catalog files are in their own hard drive directory to indicate that the data is offline.
When a client asks for an image or media, I open their corresponding catalog and type an identifier in the search slot (e.g., Thomas, heuchera, etc.) and the program shows all files with that keyword. If it's a TIFF file, I double click and Photoshop opens the file and I work the file as needed.
This process is so easy I don't know why it's more ubiquitous.