I, like you chose Capture One for its superior RAW processing. Nothing else I tried produced a processed image that was as pleasing to my eye with the least amount of effort. I prefer working in Sessions with Capture One Pro vs the Catalog, but I also like the ability to search all of my images in one place as in the Catalog. What I ended up doing, that so far is working well for me is outlined below which is copied from another Capture One forum post of mine.
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1 - Create a "Master" Catalog that will eventually contain all my images but import nothing at first.
2 - Create a new SESSION from the memory card with each new shoot (or import an existing folder of unprocessed images into the session) and do a quick renaming, key word addition, rating and culling.
3 - Import that SESSION into the Master Catalog along with all changes / ratings etc. just to make it searchable.
4 - Continue to further process all images only in their original SESSIONS. Not from within the Catalog. Everything in the Catalog is never changed in any way; it is just there so I can search for stuff easily.
5 - After working on a SESSION a bit more, update it in the CATALOG by re-importing the SESSION, leaving the files in their original location.
You must Re-import the session by clicking directly on the applicable Session .cosessiondb file from the File / Import Session menu, rather than right clicking on the session folders in the Library and choosing Import. In testing my methods to see if this was going to work for me, I did learn that the Library right click import does not work because it skips all the images since they are already there in the Catalog. I am assuming that even if C1Pro did give you the option to overwrite them, it still would not bring in the adjustments, since it is probably only looking for image files in those folders, not the Sessions .cosessiondb file too. But when doing the upper menu File / Import Session method of re-importing, C1Pro presents a dialog box as shown below –
Catalog already contains this image. Keep or replace existing adjustments?
[ ] Apply to all conflicts of this type
[Keep] [Replace] [Stop]The only thing I am seeing that I don’t like, is that doing this creates a new User Collection every time. Not a big deal since I don’t use the User Collections in this method, but I do plan to delete the older User Collections for that Session every time I do a re-import, to prevent a massive amount of unwanted User Collections from building up in there.
This Session import method appears to not work on a Mac, though it has been reported to Phase One as not working so it may be fixed down the road.
Regards,
Don