How to move from a Catalog to a Session?

PROBLEM

I have been working in a catalog but now I want to switch over to a session workflow. How can I accomplish this without losing the work I have already done so far?

SOLUTION

As a Catalog contains all the information about the adjustments made with images, getting those images and adjustments into a session will take some effort to make sure that everything is transferred properly.

1. Create a session.

Creating a session is not crucially necessary at this step but it will be good to start arranging everything. Select File -> New Session and choose your destination folder.

Once the session is created, feel free to close it as you will need it later.

2. Export the images from the catalog to the new location.

Open the catalog with the images you would like to export. This can be a small set of images or an entire catalog. As an example, we will be exporting 52 images out from our catalog. Select the collection you would like to relocate. As we are going to move all images, the All Images option in the Catalog Collections is selected. Then select Edit -> Select All (this will select all the images in the collection).

3. Navigate to Choose File -> Export Images -> Originals to continue.

4. Select the destination where you would like the images and the adjustments to be placed. In this particular example, we will be exporting images to the session folder created in Step 1.

In the Location section, in the Destination field, we have set the Catalog_To_Session_Migration folder created in Step 1.

In the Sub Folder field, we specify that the images should go to the Capture folder in that session. The items following "Capture/" are tokens that help to sort the images by their original capture year, month and day. This part is flexible, so each user can select any tokes that would help to sort the images in further.

In case you simply want to locate all the raw files in one folder, you can choose that folder in the Destination field from the dropdown list and leave the Sub Folder field blank.

5. In the Naming section, choose the Text and Tokens option from the dropdown menu in the Method field and set [Image Name] token in the Format field. This will maintain the names of the images during the migration from a catalog to a session.

6. Make sure to tick the Include Adjustments and the Pack As EIP checkboxes. Otherwise, the raw files will be copied but any adjustments that were applied to them in the catalog will not be transferred.

7. Click Export [number] Originals. Consider that it may take some time to copy the files and transfer them from a catalog to a session folder.

8. Close the catalog, navigate to File -> Open and choose the session folder created earlier. Your images and adjustments will be in the subfolders as described in the Export Originals dialog earlier.