Save a version of an image without creating a new variant
Implemented
Is there any way to save a version of an image – like with Lightroom's snapshot function – without having to create a variant, which, if you create many versions, becomes pretty messy?
. . . . .
I'll turn this into a feature request.
Let me just add that as you can't add one variant to an album without at the same time adding all other variants, creating unnecessary variants isn't a very attractive alternative.
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Offizieller Kommentar
For now, the Clone Variant option would be great to preserve the image variant with the current edits. Right-click on the thumbnail and select Clone Variant. Then, a variant group will be created and you can collapse or expand it to find the right variant.
When you want to export the image, you can choose the most suitable variant (or several variants) of that image in the variant group.
I will also submit your request to the Product Management team regarding the option to create snapshots as in Lightroom.
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I'm affraid not. The philosophies of Lightroom and Capture One are different, and there is no "history" panel for this reason in C1, hence no snapshot.
Robert0 -
tenmangu81 wrote:
I'm affraid not. The philosophies of Lightroom and Capture One are different, and there is no "history" panel for this reason in C1, hence no snapshot.
Robert
Thanks for the info!
It's difficult to see, though, what would be the advantage of a design philosophy that dictates the lack of an incredibly useful option such as snapshots.0 -
thomaskyhn wrote:
tenmangu81 wrote:
I'm affraid not. The philosophies of Lightroom and Capture One are different, and there is no "history" panel for this reason in C1, hence no snapshot.
Robert
Thanks for the info!
It's difficult to see, though, what would be the advantage of a design philosophy that dictates the lack of an incredibly useful option such as snapshots.
I have no idea what a snapshot is but it sounds rather like a variant (of a single image), possibly without the further benefits.
Grant1 -
SFA wrote:
thomaskyhn wrote:
tenmangu81 wrote:
I'm affraid not. The philosophies of Lightroom and Capture One are different, and there is no "history" panel for this reason in C1, hence no snapshot.
Robert
Thanks for the info!
It's difficult to see, though, what would be the advantage of a design philosophy that dictates the lack of an incredibly useful option such as snapshots.
I have no idea what a snapshot is but it sounds rather like a variant (of a single image), possibly without the further benefits.
Grant
In Lightroom, a you can save a "snapshot" of all settings/adjustments for an image, which allows you to change back and forth between various states of editing. It's not a variant, which in Lightroom is called a virtual copy, it's only the settings you're saving, so no extra previews are generated and you're not cluttering up your library with extra copies/variants.0 -
Okay, Capture One does not have snapshots the way Lightroom has implemented this, only variants (virtual copies in Lr talk).
However, be aware that a variant in Capture One does not copy the image file nor the preview. It only creates a new set of adjustments. Like snapshots, but different.
Not to defend one other the other, but hoping to solve any confusion or misconception about what a clone/new variant is.1 -
Paul_Steunebrink wrote:
Okay, Capture One does not have snapshots the way Lightroom has implemented this, only variants (virtual copies in Lr talk).
However, be aware that a variant in Capture One does not copy the image file nor the preview. It only creates a new set of adjustments. Like snapshots, but different.
Not to defend one other the other, but hoping to solve any confusion or misconception about what a clone/new variant is.
Thanks for the info. I was aware that creating a variant doesn't duplicate the image file, but I was under the impression that an extra preview file was generated.0 -
thomaskyhn wrote:
Paul_Steunebrink wrote:
Okay, Capture One does not have snapshots the way Lightroom has implemented this, only variants (virtual copies in Lr talk).
However, be aware that a variant in Capture One does not copy the image file nor the preview. It only creates a new set of adjustments. Like snapshots, but different.
Not to defend one other the other, but hoping to solve any confusion or misconception about what a clone/new variant is.
Thanks for the info. I was aware that creating a variant doesn't duplicate the image file, but I was under the impression that an extra preview file was generated.
Only if needed in memory at run time.
Grant0 -
I too miss snapshots badly!
When I'm at a point where I think an edit is finished, I want to have a way to conserve that state. Especially if I order a test print and then want to finetune my edit for the final print. It often happens, that I start playing a little with an edit, like "hmm, maybe a little less saturation?" and just quickly adjust a control. With a single unmindful click, I lose the reference edit that was printed.
Even worse: From time to time it happes to me, that I accidentally press a button and screw up an edit without notice. A snapshot would at least allow me to just go back when I realize.
Variants just aren't an alternative. It costs enormous discipline to create variants that you don't touch for your life. Remember: you can't store those variants separately in some safe album. Neither can you give those a name, describing their purpose like you can with snapshots in LR.
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You can back out recent changes if you need to.
Personally I find the use of variants very effective although, yes, you do need to get into the habit of creating them at specific points when you feel the need for them and probably need to utilise the IPTC fields and/or Keywords to remind yourself what they were for (unless very obvious - like a B&W edit for example).
I don't think LR had Snapshots when I was using it back in V1 days. That makes it difficult to make any comparative comments.
However the other software I was using back that had something similar to C1 Variants but based on a jpg with the edit instructions embedded (if I remember correctly) and I found that very useful if a little eager to consume storage capacity. Much more useful that an edit history.
There is nothing to stop you creating a output of a variant and saving it somewhere if you wish. And nothing to stop you exporting the file and edits as an EIP file (for example) saving that as well as giving the image and its specific edit a life of its own for inclusion in an album of your choice.
In fact I would suggest that the Output files are the things that fit well with the Album concept - just like traditional old school print albums which are mostly entirely separate from the negatives from which the mages were created.
Grant
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"There is nothing to stop you creating a output of a variant and saving it somewhere if you wish. And nothing to stop you exporting the file and edits as an EIP file (for example) saving that as well as giving the image and its specific edit a life of its own for inclusion in an album of your choice."
No, there's nothing stopping you from doing this. Nevertheless, it's an inconvenient workaround for a simple function that would allow you to save the settings as they are at a particular point in the editing process without having to create extra instances, variants, files, etc., which Capture One already does a bad job of handling.
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Thomas,
Saving the settings at a particular point in the process is exactly what a variant is.
This is, perhaps, most evident when working with sessions. The .cos file for an image contains the adjustments for all variant as a few bytes of text. Plus, where required, links to LCC files, layer masks and perhaps other things that require different data handling. Most of the differences are in the .cos file or its equivalent record in a catalogue database.
They point to the same source image. Thumbnails are created on the fly and on demand from the base thumbnail. Likewise Previews.
I have no idea what LR does.
Previous software I used had a similar concept but that required creating a separate jpg for each Snapshot - mainly because that application saved each variation as what was effectively a relatively low resolution preview jpg with the edit instructions embedded in it. Basically what you describe in your critique above and rather different to the way that C1 works.
Grant
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"Saving the settings at a particular point in the process is exactly what a variant is."
Except that by creating a variant you create another instance of an image, which – as pointed out above – clutters up your library, and – given Capture One's inability to treat variants as separate instances (you can't add one variant to an album without adding all of them) – this is obviously something you'd want to avoid.
"I have no idea what LR does."
It does what I've requested here: it saves the settings of an image at a specific point in the editing process without creating any unnecessary variants, files, etc.
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I agree with you Grant. Variants are snapshots with thumbnail in my book. Yes I understand LR has virtual copies and snapshots. But LR does not have layers. If I make an intermediate variant, the subsequent edits often also include changes to masks. And I do not know this at the time I would create a snapshot. I think if the software would have to support both variants and LR-like snapshots this adds complexity not only for the software developers but also to for the user, for a perceived (and maybe real) benefit of questionable magnitude.
This having said, the ability to rename variants, and to lock variants from being edited until unlocked, plus the option to assign them to non-smart albums would be most welcome and would address most of the points snapshots would be useful for.
Regards
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"the ability to rename variants, and to lock variants from being edited until unlocked, plus the option to assign them to non-smart albums would be most welcome and would address most of the points snapshots would be useful for"
This certainly would be an improvement, but it wouldn't prevent your library from being cluttered up with unnecessary instances of the same image.
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So someone is downvoting this request. What reasons would anyone have for doing that? It's not as if they would be forced to use the requested option.
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It wasn't me I think, though I can understand that if someone thinks it is adding unwanted complexity to the user (e.g. even more menu items), or unnessesary complexity to the software, (read: reliability and regression issues), or detracts the company from other features...
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Thomas,
This certainly would be an improvement, but it wouldn't prevent your library from being cluttered up with unnecessary instances of the same image.
There is a collapse icon, which hides all but one variant.
regards
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"There is a collapse icon, which hides all but one variant."
I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for pointing it out.
It says here that you should be able to collapse or expand a variant group by clicking the the small rectangle with the number in the top right corner – but nothing happens when I do that.
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"I can understand that if someone thinks it is adding unwanted complexity to the user (e.g. even more menu items), or unnessesary complexity to the software, (read: reliability and regression issues), or detracts the company from other features..."
I see your point.
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Click the symbol on the top left.
Ian
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Thanks, Ian. I have no icon on the top left.
Strangely, the support page says top left, but indicates top right:
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I think that is just indicating what it means by the Variant Number Icons.
It looks as though their screen shot doesn't show it either. I see it both in browser (grid) view and on the thumbnails in the film strip browser down the side of the screen (which I never actually use).
I can't see any setting that would turn that off and on. Maybe someone else will have an idea about that.
Ian
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The result of further research...
If I look at the images in the browser when I am in my Selects folder (or my Capture folder, too) then I see the little icon. But if I create a smart album for, perhaps, 3 stars or more, and view the contents of that, then the little icon doesn't appear.
I suppose that makes some sense. I could have made one of my variants of the crane above 3 stars and one of them 2 stars. Then only one of them would appear in the smart album, and collapsing or expanding variants would be a strange thing to do since only some of the variants of that image would be in the smart album.
If I add them to a regular album, then the icon does appear.
Also in grid view, the icon only appears on the top left of the first variant. But on the film strip down the side, it appears on all the variants.
There is another way to collapse or expand variants, which is the Collapse Selected or Collapse All commands on the Image menu. But those are greyed out if you are in a smart album, apparently.
Ian
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Hi Ian,
Thanks for the further info. I've selected the All Images folder in the library, so it isn't because of the smart folder limitations.
I've also looked at the collapse/expand section in the Image menu, and it's greyed out here too.
Thomas
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Yes, I find that they aren't there using the All Images album either. I don't know whether you are in a session or a catalog, but it works for me in the actual folder the images are in (Selects in this case).
Ian
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You're right – with the actual folder selected I see the icon too!
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I would like to come back to the topic:
BeO:
"This having said, the ability to rename variants, and to lock variants from being edited until unlocked, plus the option to assign them to non-smart albums would be most welcome and would address most of the points snapshots would be useful for."I agree, that would check most boxes for me too.
Snapshots would still be a bit more flexible. E.g., you could also create different snapshots for each variant. For me, variants have the main purpose of having different edits of the same file. Snapshots would allow to protect myself from user errors and to go back to an older version of an edit without losing the current one. In my opinion, these are different things. Each purpose can be achieved with the other tool but it will always be a complicated workaround.
The complexity, that snapshots would add to Capture One is not too bad in my opinion. Imagine one additional tool panel which contains a list of snapshots for the current variant, a field for entering a name or description and a button, that adds the current settings to the list using the name in the field. With a double click on an entry in the list, you could switch to that snapshot. With a right click, you have the options to rename or delete a snapshot.
If you don't need the feature, just remove the tool panel.I think compared to snapshots, the latest feature additions are in a completely different league regarding complexity. Especially Layers opened a whole new dimension. Same is true for masks. I appreciate both of them as a very mighty tools. But compared to layers and masks, snapshots seem like a minor detail. At least for me, the benefit would be of a similar magnitude.
If the improvement of variants suggested by BeO are far easier to implement, i would be happy with those too. But I wouldn't be surprised, if adding snapshots is the even simpler implementation.
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Alexander,
Like a versioning for variants. Should the snapshot contain all layers, masks and their settings? This is kind of a rgetoric question, yes they should, it is useless otherwise.
Having a second dimension in addition to the variants is just too much overload for the one dimensional guy I am. A variant which I can lock is far easier to grasp than to create a snapshot of a variant. Variants are also kind of a snapshot, and hence the snapshot you propose is essentially like snapshots of snapshots. You would have to decide which difference in edits is worth to make a new variant, and which difference in edits is only a version of that variant. I do see use cases for this e.g. If you always create a color and a B&W version of each image and want to have 2 variants only. And their are certainly others.
But then the whole user interface with regards to switching between different version of your color image would need to be done via this panel and not via the browser. You would double the user interaction concepts and implementation and maintenance effort e.g. :
Today you want to select and compare two variants. You can do this.
Tomorrow, you want to compare two snapshots of a variant. Then you maybe want to create a new variant out of a snaphot because you like it so much and want to proceed further edits baed on this snapshot. And maybe add the edits of a variant 3 to the snapshot list of another variant 2 and then delete variant 3 (merging). And I have just started thinking about potential enhancements for snapshots...
In my book this second dimension it's not worth the effort and risk.
And honestly, if you compare the value of snapshots with the mighty concept of layers in C1 and consider this equal value, then you are probably not yet fully arrived in the Capture One world, and this poses a question mark for me for what exact adjustments you need snapshots in the first place, for a few sliders?
Yes, image quality is better in most cases but the real thing at least for me is the layers and ease of use and mighty tools which work on layers.
Sorry, I do not mean it that harsh as it may sound, but English is not my mother tongue and this textbox with iPad is awful to use, I cannot even scroll up or down my text.
So, for me it is not convincing very much. But you should submit a feature request, I believe this still is the official way do get it to the company.
regards
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BeO,
I don't quite see what the issue is. Lightroom has both virtual copies (variants) and snapshots and it works perfectly. The specific adjustment options, layers etc., shouldn't make any difference.
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