Capture One Catalog
I feel compelled to write down my thoughts about Capture One Catalog. As much as I love Capture One Session, I am appalled by Capture One Catalog.
I have 25 years of experience in Data Management Systems, not in image management, but in large industrial data acquisition and management systems. So I have a Data Management view on the Catalog. And this is what I want for my own image collection.
Currently Capture One Catalog just does not work. I know it seems to work during webinars, but I know how easy it is to demo toy catalogs and hide the real issues (I have experience 😊 ). A large image catalog in Capture One just-does-not-work. I have several big issues reported and hopefully they will be addressed, but I am afraid that Catalog is not a priority.
Apart from being extremely buggy, I think Capture One Catalog is not taking the right approach. I was using MediaPro before and I was kind of amazed when CO started to include Catalog functionality. I think that was a wrong decision, but I can live with that as long as it is executed properly. I like MediaPro much better as an interface, but its file structure makes it hard to handle large catalogs. MediaPro looks like a Catalog, Capture One Catalog is just a glorified image editor and tagger.
From my experience it is always better to have separate, smaller programs on a solid common data structure, rather that making big monolithic software applications. These last are more difficult to design properly and tend to be more buggy. But I know some people disagree.....
For me, Catalogs by definition are large, so no use to look at small catalogs.
Lets look at the workflow from a Data Management perspective:
1. Data is generated and acquired under the ownership of some department. This department is responsible for the quality control and some basic processing. For images this would be a photographer and Capture One Session. Discard the junk (cf. remove invalid data) and process the rest. After this stage this data is archived and kept forever. It may be reprocessed if new techniques become available, but the raw data stays as it is, forever. This is completely analogous with Images and Sessions.
2. Now data needs to be consolidated, i.e. shared with other departments and maybe rolled up to higher levels in the corporate hierarchy. For this only validated and processed data should be used. Usually a selection is made of a certain subset of the data. Too much detail is not usefull for other departments. For images that is analogous to importing from the Session a selected subset of images into a Catalog. Currently CO can not do that. It imports the whole session. It should have an interface allowing selective import. It could be as simple a selecting from a smart album. Almost all my sessions have a smart album called "Selected Images".
3. There should be a way to organize the imports in the Catalog, e.g. by department and acquistion date. In the case of Images, by Session and acquisition date for example. The CO Catalog tree with albums, projects and groups would be great for that, if it worked................. But it does not work. Organize sessions in groups and projects and the next time you open the Catalog the order can have changed and groups break apart. Albums literally fall out of their groups and are placed at random in the tree. You manually rearrange them again and next time you open, again they break up randomly.
4. Consolidated data is never edited by departments other than the department that acquired the data. They are the owner of the data. This should be the same for images. Images should NOT be edited in the Catalog, they should always be edited in the Session and refreshed. That way we keep the data consistent. Now we can be a bit flexible on that. I know some people would like to edit images on the fly in the Catalog and have a less purist view than me. That is fine, but i would like there to be a switch disallowing image edits in the Catalog. I need to be able to enforce consistency.
5. Editing of tags and keywords in the Catalog is perfectly fine in my view. While we usually start keywording in the Session, it is expected to have to add additional keywords in the Catalog, since we are working in a wider context(local vs global keywording).
6. There should be a working "refresh Session" operation. When images have been updated in the Session these updates should go into the Catalog. Image edits done in the Catalog should NEVER go back to the Session, because then we end up with a big mess sooner or later. The refresh session functionality is currently implicit in the Import session (i.e. re-import), but it is very messy. It needs cleaning up. It would be "nice to have" a history of updates to the catalog. I am not in favor of automatic refresh, but a comparison option finding discrepancies between Catalog and Session content would be nice.
7. It is perfectly fine to have multiple Catalogs, e.g. Vacation Images, Work Images, 5 star images, etc. But they should all source from the same sessions (see point 2).
8. Data Management Catalogs always have extensive Select, Report and Export functionality. That functionality is for the most part already existing in Capture One Catalog. Improvements are always possible, but I think the priority should be on the Catalog creation and structure first. No point is selecting and exporting from a Catalog where you can not even get the data in properly.
Unfortunately Capture One Session and Catalog closely are tied together (no open interfaces). So either they both work, or I need to look for an alternative for both. But I really want to stay with Capture One Sessions. So please fix the Catalog.
Jozef Dassen
I have 25 years of experience in Data Management Systems, not in image management, but in large industrial data acquisition and management systems. So I have a Data Management view on the Catalog. And this is what I want for my own image collection.
Currently Capture One Catalog just does not work. I know it seems to work during webinars, but I know how easy it is to demo toy catalogs and hide the real issues (I have experience 😊 ). A large image catalog in Capture One just-does-not-work. I have several big issues reported and hopefully they will be addressed, but I am afraid that Catalog is not a priority.
Apart from being extremely buggy, I think Capture One Catalog is not taking the right approach. I was using MediaPro before and I was kind of amazed when CO started to include Catalog functionality. I think that was a wrong decision, but I can live with that as long as it is executed properly. I like MediaPro much better as an interface, but its file structure makes it hard to handle large catalogs. MediaPro looks like a Catalog, Capture One Catalog is just a glorified image editor and tagger.
From my experience it is always better to have separate, smaller programs on a solid common data structure, rather that making big monolithic software applications. These last are more difficult to design properly and tend to be more buggy. But I know some people disagree.....
For me, Catalogs by definition are large, so no use to look at small catalogs.
Lets look at the workflow from a Data Management perspective:
1. Data is generated and acquired under the ownership of some department. This department is responsible for the quality control and some basic processing. For images this would be a photographer and Capture One Session. Discard the junk (cf. remove invalid data) and process the rest. After this stage this data is archived and kept forever. It may be reprocessed if new techniques become available, but the raw data stays as it is, forever. This is completely analogous with Images and Sessions.
2. Now data needs to be consolidated, i.e. shared with other departments and maybe rolled up to higher levels in the corporate hierarchy. For this only validated and processed data should be used. Usually a selection is made of a certain subset of the data. Too much detail is not usefull for other departments. For images that is analogous to importing from the Session a selected subset of images into a Catalog. Currently CO can not do that. It imports the whole session. It should have an interface allowing selective import. It could be as simple a selecting from a smart album. Almost all my sessions have a smart album called "Selected Images".
3. There should be a way to organize the imports in the Catalog, e.g. by department and acquistion date. In the case of Images, by Session and acquisition date for example. The CO Catalog tree with albums, projects and groups would be great for that, if it worked................. But it does not work. Organize sessions in groups and projects and the next time you open the Catalog the order can have changed and groups break apart. Albums literally fall out of their groups and are placed at random in the tree. You manually rearrange them again and next time you open, again they break up randomly.
4. Consolidated data is never edited by departments other than the department that acquired the data. They are the owner of the data. This should be the same for images. Images should NOT be edited in the Catalog, they should always be edited in the Session and refreshed. That way we keep the data consistent. Now we can be a bit flexible on that. I know some people would like to edit images on the fly in the Catalog and have a less purist view than me. That is fine, but i would like there to be a switch disallowing image edits in the Catalog. I need to be able to enforce consistency.
5. Editing of tags and keywords in the Catalog is perfectly fine in my view. While we usually start keywording in the Session, it is expected to have to add additional keywords in the Catalog, since we are working in a wider context(local vs global keywording).
6. There should be a working "refresh Session" operation. When images have been updated in the Session these updates should go into the Catalog. Image edits done in the Catalog should NEVER go back to the Session, because then we end up with a big mess sooner or later. The refresh session functionality is currently implicit in the Import session (i.e. re-import), but it is very messy. It needs cleaning up. It would be "nice to have" a history of updates to the catalog. I am not in favor of automatic refresh, but a comparison option finding discrepancies between Catalog and Session content would be nice.
7. It is perfectly fine to have multiple Catalogs, e.g. Vacation Images, Work Images, 5 star images, etc. But they should all source from the same sessions (see point 2).
8. Data Management Catalogs always have extensive Select, Report and Export functionality. That functionality is for the most part already existing in Capture One Catalog. Improvements are always possible, but I think the priority should be on the Catalog creation and structure first. No point is selecting and exporting from a Catalog where you can not even get the data in properly.
Unfortunately Capture One Session and Catalog closely are tied together (no open interfaces). So either they both work, or I need to look for an alternative for both. But I really want to stay with Capture One Sessions. So please fix the Catalog.
Jozef Dassen
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Jozef,
I might first mention that, as you may know, this is primarily a user to user forum so your observations may well be of interest to many and certainly many will have opinions about your ideas but you should perhaps consider also taking this up directly with Phase.
Secondly - you seem to be referring to Catalogue(s) being a subsequent part of a Session based workflow.
I have never had the feeling that this was part of the design intent. The two approaches are fundamentally different and I suspect that the Catalogue option was introduced to widen the appeal of the product for commercial reasons.
There is nothing wrong with that idea but I doubt Phase set out with the intention of trying to offer an Industrial Scale multi-user catalogue facility within the concept (and pricing) of a single user Raw Converter.
I think I would look at you second step and ask whether there is a more suitable approach.
My preference is Sessions. I have never been keen on the catalogue concept - especially those application that used to force the import of a document into a catalogue even before processing. In certain industries there may be a place for that approach but I don't see the need for the majority of users.
I see no point in trying to manage images simultaneously in a session and a catalogue. I can see the point of using a catalogue for finished work but for the Exports or Processed Outputs (same thing really in this context but I mention them separately in case people think I am being too specific.) Add those to a catalogue (as TIFF, jpg, whatever) and you have the best of both approaches. In my personal opinion.
For your point 3 - organising the data.
I understand what you are suggesting but cannot comment on the way things function.
However basic groupings by dates and general Meta data are all possible (as far as I know) and available without having to define a structure. No doubt further work could add to the experience - that is always the case - but there will also be compromises and of course in the software industry at least 80% of developments are never used or not used in the way they were designed to be used. It is quite possible to use a lot of resource to add functions, maintain them for years and then remove them (causing potential destabilisation) without anyone noticing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Organize sessions in groups and projects". Are you referring to organising a C1 Session folder structure in a Catalogue as a set of referenced files or are you using the word "session" more generically?
Your point 4.
I agree. So only make the output available to the catalogue. And if it's a referenced file break the link (but in a way that means you can get back to the file and the session that provided it should you need to.
I general agree with your points 5 and 6.
Your point 7 is a clear reason for making it quite difficult to delete images without making people think about what they are doing and how widespread the effect might be!
Given my comments above I am not sure what to say about your point 8 - other than I suspect the two options offered have never been thought of as working together in the way you describe. But I might be wrong about that.
Do make direct and official contact with Phase and put you suggestions in front of them.
Grant0
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