Output location in catalog
I use sessions. But I am thinking of importing older sessions into a catalog, mainly for the sake of being able to find things again, so for example to find that photo of a heron on the Regent's Canal in London.
My sessions are all organised and named by date - so for example 2017B Spring. Within the session, I use the standard Capture, Selects, Output and Trash subfolders.
Say I import my 2017B Spring session into the catalog, and later find that heron photo and want to adjust it some more and re-process it. How do I set it up so that it gets into the 2017B Spring>Output folder? I realise that I can set the output folder ad hoc each time. But if the next one I want to deal with is in the 2016E Summer folder, is there a way setting up the recipe to direct the output to the 2016E Summer>Output folder just by doing it relative to the folder the raw file is in?
Ian
(I've pretty much ignored Catalogs up to now, being accustomed to Sessions. But I am beginning to wonder whether using them might be a better idea than relying on Media Pro and wondering when it will support High Sierra and Capture One 11. So sorry if I keep asking dumb questions!)
My sessions are all organised and named by date - so for example 2017B Spring. Within the session, I use the standard Capture, Selects, Output and Trash subfolders.
Say I import my 2017B Spring session into the catalog, and later find that heron photo and want to adjust it some more and re-process it. How do I set it up so that it gets into the 2017B Spring>Output folder? I realise that I can set the output folder ad hoc each time. But if the next one I want to deal with is in the 2016E Summer folder, is there a way setting up the recipe to direct the output to the 2016E Summer>Output folder just by doing it relative to the folder the raw file is in?
Ian
(I've pretty much ignored Catalogs up to now, being accustomed to Sessions. But I am beginning to wonder whether using them might be a better idea than relying on Media Pro and wondering when it will support High Sierra and Capture One 11. So sorry if I keep asking dumb questions!)
0
-
Iain,
My thinking about combining sessions and catalogues would be along the the lines of cataloguing the Output folders rather than an entire session.
With controlled naming in the sessions and outputs the image name of the output file would be used to identify the session and image involved. This if I wanted to go back and do some more wok on the image it should be easy enough to find the session, re-work the image in what ever way I prefer for the exercise - maybe an additional version using a variant - , process the result and then import it to the catalogue from a "known" (to the catalogue) folder.
However, just to add another dimension to this, I have recently purchased a NAS and although time constraints have not yet allowed me to fully investigate all of the features and tools available, it comes with some capabilities that may be adequate for a session preferrer to obtain the Catalogue style "search all images" providing some naming and/or metadata options (Keywords, locations - anything as text) have been exported with the output files (easiest if jpg in the respect.)
Of course an indexed Windows system would allow similar searches in a basic fashion. Presumably Mac too?
Grant0 -
Thanks for the thoughts, Grant.
Naming to include all the keywords, though, could be cumbersome. I might want a particular image tagged with Bird, penguin, African penguin, Boulders Beach, etc. Or am I misunderstanding?
Ian (not Iain!)0 -
[quote="Ian3" wrote:
Thanks for the thoughts, Grant.
Naming to include all the keywords, though, could be cumbersome. I might want a particular image tagged with Bird, penguin, African penguin, Boulders Beach, etc. Or am I misunderstanding?
Ian (not Iain!)
Sorry - I seem to know a lot of Iains and sometimes the fingers slip in the extra i when the brain is distracted!
Naming at the Session/Folder/File level is, in my case, quite top level generic but at least it helps to narrow things down quite a lot.
There would normally be little point in naming that included keywords - especially for a catalogue.
However for a session I find it quite useful to name for an "event", be it a specific shoot of a subject through to a multi-day "event" or a holiday.
So for example "Holiday Sept 2017" might be a reasonable Session name. That makes it easy to get to that particular activity without needing to search through anything other than finding the top level folder.
In theory the images files will have their own dates so I don't NEED to replicate that data unless I think there may be a good reason to do so.
I then tend to save a folder per day for simplicity of knowing where one is with saving what has been captured. Sometimes more than one folder per day - especially if number of images are high and originate from multiple cameras.
In terms of Post Processing it makes some sense to me to keep similar images from the same camera (or different but similar cameras) together. It's likely to make copy and pasting edits more efficient.
Using your example data my initial response would be that "Boulders Beach" and "Bird" sound like values that might be applicable for IPTC fields in the metadata. The "Image" and "Content" sections seem most likely, whether or not you feel a need to follow the global usage guidelines is your choice!
However whilst that works for internal purposes if you want to share and publish images that also offer the same search opportunities once released to the wild, populating keywords as well with the same values may make sense.
The "absolute" needs for identification of an image will vary according to likely purpose. If the reason for tagging stuff is to make one's own search effective then I think keeping it as simple as possible may work fine.
If you are trying to assist the "general public", "casual user" or to attract Internet searches to find the images directly then something more complex and complete may be required. But even then so long as the "Output" file has fairly minimal information about which session it came from and when it was shot getting back to the original should be easy enough once the "output" file has been found as a starting point.
I have been debating the need to go all the way back and keyword some older folders. But then I discovered that the NAS has up to 28 copies of some of them - it's amazing how an original and a backup folder can reproduce as disks are superseded and aggregated every few years! I have a de-duplication task to address in the near future. I need the disk space back!
For the specific naming by KW then a hierarchical Bird>Penguin>African Penguin would be fine although penguin would not really be required twice in this example.
Selecting "African Penguin" should get you the other two.
Whether you really NEED to go down to "African Penguin" is for you to decide. 50 penguin images and only you searching ... maybe not. 5,000 images all taken at the same location .... might be worth doing the keywording exercise!
HTH.
Grant0 -
I’ve already done a fair bit of key wording in Media Pro, so in many cases my African penguin shots are already tagged. To be honest, it’s probably ducks more than penguins where I need to subdivide the many species! The thing is that I have sessions with the Capture, Selects, Output, Trash structure going back years, so my main concern is fitting in with that and easily putting any newly output version into the same output folder it would have gone in if dealt with in the session.
Ian0 -
I didn't read any help pages and I didn't watch the tutorials. And I use a different approach in the referenced catalogs that store my old works. But if I understand you right you are looking for something like this:
With
Process Recipe
- File
-- Root Folder = "/path/to/all/sessions/"
-- Sub Folder = "<description>/Output/"
and
Metadata
- Description = "session_name"
you should have your images processed to
"/path/to/all/sessions/session_name/Output/".
I didn't test it, so I might be wrong.
Regards,
Hans0 -
[quote="Ian3" wrote:
I’ve already done a fair bit of key wording in Media Pro, so in many cases my African penguin shots are already tagged. To be honest, it’s probably ducks more than penguins where I need to subdivide the many species! The thing is that I have sessions with the Capture, Selects, Output, Trash structure going back years, so my main concern is fitting in with that and easily putting any newly output version into the same output folder it would have gone in if dealt with in the session.
Ian
Stick with the Session and the session's Output folder plus any sub folder election and make those outputs the source folders for reference catalogue?
Then all you needs to do it get your (metaphorical) ducks in a consistent row and it should be easy enough.
It's always worth checking in the where the "Output" folder is pointing to though ....
I think the text could do with a supporting flow diagram BUT I fear that might in some ways be just as complex to understand.
I found it quite easy to work what to do when I had a design for output distribution in mind. Absent the mental design the array of options can be daunting.0 -
Yes but if I have a referenced catalogue comprising several sessions, there would be several output locations.
I vaguely recall that people have talked on here at some time about relative and absolute locations but I can’t remember where.
Ian0 -
In my example above your images should be processed to
"/path/to/all/sessions/session_name_1/Output/",
"/path/to/all/sessions/session_name_2/Output/",
:
"/path/to/all/sessions/session_name_X/Output/",
if the description field of each image is set to the session name they're from, like session_name_1, session_name_2, and so on.
Root Folder is an absolute path, Sub Folder is relative to that.
Regards,
Hans0 -
My own workflow is different and looks like this:
Starting with sessions:
The images are not in the sessions but in their own folders.
"/base/folder/Photography/Images/yyyymmdd_CATEGORY_Keyword".
The sessions have their own place, too. I'm using one session for one shooting and the same name as for the image folder.
"/base/folder/Photography/Sessions/yyyymmdd_CATEGORY_Keyword".
After importing into referenced catalogs:
The Process Recipe uses the <Image Folder Name> token.
-- Root Folder = "/base/folder/Photography/Output"
-- Sub Folder = "Printing/<Image Folder Name>"
The output goes to "/base/folder/Photography/Output/Printing/yyyymmdd_CATEGORY_Keyword".
'Printing' can also be 'Web', 'Portfolio', and so on, for different recipes.
By doing so, I have one folder for each purpose (Print, Web, Portfoilo). In each of them I have an automatic separation per former session name, because the image folder name is equal to the former session name.
Regards,
Hans0
Post ist für Kommentare geschlossen.
Kommentare
10 Kommentare