Portfolio pieces in one location? Catalogues?
Over the years I've done hundreds of shoots, and am now in the process of looking back over them to pull out the best pics from each - mostly for portfolio reasons, but also for stock, and easy asset retrieval for socials and exhibitions etc.
With C1 engine advancements and new tools, and my own improving skills, I'm probably going to re-edit a lot of them to give them an updated look. But even if they stay as is, I would like to keep them in one place. A "folio" I guess, as well as a "stock image library".
But I'm wondering if anyone has a solution to do this efficiently? My first thought is to pull only my selects into a single folder, work on them, and store them in a relevant location. But in doing so, I'd have created a "good version", and left a folder with an outdated version in it.
So, I'd like to copy my "finished" file (the RAW and any PSD/TIFF with layers, and a flattened final file) back to it's original location, and possibly reference it from the new location, so that if I ever update it again, those changes are reflected everywhere automatically.
I work in sessions, but this sounds like a job for catalogues. But I found the original implementation of a catalogue to be unintuitive, and am honestly just not up to date on how to best make use of them within Capture One.
I know you can add a session to a catalogue, and that might work, but we're talking hundreds of thousands of images here, of which there's maybe 200 folio worthy pieces (if that), and 10,000 stock images. So if I added all my sessions to one catalogue, it's going to be huge. And possibly slow and clunky. Not sure if that's viable or not? Plus, I'm just not familiar with it and now to avoid ruining old sessions by misusing a catalogue.
Oh, and also... I do video too. And would LOVE if I could use a similar workflow to retrieve video assets, or at least final projects.
Anyone have a good workflow and file management system for something like this?
Easiest thing I guess would just be to update each session, edit the best, and copy the required files to a special folder. And repeat in the future if I ever wanted to update anything. But that feels kind of.... old school. Do referenced files seem like the right approach?
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I think you ought to look at the possibility of a catalog. There is no need to add the whole of a session to the catalog. You can add just a folder, such as the Selects folder, and even then only import some of the images. You could add an extra folder to a session (perhaps called For Archive) and move just the chosen image to that. (My practice is to create a new session each month - I am just a hobbyist - perhaps with an extra one for an event like a holiday, then import all the Selects to the catalog when the month is over. The advantage for me is the ease of finding images - I take a lot of wildlife images, and having them all in one catalog makes it easier to find images of the same species taken at different times.) I import the images in their existing location, so they are not moved or copied anywhere.
BUT... the downside of this is that once you have changed the edits to an image in the catalog, those changes are not synced back to the session. This is because of the different ways that Sessions and Catalogs store the edit information. In Sessions it is in sidecar files in subfolders of the image folders. In catalogs, it is stored in the catalog database. So once I have imported images from a session into the catalog, I never edit them in the session again. If I want to compare an old edit with a new one, I just create a new variant in the catalog. It takes virtually no extra space.
If I really want to, I can add extra images from the session later. So I might wonder whether I have any other images of a particular species still in the Capture folder of an old session. I can open that session, move some images to the Selects folder of the session, then re-sync that folder with the catalog. BUT I never actually edit them in the session.
Ian
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Thanks Ian, that's actually a really good tip (Not adding everything). And I quite like aspects of your workflow.
I often find it frustrating if I pick up a camera today and just shoot what I see, that the session doesn't really make any sense. And if I do it again tomorrow, and shoot similar stuff, that all my wildlife photos will be arbitrarily separated by the day I shot them on.
If I was doing a fashion job, and suddenly a dog runs on set so I photograph it for art's sake, it does not logically belong in that session. So I either leave it there (and usually forget it), or have to physically move it to another folder to be sorted later.
I've given thought to this, and sometimes feel like I should drag all my dog photos to a dog specific session I can add to over time. But that's just odd, and would read to a lot of random sessions to track. Your solution has a lot of merit.
I am curious though why you don't just shoot straight into a catalogue if that's where it will end up anyway? Could you not make a 2021 catalogue and download everything to it, and keyword/make albums there? Do you see any specific advantage to your hybrid workflow?
In my case, I think I still might need to add the entire folder most of the time, or REALLY change up my workflow.
For example, just looking at a single session..
- I always make a new one for each shoot, because that usually represents a job. Because sessions can get bogged down when they get too large, I often make one per day, even if it's the same job. I've made 2 in a day a few times before.
- If I take 2000 photos, I would rate the images until I have something like 100x4 star images, and 10x5 star images. The 4 star images could eventually end up as stock (so they're important), but I mostly care about my 5 star images.
- Currently, I tend not to use the selects folder, so moving them there would be a change in itself. And my work often involves making shot folders within the capture folder, and so I'd need to replicate that folder structure within selects, so that my pics from "shot 5" go into "shot 5" in the selects folder. I'm trying to think if there's a way to automate it so that when it goes to Selects, it auto creates the folder, but I don't think that is possible?
So the only files I'd ever want to see again would be the 4 and 5 star files, and any jpgs/tiffs made from them.
So as you say, I'd have to physically move them out of the capture folder and import from the new folder
OR,
Import the entire capture and output folder, and put them into a 4* and above album. (If I delete the 3* and below images from the catalogue, they go to the catalogue trash. But they're still referenced right? So no space saving.)
Also, after I wrote this, I did my own test, and kind of figured out a few things for myself, and again you're right... adjustments made in one don't sync with the other...
Within the catalogue, I performed a random edit on a single image. It was not reflected in the Session. I synced it, and it was still not reflected. Within the Session, I performed a different edit on the same image. It was not reflected, even after closing out of the session, and hitting sync in the catalogue.
I never really intended to WORK in a catalogue, but was surprised to find that if I did, the session wouldn't reflect any changes. But I was even more surprised to find that if I changed the session, the catalogue can't be updated (can it?), even though I could originally import the images with the adjustments.0 -
I am curious though why you don't just shoot straight into a catalogue if that's where it will end up anyway? Could you not make a 2021 catalogue and download everything to it, and keyword/make albums there? Do you see any specific advantage to your hybrid workflow?
Three main reasons.
- I started with sessions when I started with Capture One. I had at one stage used Media Pro to keep track of everything. But they stopped developing it and at that stage I embraced the idea of a Capture One catalog. But...
- I often start with my images on a MacBook and they get to my desktop iMac later, so at the end of the month, or the end of the holiday, I copy the whole session over to the iMac (which has much more storage) and add the keepers to the catalog.
- It prevents swelling the catalog size unnecessarily with the non-keepers.
You don't have to use the Selects folder. If you are using star ratings, you can filter for 4 and 5 star images and just add those to the catalog. But I like the Selects folder idea - they are my keepers, and they end up in a different folder.
Ian
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Variants, keywords, and smart albums.
I keep originals wherever I put them when first edited. When I look later and decide I can do a better job or need a different crop or a b&w version, etc., I create a new variant and edit to taste. If I want to keep track of new and old versions I make up keywords -- say v-2005 for an image first edited in 2005 and v-2021 for a re-edit today. Maybe add more keywords such as original for the initial edit and b&w for black and white versions. If I want to group the images I create a smart album based upon the made up keywords.
With smart albums based upon keywords there is no need to move images around or create extra copies... unless that is what you want to do.
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