When working with Capture One, photographers prefer to manage all their images in a single Catalog for as long as possible. A catalog defines your search boundary, meaning you can only search within one Catalog at a time. However, if your Catalog grows too large, feels sluggish, or you’d like to separate work and personal projects, splitting your Catalog into two or more may be the right move.
The good news: Capture One makes it easy to split Catalogs.
Why split a catalog?
Performance: Large catalogs with tens of thousands of images may become slower, depending on your hardware.
Organization: You may want one catalog for business and another for personal work, or keep project-specific catalogs alongside a main archive of final images.
Workflow flexibility: Some photographers keep project catalogs for active work and merge them into a single “master” catalog later.
Before you start
Understand the difference between managed and referenced images:
Managed images (stored inside the Catalog) will be copied into the new Catalog.
Referenced images (stored outside the Catalog) remain referenced in the new Catalog.
During export, you’ll also be asked whether to include referenced originals. Checking this box ensures that referenced files are copied into the new Catalog, keeping everything together.
How to split a catalog
1. Prepare your collections
First, decide which images will move to the new catalog.
Organize them into User Collections such as Albums, Smart Albums, Groups, or Projects.
You can export an entire Group or Project, including all albums inside it.
This step ensures your catalog structure (e.g., Projects and Albums) is preserved after the split.
Tip: Create groups in User Collections (e.g., “Client work 2025” or “Personal projects”) and move albums into them. This will make export and re-organization much easier.
2. Export collections as a new catalog
Select the Collection, Group, or Project you’ve prepared.
Go to the menu: File > Export Collection as Catalog.
In the dialog:
Name your new Catalog.
Choose a location to save it.
Decide whether to include referenced originals (checked if you want the files copied).
Click Export collection as catalog.
You’ll see a confirmation once Capture One has finished.
Repeat this process if you want to create multiple new Catalogs (for example, splitting by year, by project, or by client).
3. Verify and clean up
Open the new catalog(s) you’ve created to make sure everything looks correct.
If you included originals, and you’re confident the export is successful, you may delete the images from the old Catalog to free up space and avoid duplicates.
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