Importing to Folders - Good or Bad?
In LightRoom, when importing new photos it would also place them in a folder with the current date.
After the import, I got in the habit of renaming the folder, tacking on (after the date) a short description of the event. Of course, I also use metadata to tag photos, but this provides a good quick way to find a folder of photos in a hurry.
In Capture One, I’m currently running it in catalog mode. When importing, I’ve been doing something kind of similar, but instead of importing directly to the catalog, I create a folder (using my naming scheme) and import there.
This is seeming to work, but I’m wondering if it’s a “bad idea†with Capture One? Should I import directly to the catalog only?
What are the advantages/disadvantages I’m not seeing?
Or, does this workflow better fit with the “sessions†model?
After the import, I got in the habit of renaming the folder, tacking on (after the date) a short description of the event. Of course, I also use metadata to tag photos, but this provides a good quick way to find a folder of photos in a hurry.
In Capture One, I’m currently running it in catalog mode. When importing, I’ve been doing something kind of similar, but instead of importing directly to the catalog, I create a folder (using my naming scheme) and import there.
This is seeming to work, but I’m wondering if it’s a “bad idea†with Capture One? Should I import directly to the catalog only?
What are the advantages/disadvantages I’m not seeing?
Or, does this workflow better fit with the “sessions†model?
0
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IMHO, nothing bad. But with some benefits.
C1 let you import images into the catalog or keep in the folder.
If you use your own folder structure, you can also have a session and work with the same images in the folders.0 -
Ok cool. That's an interesting approach, I'll have to try that out as well 😊 0 -
Ryan,
If you use a "Managed" catalogue the images are imported in the catalogue's folder structure and so can be bulk managed (for example if you wish to move an entire catalogue to a different drive or a different machine) quite easily.
On the downside they tend to make the "catalogue" rather large rather quickly and the internal folder are general not available to other applications - or at least not safely available. But Managed catalogues have their place.
A "Referenced" catalogue allows the source files to be outside the catalogue folder structure and so accessible by other methods if required BUT should you do that any work using the files will be entirely independent of the catalogue and so unknown to it. That would of course include moving or deleting the source file for example.
On the benefit side the catalogue size is likely to be much smaller and you can, potentially, point more than one catalogue (or session) at the same source file - other applications too if you so wish.
If you have a relatively large collection of source files and relatively small storage disks to work with the Referenced approach is probably the only one that will make sense.
Or use sessions rather than a catalogue for the initial processing activity and, perhaps, move the end result to a catalogue when it is "finished".
All very flexible - the choices are yours.
HTH.
Grant0 -
Grant,
Thanks a bunch for the detailed explanation. That helps a lot!
/Ryan0
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