Catalog Adjustments Workflow
I've been steadily moving towards using Capture One as my primary workflow tool. I work as a digital tech so I'm very comfortable with C1 as an capture and on-set editing tool, and have been moving towards making it my primary software for my personal work as well.
I do documentary / street photography so being able to have years of my work in one manageable archive is a huge benefit, as I can pull shots from many different sources to make albums for specific projects, galleries, submissions, etc - which often reference work from many different years and locations. Filters and smart albums are a great benefit in this workflow.
*However* I've already run into a number of problems with corrupted catalogs (yes I have been backing up, but even then have run into issues where I had to totally rebuild, which is very time consuming) and this makes me nervous about losing individual adjustments I've made to images from across my archive, as they appear to only be stored in the Catalog itself.
My biggest frustration in moving to catalogs is discovering that the adjustments I'm making are not stored in the Settings folder as they would be with a session. Is there a way to set this? In other words, I would like to be able to go back and tweak adjustments to an image from years ago, and then should I open that shot folder in a non-catalog session (or a different catalog) I would like to see those adjustments reflected there, rather than just in this big risky catalog file.
This seems like it should be a customizable option, but perhaps I am missing something?
I do documentary / street photography so being able to have years of my work in one manageable archive is a huge benefit, as I can pull shots from many different sources to make albums for specific projects, galleries, submissions, etc - which often reference work from many different years and locations. Filters and smart albums are a great benefit in this workflow.
*However* I've already run into a number of problems with corrupted catalogs (yes I have been backing up, but even then have run into issues where I had to totally rebuild, which is very time consuming) and this makes me nervous about losing individual adjustments I've made to images from across my archive, as they appear to only be stored in the Catalog itself.
My biggest frustration in moving to catalogs is discovering that the adjustments I'm making are not stored in the Settings folder as they would be with a session. Is there a way to set this? In other words, I would like to be able to go back and tweak adjustments to an image from years ago, and then should I open that shot folder in a non-catalog session (or a different catalog) I would like to see those adjustments reflected there, rather than just in this big risky catalog file.
This seems like it should be a customizable option, but perhaps I am missing something?
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Does anyone have ideas for a more flexible workflow? 0 -
Honestly, I still feel pretty strongly that C1 catalogs just aren't ready for primetime and I still recommend that everyone avoids it altogether.
That said, you don't HAVE to use a catalog system if you don't want to. Just set up your folder structure well from the beginning and then it doesn't matter much whether you have a catalog system or not.
I do actually maintain a Lightroom catalog just because it speeds up searching, but I keep my files organized in a structure that doesn't absolutely require a catalog system (in the event of catalog corruption, I can still easily find what I'm looking for pretty quickly) and it all works well.
My workflow basically looks like this:
Tethered capture / Ingest from Card -> Process RAW files in C1 -> Retouch/Finish in PS -> Sync folder my archive folder location in LR. (I don't use LR for raw processing at all anymore - only for organization)
Since I'm just telling LR to sync my Archive folder (which contains my intact Capture session folders) it will automatically add the new folder, and image files inside of the session. It also just ignores everything else so my Capture One session file, proxies, thumbnails etc so I can easily open that session back up later if I want to.
My folder structure follows the DAM Book () structure pretty closely (a little old, but absolutely worth a read if you care about asset management) and is based on "projects" not organized by date. Humans like to organize their photos by date for some reason, but in many occasions it doesn't make sense (especially when any catalog system, or just Bridge can easily sort by date) so my folder structure is pretty simple.
/Archive/[01234-Project Name]/
/Archive/[01235-Project Name]/
/Archive/[01236-Project Name]/
So each folder (top level of the C1 session) has a serialized project number, and a descriptive name, and each image file has the project number in the file name.
That makes it dead simple to a) notice if something is missing because the numbers will jump from 0101 to 0105 (so you know 0102, 0103, 0104 are out of place) and b) it makes it obvious where things belong.
It also means that if I have a project that gets shot over multiple days/weeks/months they can all live in the same project folder because if I want to sort by date/time I can just let Lightroom/Bridge/Capture One sort by date.
That folder structure ALSO means that I don't NEED a catalog if I don't want it, but also if I ever do feel confident with Capture One's catalog system, it will be straight forward to migrate (you just make a point of not storing images inside the catalog, which is a dumb thing to offer in the first place IMO).
Anyway - there's no single answer here, but that's how I do it and it's been pretty smooth for the past 5-6 years.
Good luck!0 -
brianmerwin wrote:
Honestly, I still feel pretty strongly that C1 catalogs just aren't ready for primetime and I still recommend that everyone avoids it altogether.
That said, you don't HAVE to use a catalog system if you don't want to. Just set up your folder structure well from the beginning and then it doesn't matter much whether you have a catalog system or not.
I do actually maintain a Lightroom catalog just because it speeds up searching, but I keep my files organized in a structure that doesn't absolutely require a catalog system (in the event of catalog corruption, I can still easily find what I'm looking for pretty quickly) and it all works well.
My workflow basically looks like this:
Tethered capture / Ingest from Card -> Process RAW files in C1 -> Retouch/Finish in PS -> Sync folder my archive folder location in LR. (I don't use LR for raw processing at all anymore - only for organization)
Since I'm just telling LR to sync my Archive folder (which contains my intact Capture session folders) it will automatically add the new folder, and image files inside of the session. It also just ignores everything else so my Capture One session file, proxies, thumbnails etc so I can easily open that session back up later if I want to.
My folder structure follows the DAM Book () structure pretty closely (a little old, but absolutely worth a read if you care about asset management) and is based on "projects" not organized by date. Humans like to organize their photos by date for some reason, but in many occasions it doesn't make sense (especially when any catalog system, or just Bridge can easily sort by date) so my folder structure is pretty simple.
/Archive/[01234-Project Name]/
/Archive/[01235-Project Name]/
/Archive/[01236-Project Name]/
So each folder (top level of the C1 session) has a serialized project number, and a descriptive name, and each image file has the project number in the file name.
That makes it dead simple to a) notice if something is missing because the numbers will jump from 0101 to 0105 (so you know 0102, 0103, 0104 are out of place) and b) it makes it obvious where things belong.
It also means that if I have a project that gets shot over multiple days/weeks/months they can all live in the same project folder because if I want to sort by date/time I can just let Lightroom/Bridge/Capture One sort by date.
That folder structure ALSO means that I don't NEED a catalog if I don't want it, but also if I ever do feel confident with Capture One's catalog system, it will be straight forward to migrate (you just make a point of not storing images inside the catalog, which is a dumb thing to offer in the first place IMO).
Anyway - there's no single answer here, but that's how I do it and it's been pretty smooth for the past 5-6 years.
Good luck!
This is interesting because I was wondering the same thing as well.
I have 2 questions then.
1. When working on the images in C1 and then importing them back into LR, won't LR process them differently? Because I've seen a big difference in my images.
2. What other Catalog software would you recommend?
Thanks!0
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