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Personal image storage question

NN8879221
This feels like an amateur question as I've been a C1 user since v3 but it's aways been used for work. I'm stuck in habit and need advice.

My normal work flow is creating individual session folders for each job and organize by year for storage. It works perfectly for me in that respect but I'm now using C1 for my home snaps as well. I shoot RAW for these (again habit, so iPhoto isn't of use). We also recently had a baby so my personal snaps are growing out of control.

I've tried creating yearly and trip based folders for these images but it's not really working. Because we travel quite a bit, organising images has been getting out of hand. As you can imagine I now stare at a multitude of folders when I'm looking for an image and I have no idea where to find things anymore...

Anyone have any suggestions to help me get it all back in shape and a work flow that I can put in place for the future? Maybe a Youtube video perhaps or detailed advice?

Thank you,
Robert
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Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Wesley
    I use catalog for home snaps and sessions for jobs. Try looking at Phase one videos on keywords and catalogs.
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  • SFA
    Robert,

    If you are happy with sessions I would stick with them.

    For specifically personal stuff I have either separate sessions - per event perhaps if it is uniquely stand alone anyway - and one (or more) generic sessions. I just add new folders to an appropriate session as required or add new images to an existing folder.

    Make the folder a favourite within the same session and you are not far short of a catalogue. All keywords and so on will be available for discovery and selection.

    Adding a folder with existing edits and meta data entries to one (or more) sessions is as simple as browsing to the folder and making it a favourite within that session.

    If a catalogue seems more useful for some reason (there are options for taking catalogues "on the road" without needing to take all of the original files for example) then a useful approach might be to process files to an output (a decent jpg would probably be enough and the most compact option) complete with adjustments and meta data, and add those outputs to a catalogue. So long as your file naming convention allows you to re-discover the original file (in its session?) should you need to the catalogue just becomes a proper "catalogue" (or multi-faceted index) rather than having the added complication of being part of the editing process.

    That said .... the whole aspect of finding images is much easier to manage in V9 than previous evolutions but you may need to revisit older images and add information to make them more search friendly - something I am contemplating for a lot of file from earlier C1 versions and pre C1 times.

    Not a very cheering prospect!


    Grant
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  • Richard Allen
    For my purposes I use Capture exclusively for editing my images but use Lightroom as the catalogue.

    I store all my images by Year Months and Days.

    In Capture One I import the images as Catalogues so it keeps the same Year, Month, Day format that I see in Lightroom.

    I'd like to use Media Pro but it just doesn't work as well as Lightroom (in my opinion) in that respect.

    Finally, I keep all my images in a folder within a Google Drive folder so they're automatically backed up and can be viewed anywhere.

    That's the way I do it but we all have our own ways and it's what 'works for you' that matters.

    I hope this helped?
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  • SFA
    In theory, in a relational database, the structure of storage should not matter at all.

    One can index on year, month, day within month - or indeed any number of other alternatives - thus overcoming the constraint of structures.

    On the other hand, if one feels the need for control (and the effort it requires) or intends to share with an external application that does not understand the database, then things can be more complicated.

    Grant
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  • George Barron
    I'm not sure I understand the bias against using a catalog and user collection for this sort of thing. I have essentially duplicated the file structure I had in Aperture for 10 years and it worked perfectly.

    Nothing wrong with date based folders except after 10 years do you really remember which year you went on this trip or that vacation or when you took that one special snapshot of your child? I don't, but maybe I'm just getting old.

    In CO9 I have set up a series of albums or projects for the typical types of photos I take: Trips, Vacations, Events, Art&Landscape, Food&Cooking, Family, Equestrian Events, Motorsports etc. For the Equestrian project, for example I will include albums for each equestrian event with a date in the title. Pictures in all albums are sorted by date. I can usually find almost any image in seconds this way. I do minimal keyboarding but for any image I can't go directly to a keyword or date search takes me right to it. Granted, I have fewer than 10,000 images (I am a brutal editor) so maybe this system would not work for tens of thousands of pictures.

    CO has some limitations compared to Aperture for this approach but it still works well.
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