C1 catalogs - advice coming from Lightroom
I'm trying to integrate my workflow from a combination of Lightroom+C1 to C1 only, but I'm having trouble coming up with a strategy.
Currently, I create a new LR catalog per year (34K images) and use C1 to process the raw files. After that year is over, I merge the LR catalog from that year into an LR archive catalog. My archive catalog has over 110k images. I'm not sure if C1 would be able to handle a catalog of that size. I was thinking about making a C1 catalog for each year, then merge that catalog into an archive. Is that reasonable or is there another strategy that I should look at when handling a large amount of images?
I was hoping C9 might have some additional improvements to the catalog system and am curious to see what other photographers are doing. I can stick with LR solely for cataloging if I have to, but would like a one software solution.
Currently, I create a new LR catalog per year (34K images) and use C1 to process the raw files. After that year is over, I merge the LR catalog from that year into an LR archive catalog. My archive catalog has over 110k images. I'm not sure if C1 would be able to handle a catalog of that size. I was thinking about making a C1 catalog for each year, then merge that catalog into an archive. Is that reasonable or is there another strategy that I should look at when handling a large amount of images?
I was hoping C9 might have some additional improvements to the catalog system and am curious to see what other photographers are doing. I can stick with LR solely for cataloging if I have to, but would like a one software solution.
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Good morning,
I have tried to import a 60K+ image LR catalog, but gave up in the end. I did manage to get it imported, in a single catalog, but not in a single import session. Then I found that working with that catalog was not really a pleasure (put mildly). OK, it's a 2011 mac with only 8GB RAM, but still
In one of PO's (very good) webinars, David Grover of PO stated that "you use a catalog to store a lifetime of images", and that he has a catalog of all the image he took since 2003. He must either have a supercomputer or a lot of patience (or not taken many pictures). Maybe things are different when you have a lot of RAM; CO seems to be quite memory hungry.
So I left the existing images where they were (in a single LR catalog, coming from a single Aperture catalog), and started using smaller catalogs and sessions. I have started a new catalog for 2016 and I will see how far I get with that.
I really hope that PO can improve working with larger catalogs, but until then I will not attempt to bring everything together.
Sorry for the bad news; I wish it were different as well. But do enjoy the image quality!
Cheers,
Peter.0 -
Thanks Peter for the reply. I remember David mentioning the back catalog that he has of his images as well. It was one of the selling points for trying out C1 ver9 and I was pretty excited about hearing that. I thought finally it's useable!
I tried the catalog function back in ver7, but went back to LR shortly after. I was hoping that the latest version would be faster for running on my macbook which is 16gb. I guess I will try to create a large test catalog this weekend and see how it goes.0 -
This was my reply to another post elsewhere in this forum - see viewtopic.php?f=61&t=22129 on the Capture One 9.x Software for Mac forum. NN259560UL wrote:
Like you I have used LR extensively, since version 3. Like you I do not want to be forced into the cloud version. Like you I have sizeable LR catalogue, although smaller than yours. I will also add that I have never been entirely satisfied with LR raw conversion capabilities, CO is, in my opinion, better and more capable raw converter; the colour editor is awesome and the fact that it can be combined with layers opens a lot of creative opportunities.
For the past year, I have been running CO 8 and now 9 in parallel with LR 5. In a nutshell, this is what I have done:
1) I am running 2 catalogues, an LR catalogue and CO catalogue with exactly the same folder structure: folders organised chronologically by capture date using a hierarchical folder structure Year/Month/Day
2) CO has become my primary editing tool, I rarely do any editing with LR
3) I now rely heavily on producing TIFF derivatives, using CO Process functionality, to send any photographs to the printers and to upload images online. When I was using only LR, I was using plug-ins to upload "directly" from LR; please note the quotes and italics, because LR creates a derivative that you do not see
4) I have only imported into the CO catalogue a small part of the photos in the LR catalogue, they are primarily the photos that I thought will benefit more from being edited and processed using CO. I have not imported the catalogue, I just just imported the relevant folders. I am not sure if this is a good idea or not, the drawback is that I have chosen to loose, at least temporarily keywords, titles and captions. At the moment this is not a big deal because I have only imported a small part of the photos in the LR catalogue.
5) Up until recently I used to keep both catalogues in sync, this means the following:- a) all new photos were imported in both catalogues
b) any new derivatives created in CO were imported into the LR catalogue
c) I was still using LR catalogue to upload images only
However, I am in the middle of changing this and trying to see if I can free myself from LR.
6) The most difficult part so far is not learning how to process images with CO but to devise a new workflow. CO does not support the same collection (Album and Smart Album in CO parlance) workflow I used to have in LR. For instance, CO 9 for MAC OS does not support the creation of a Smart Albums with all Adjusted photos, with photos Adjusted in the last 7 days, and so on. Hopefully, they will add this functionality soon (before CO 10).
Because I now heavily rely on derivatives I have adjusted my workflow as follows: all derivatives go into a derivatives folder with the same path as in the catalogue - i.e., a derivative of a photo on 2016\201602\20160214 in the raw branch of the catalogue, will go under an identically named folder on the derivatives\CO branch of the catalogue. When using LR, all my derivatives where in the same folder as the original. It is only when I started using CO that I felt the need to separate with LR work from my CO work.
I could keep going on. The only thing I would add is that if you are going to make that transition, I would recommend a parallel run.0
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