trying to import LR catalog with mixed success
I'm using C1 11 on Windows 10. I'm coming from LR 6 and am trying to import my LR catalog into C1. Unfortunately, this is a hell of lot more difficult than just doing File->Import Catalog->Lightroom Catalog.
I have a directory with all my pics in it. There are sub-directories, and sub-sub-directories, and maybe even a few sub-sub-sub-directories. C1 does NOT deal with subdirectories well, despite what the import dialog says. Sometimes it does import a sub-directory, sometimes not. For example,I had a "35mm" sub-directory with some 35mm (TIFF) film scans in it. This is a sub-directory under the main directory. This directory also has sub-directories. When it showed up in the C1 Library "tab", it showed zero files. Turns out there are three sub-directories as well. The sub-directories were not created or imported and there are no files in the "35mm" directory itself. I right-click'ed and did "sync" on the "35mm" directory and it still didn't add sub-folders or files. I had to add each sub-folder manually, then "sync" the sub-folder.
I also have a lot of sub-directories under the top-most directory that were not created. "Arizona" and "Texas" were found and created, "Canada", "Minnesota", and others were not. So apparently I have to add the missing folders manually, then "sync" them with the disk folder. That works but is very tedious. Then the problem is that I no longer have just the images from my LR catalog. When I "sync" a folder with the disk copy it imports every file whether it's in the LR catalog or not, but I just want files from the LR catalog.
Is there a solution to this or do I just have to swear a lot (more?) and import everything on disk and then delete from the C1 catalog the pictures I don't want?
Also, when I do add a directory to the C1 Library "tab" it only adds a folder to the hierarchy - no files are added. In order to actually have files in the folder, I have to right-click on the folder in C1 and do "sync". Then it imports all of my files. Why does it do this? What is the point of adding the folder to C1 if the files have to be added separately?
Finally, one more question: In LR, I have some "virtual copies" of files. I have the original physical file and I may have several virtual versions that are processed differently: black and white, sepia, desaturated colors, different crops, etc. C1 doesn't see these. Do I have to export each virtual copy as a TIFF file (or JPG) and import it into C1?
I have a directory with all my pics in it. There are sub-directories, and sub-sub-directories, and maybe even a few sub-sub-sub-directories. C1 does NOT deal with subdirectories well, despite what the import dialog says. Sometimes it does import a sub-directory, sometimes not. For example,I had a "35mm" sub-directory with some 35mm (TIFF) film scans in it. This is a sub-directory under the main directory. This directory also has sub-directories. When it showed up in the C1 Library "tab", it showed zero files. Turns out there are three sub-directories as well. The sub-directories were not created or imported and there are no files in the "35mm" directory itself. I right-click'ed and did "sync" on the "35mm" directory and it still didn't add sub-folders or files. I had to add each sub-folder manually, then "sync" the sub-folder.
I also have a lot of sub-directories under the top-most directory that were not created. "Arizona" and "Texas" were found and created, "Canada", "Minnesota", and others were not. So apparently I have to add the missing folders manually, then "sync" them with the disk folder. That works but is very tedious. Then the problem is that I no longer have just the images from my LR catalog. When I "sync" a folder with the disk copy it imports every file whether it's in the LR catalog or not, but I just want files from the LR catalog.
Is there a solution to this or do I just have to swear a lot (more?) and import everything on disk and then delete from the C1 catalog the pictures I don't want?
Also, when I do add a directory to the C1 Library "tab" it only adds a folder to the hierarchy - no files are added. In order to actually have files in the folder, I have to right-click on the folder in C1 and do "sync". Then it imports all of my files. Why does it do this? What is the point of adding the folder to C1 if the files have to be added separately?
Finally, one more question: In LR, I have some "virtual copies" of files. I have the original physical file and I may have several virtual versions that are processed differently: black and white, sepia, desaturated colors, different crops, etc. C1 doesn't see these. Do I have to export each virtual copy as a TIFF file (or JPG) and import it into C1?
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If you have an established folder hierarchy, it may be easier to simply use a session rather than a catalog. This would skip the whole importing process, as the session document is more more of a folder browser than an all-encompassing package. 0 -
I understand that sessions are an alternative to catalogs. I don't know a whole lot about sessions yet. I will have to read a lot more about sessions before I am comfortable going that direction.
I'd like to discuss the catalog issue please.
I repeated my LR catalog import steps again after creating a new C1 catalog and importing my LR catalog. When the import finished, C1 created my photo directory tree in the Library tool tab. It said it imported 13,972 of 18,177 images. My LR catalog contains 20,285 mages total - jpg, tiff, NEF, and RWL files. No dng or psd files are included in this count.
[*]A number of sub-directories under the "Texas" directory in LR were not imported into the C1 library - some sub-directories were imported and some were not. I don't see the pattern, if there is one, yet.
[*]The counts for the directories shown in C1 do not match the counts for the same directories in LR. C1 almost always reports the total number of files in the Windows directory, not the number shown in the LR directory.
[*]Windows File Explorer lists
[*]C1 reports 3,664 files in my "Texas" directory. Windows File Explorer reports 3,425 in that same directory (excluding files in sub-directories and directory folders). C1 has found 239 more files in the "Texas" directory that Windows knows about. I don't believe that that is possible. Windows File Explorer is THE reference for Windows directories.
Questions that I need answered:
1) why didn't C1 import ONLY the files in my LR catalog rather than every file in my photos directory tree?
2) Why does C1 report 239 more files in its reference to my Texas directory than exists on the disk?
3) why is C1 sporadically importing some sub-folders in my photo directory tree and not others?
Is there a log file in which is logged every file that is imported from the LR catalog for each directory and also reported files which cannot be imported. This might help answer some of these mysteries.0 -
Another side-effect of importing from a LR catalog to a C1 catalog is that C1 seems to have created variants of a lot of my files, but I don't know why. In my Arizona directory (as shown in C1 Library view) there are 26 files with variants. The variants appear to be identical to the primaries. That would help to explain why C1's Library shows 264 files in the Arizona directory when Windows says there are only 233 files. This could perhaps go a long way to explain why the counts in other directories in C1's Library don't match the counts in the Windowws directory. 0 -
I have submitted this problem to C1 support. 0 -
I sent my questions to C1 support. After quite a bit of back and forth, they don't seem to have any idea why my import from my LR catalog worked so poorly. Their answers to my first two questions was, "I don't know".
It appears that C1 import from LR works, but only halfway. It imports high-level directories but not sub-directories. It may (and for me, did) create variants of images for no reason - my C1 catalog has hundreds if not thousands of variants created automagically by C1 during my import from LR. I had to add several dozen sub-directories manually (via "Add Folder"), then had to sync then with the disk directory. This results in C1 adding every image in that disk directory to its library instead of just the images in the LR catalog. Now I have to go through and remove images I don't want in my catalog one by one. I also have to somehow go through all of my images and remove all of the variants created automagically by C1. I still don't know if I have all of my images from my LR catalog in C1.
Basically, it appears that the import from LR catalog functionality is very buggy and barely works. All I really managed to do was import all of the files on disk, whether they were in my LR catalog or not, and also have C1 apply my global adjustments from LR to the images. Honestly, the import from LR catalog seems to be far more trouble than its worth.0 -
NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
It appears that C1 import from LR works, but only halfway. It imports high-level directories but not sub-directories.
That was not my experience when importing into Capture One 10 (before Capture One 11 was released) a modest Lightroom catalogue of 8,000 or so images. I had a few folders that had sub-folders (one level down only) and they all imported successfully. (I should perhaps clarify that I'm using Capture One on a Mac running macOS High Sierra.)NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
It may (and for me, did) create variants of images for no reason - my C1 catalog has hundreds if not thousands of variants created automagically by C1 during my import from LR.
Again, I did not experience that problem.NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
Basically, it appears that the import from LR catalog functionality is very buggy and barely works.
I'm sorry that my post won't help you - but felt it appropriate to provide a different view. It clearly works reasonably well for some of us!
Stephen0 -
I went through this just last week. I worked with Support and did finally get my LR catalogue imported correctly. My directory structure is a top level folder with a sub folder for each year and then a sub sub folder under that for each job / outing. It turns out there are a few sub sub sub folders too 😊 I'll take a shot at answering your questions. NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
I repeated my LR catalog import steps again after creating a new C1 catalog and importing my LR catalog. When the import finished, C1 created my photo directory tree in the Library tool tab. It said it imported 13,972 of 18,177 images. My LR catalog contains 20,285 mages total - jpg, tiff, NEF, and RWL files. No dng or psd files are included in this count.
[*]A number of sub-directories under the "Texas" directory in LR were not imported into the C1 library - some sub-directories were imported and some were not. I don't see the pattern, if there is one, yet.
[*]The counts for the directories shown in C1 do not match the counts for the same directories in LR. C1 almost always reports the total number of files in the Windows directory, not the number shown in the LR directory.
[*]Windows File Explorer lists
[*]C1 reports 3,664 files in my "Texas" directory. Windows File Explorer reports 3,425 in that same directory (excluding files in sub-directories and directory folders). C1 has found 239 more files in the "Texas" directory that Windows knows about. I don't believe that that is possible. Windows File Explorer is THE reference for Windows directories.
Questions that I need answered:
1) why didn't C1 import ONLY the files in my LR catalog rather than every file in my photos directory tree?
It is supposed to only import the images in the LR catalogue. Are you saying it pulled in more? I did not see that happen to me. And it turns out I did have quite a few files that I had removed from my catalogue and were on disk but on in the LR catalogue. That lead to some confusion on my part comparing image counts between LR and the file system.NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
2) Why does C1 report 239 more files in its reference to my Texas directory than exists on the disk?
That seems very strange. I had file counts that were the other way - more on disk than in the catalogue. This was due to at edit time I removed from LR rather than delete from disk. I also had differing counts from LR and C1 because of virtual copies in LR.NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
3) why is C1 sporadically importing some sub-folders in my photo directory tree and not others?
This I experienced. There is a bug (reported) with C1 importing HDR .dng files. They are not supported and if you include them in your catalogue to import C1 correctly ignores them but also gets tripped up by them and stops importing other files that it should.NNN636286928999838177 wrote:
Is there a log file in which is logged every file that is imported from the LR catalog for each directory and also reported files which cannot be imported. This might help answer some of these mysteries.
Sadly no. I wish there were.
Here is now my experience went:
I started with a fresh new C1 catalogue and imported my existing LR catalogue. That head to some very confusing number - 70 000 in LR only 18 000 in C1. I knew I had some virtual copies but not that many. The import process correctly reported the number of images in my LR catalogue and always reported zero for images skipped. Clearly it is supposed to skip virtual copies and clearly it was skipping others too.
Support suggested I break the LR catalogue up.
Next I used LR's export as catalogue to create a LR catalogue for each year. I selected the top level year folder which in LR displays all images in the catalogue from all sub folders. Then I started with a fresh C1 catalogue and imported one year at a time checking the images counts after each. Things went smoothly until I hit 2015. Then things fell of the rails. I got missing job folders an some folders with missing images. Prior to 2015 I had a lot of confusion over images counts but was able to reconcile the virtual copies and realize that C1 had things correct. The 2015 import was just messed up.
Then I started doing one LR catalogue per job. That is when I found out the problem was with folders that had .dng files in them.
I had a couple of back and forth conversations with support and learned that LR generated HDR .dng files are not supported. I found that if I created my LR catalogue for the year with out .dng files everything imported as expected.
With that realization I started over and selected all my images in LR and filtered out virtual copies and .dng files and created a LR catalogue for that (all the images that should be supported by C1) - around 60 000 images.
C1 imported that catalogue perfectly. I was so happy. It pulled in all 60 000 images correctly along with my collections. Very nice.
My example does not match your perfectly but it might be worth creating a special catalogue from LR that only contains the images that C1 can handle and see if that helps. In LR show all images and use the filtering to remove virtual copies:
http://www.lightroomfanatic.com/tutoria ... g-filters/
And then add metadata filtering by File Type and remove any .dng files or other files - such as videos:
http://www.adobepress.com/articles/arti ... 1&seqNum=2
Then select all and export as a catalogue and then import into C1 using that catalogue.0
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