Workflow suggestions
I am using the trial Capture 1 v11 right now after years with Lightroom.
I am looking for a Capture One workflow that will give me the best possible efficiency.
I have about five major clients and the occasional 'visitor'
I mainly shoot in the studio static products and people (so sometimes tethered but often not)
Sometimes I'm simply on location where I will not be carrying the laptop - e.g. covering a news event etc.
In the studio I will use my MacAir and a Samsung SSD hard drive where I will record everything from a shoot.
"Sessions" would seem to be the way forward here (??)
I like the idea that with Sessions all the raw files are within the one package and I can simply drop the whole thing into my desktop computer and have everything there to go.
So for client A that would be a session identified as Client A and date
I will then bring the hard drive back to my desktop computer for working (trusty old Mac Pro with an 1 Tb SSD internal hard drive.
After adjusting and outputting files I want to remove these files from the computer and archive them.
This is when I save it onto a Drobo external storage system (and weekly) backed up onto another system for longterm archive).
I feel as though I should put it into a Catalog on my external Drobo rather than keep it as a Session ?
How well does this work ? Where do the RAW files go ?
Should I create a catalog for each client or just have one master catalog for all my work ?
I don't want the catalog to become too unwieldy. And I don't want to lose track of the RAW files.
Having worked with Lightroom for many years I feel that my organisation did not start off very well and now I have a rather confused folder structure which I don't want to reproduce when I hand over entirely to Capture One.
I'm sure there are lots of other pros out there with roughly the same sort of set-up and I would appreciate any thoughts about workflow organisation.
Observations really welcomed here guys đ
I am looking for a Capture One workflow that will give me the best possible efficiency.
I have about five major clients and the occasional 'visitor'
I mainly shoot in the studio static products and people (so sometimes tethered but often not)
Sometimes I'm simply on location where I will not be carrying the laptop - e.g. covering a news event etc.
In the studio I will use my MacAir and a Samsung SSD hard drive where I will record everything from a shoot.
"Sessions" would seem to be the way forward here (??)
I like the idea that with Sessions all the raw files are within the one package and I can simply drop the whole thing into my desktop computer and have everything there to go.
So for client A that would be a session identified as Client A and date
I will then bring the hard drive back to my desktop computer for working (trusty old Mac Pro with an 1 Tb SSD internal hard drive.
After adjusting and outputting files I want to remove these files from the computer and archive them.
This is when I save it onto a Drobo external storage system (and weekly) backed up onto another system for longterm archive).
I feel as though I should put it into a Catalog on my external Drobo rather than keep it as a Session ?
How well does this work ? Where do the RAW files go ?
Should I create a catalog for each client or just have one master catalog for all my work ?
I don't want the catalog to become too unwieldy. And I don't want to lose track of the RAW files.
Having worked with Lightroom for many years I feel that my organisation did not start off very well and now I have a rather confused folder structure which I don't want to reproduce when I hand over entirely to Capture One.
I'm sure there are lots of other pros out there with roughly the same sort of set-up and I would appreciate any thoughts about workflow organisation.
Observations really welcomed here guys đ
0
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I would recommend sessions as the most flexible way to work on the basis of your description.
However I would suggest ensuring that you have a backup of at least the RAW files as early in the process as possible simply because it is always good practise. If you can keep the memory cards somewhere safe for a while that might be adequate once copies are on disk and in the session process.
I also recommend making copies of a session as you work on it if that helps your peace of mind. Intermediate copies can be discarded when superseded.
Once done with the session you still have the option to import that to a Catalogue if you wish as well as keeping the session and if you use a referenced catalogue approach (referenced images are referenced in the catalogue wherever they are stored in your system(s), managed images are imported within the catalogue structure. A catalogue can work with both concepts at the same time.) the catalogue can reference the Original Image files (RAW, TIFF, jpg ....) wherever they are on the stored session as well as import the edits to the catalogue. That leaves you with the best of both worlds.
That said you might also find some merit in the idea of working in Sessions that reflect you main work pattern but creating a catalogue based on the output files from all of the sessions. That would give you a reletively small and very portable fast access catalogue for you images and, with a little care in naming and metadata use, an easy reference back to the original session and edit when you need it.
I'll avoid getting into any details about how the workflow would work so as to keep the overall concept simple to consider at this point. Suffice it to say that in my opinion the process does not need to be complicated in any way.
HTH.
Grant0 -
Hello Grant and thanks a lot for that.
After having looked through quite a few tutorials on the PhaseOne website the idea of sessions does appeal and later incorporating into a catalog.
Do you know when importing a Session into a Catalog it takes the images in with it to become a "Managed" Catalog or are they usually "Referenced" Catalogs.
Ideally I would like the archived version of my files to be a Managed Catalogue so I would always know that it is there that I will find the original files. This would also be the catalog I would back up to the secondary (long term) external drive - although that might become a bit of a slog as the managed catalog gets bigger and more cumbersome. Perhaps it may make more sense to simply copy over the sessions to my long term storage each time I complete one.
I'm trying to get this right this time and give myself a solid base for the new archive and not the higgledy-piggledy mess that I made in Lightroom. That archive is like walking into a 19thC bookshop - "I know that book's in here somewhere - now where did I put it ? "
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David GB0 -
Hi David,
The choice of Managed or Referenced catalogue usage - or indeed a mix, is entirely yours.
A single Managed catalogue will usually end up as a large file due to all of the stored images. Whether a large file is viable depends on your system configuration and how well it can deal with large files of any sort.
As I don't use catalogues - other than for the occasional test and investigation - I'm not really the best person to advise you on that aspect.
Hopefully a few others with useful related experiences will come along and chip in.
Also I'm on Windows.
My back history has been copied across many drives over the year and I do have a lot of session saved multiple times as older disks have been backed up to newer and larger disks without having the time (or inclination) to sort out duplication.
I have decided that the best option is to use a NAS device as an archive device (primarily) so that everything on it is stored on two separate drives in the NAS. That should cover concerns about disk failure - but a full "off site" backup service would require more effort and expense to set up and so far I have not taken that path.
Grant0 -
Hi Grant
Yes, like you I have my "archive of archives" on a NAS drive too.
And the system gets more chaotic the further back you go âšī¸
I think what I will do is shoot in Sessions.
Transfer to Archive No 1 as sessions and import into a catalog referring to my client name.
Lastly I will just keep all the individual sessions organised by date and client name in Folders in on the archive of archives.
Hope that works out0 -
[quote="NNN636650990580151357" wrote:
Hi Grant
Yes, like you I have my "archive of archives" on a NAS drive too.
And the system gets more chaotic the further back you go âšī¸
I think what I will do is shoot in Sessions.
Transfer to Archive No 1 as sessions and import into a catalog referring to my client name.
Lastly I will just keep all the individual sessions organised by date and client name in Folders in on the archive of archives.
Hope that works out
That sounds like a reasonable plan and gives you an opportunity to test the success that you feel it offers.
It's very tempting to want to update an entire back catalogue but I'm not sure the effort is justified.
I name my sessions and their files according to what they represent - usually some sort of "event". So if I am ever asked for images possibly from the event or similar event I have a subset of all images I can quickly scan just held in a session or maybe a few sessions. The date of an event also helps.
The greater challenge would be to look for less specific content and, of course, anything that might only be readily found if very suitably prepared with well thought out metadata - especially keywords probably.
I was delighted to discover that my NAS has a rather good "Duplicate files" report. With naming by session this offers excellent opportunities to "tidy up" the multiple copies although it one is also concerned about retaining previous edits - especially where some edits by have been applied to a "copy" session inadvertently, it's still quite a big task and one has to wonder if it is worth the effort.
If the results were stored as output tiffs or or full resolution jpgs (not always the case) I might have an easier decision path.
That said I find that if I do go back to an older session I will often re-edit anyway for the better results that updated software and extended user experience can produce. So maybe I am being unduly cautious about a proper clean up project.
Enjoy your project!
Grant0 -
There's no doubt about it - keeping an archive of pictures is a pain in the butt.
So much tedious keywording to ensure that you can find things again in a catalog.
Duplicate files - oh yes there are still lots of those and it is a nightmare deciding which ones are the ones to keep. (Despite specifying on import to avoid duplicates)
EXIF data missing or corrupted - how does that even happen ?? (and no way in C1 to add or adjust it)
I have only been using C1 for a month now and slowly getting a handle on what it can do for me.
Overall I'm impressed with its image adjustment possibilities but I'm not quite so convinced by the complexity of its file management.
For my professional and client work I am finding Sessions to be the way to go.
Neat little packages that I can back up across my back-up drives
The only problem being that if I make some changes to an image in a session it won't be reflected on another copy of that session on another drive. Perhaps Carbon Copy Cloner may be a solution to keep the sessions in sync ??
Oh well; it's a work in progress0
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