DAM hierarchy for Newb
Man, I'm just getting going with Capture One and finding the DAM is really poorly implemented. It's like they just threw out a bunch of arbitrary containers with no real concept of how they should be used. Somebody forgot to say "no" ☹️
Coming from Aperture, the king of DAM, it was like this:
Library>Folders>Projects>Albums with photos living inside Projects. Simple, powerful and easy to use.
I can't make heads or tails of what the heck is going on in C1, even after watching and reading half a dozen tutorials. Seems like you're just supposed to leave multiple copies of things laying around and somehow keep track of what you're doing. Importing photos is far from a clean process and waaaaaaaaaay too many manual steps to setup.
Can someone point me to a CONCISE guide to how the hierarchy was conceived? And why oh why can't I drop photos into a project without first manually creating an album called "all photos"? Seriously?
/frustrated rant
Coming from Aperture, the king of DAM, it was like this:
Library>Folders>Projects>Albums with photos living inside Projects. Simple, powerful and easy to use.
I can't make heads or tails of what the heck is going on in C1, even after watching and reading half a dozen tutorials. Seems like you're just supposed to leave multiple copies of things laying around and somehow keep track of what you're doing. Importing photos is far from a clean process and waaaaaaaaaay too many manual steps to setup.
Can someone point me to a CONCISE guide to how the hierarchy was conceived? And why oh why can't I drop photos into a project without first manually creating an album called "all photos"? Seriously?
/frustrated rant
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In order to be truly helpful it would be productive to understand what you shoot, what your subject is, and your intended workflow/output/delivery. What works for a commercial catalogue shooter will be different than what works for someone who shoots pets.
The way I do it... I work with sessions exclusively.
You have a Capture folder in every session, within which you create folders for each of your shot numbers, e.g. Shot01, Shot02, and so on.
If you want to sort and create multiple revisions of an image without unnecessary clutter, you make Albums (or pre-filtered Smart Albums which require you to Favorite folders to get populated) within your session.
Albums, and also "Clone Variants" are virtual copies - proxy pointers to existing raw files.
C1's Session workflow may be comparatively simple if coming from LR or Aperture, but the design is in having each shoot be lightweight and highly portable instead of tethered to a single, ever growing database. My preference is with the C1 approach.0 -
I'm a professional freelancer, all sorts of subjects and outputs. About the only thing I don't shoot is pets.
I find the Sessions workflow unnecessarily cumbersome because I don't need Selects, Output and Trash folders. Honestly I don't really understand the mandatory creation of such arbitrary folders. I use star ratings to select, output directly to burn folders or ftp server, and throw away almost nothing.
So I'll stick to Catalogs. I always had a referenced library in Aperture, but I'm ok with Managed if that means keeping things together better in C1. In any case, I don't really understand why a database DAM program needs to expose the filesystem so much in order to manage photos. If I wanted to do that I would just use the Finder. It feels like the program is trying to please too many people by being everything, but it's consequently very poor at moving things around within the database. Importing is a hassle with too many steps and needing to create Albums even if you don't want any.
The real test here is how exactly do you go back and delete images that are found in Albums after they've fallen off the "Recent Imports" collection. Delete them from the Album or delete the Album and they're lost in a sea of uncategorized thousands. If you could import directly into a Project, and delete from within the project (or better yet, delete the whole project and have the photos go with them), then I would actually believe these containers mean something.
The way things are in C1, Groups are containers for Projects, and Projects containers for Albums, and Albums contain references to photos. But where is an actual hard link to the photo? The only place to find it is in the Recent Imports, as long as it's one of the last ten imports. Makes no sense.
I keep hearing "Capture One isn't Aperture" when people complain about the DAM. Nobody's asking for it to be, but it would be nice if there were some actual logic to it. I get it, C1 came from sessions, which came from studio tethering, and back then there was just the Finder. OK, but it feels like I have to use sessions and tethering and follow a fixed folder structure that results in a total mess for any of it to make sense. So frustrating.0 -
Have a read of fellow Aperture orphan Derrick Story's Phase One blog post and have read his approach in the free Rocky Nook eBook (subscription required). 0 -
Wow, I really don't understand where you're coming from. I find the Sessions/Finder workflow really simple. You're a freelancing pro who almost never deletes a photo, what? You can trash the Selects, Output, and hell even the Trash folders, anytime you like. Don't import, just tether or drag from a card to a folder within the session - there's your "hard link". Good luck. 0 -
Hi,
I'm coming from Lightroom, and, even if the C1 DAM is far less effective than Lightroom catalog, for instance, I can retrieve a picture very easily, import all my pictures from my SD card very quickly (3 to 4 times faster than Lightroom, for instance), can create albums and delete pictures within albums without any trouble,.....
My way to proceed is to open and display all the folders (and subfolders when necessary) of my external HDD - my catalog is referenced - into the library tool. I am very organized (I mean my external RAW HDD is well organized) and I don't have any problem.
Right, the C1 DAM could be far better if the Phase One developers wanted to seriously work on it rather than continuing to favor Media Pro AND Capture One simultaneously (business is business...). But the catalog, as it is, is almost satisfactory for me.0 -
Tallrob,
I have a suspicion that you are overthinking this process stuff.
I can't imagine random freelance work being a natural fit with a catalogue approach in most cases. At least no more natural than a session.
And in a session the use of the defaulted folders is entirely optional for you convenience should you choose to use them.
I use sessions.
Some "event" sessions use the Capture folder. Other session just work with folder picked using the finder - maybe made "Favourites" it there is some convenience in doing so but not necessarily.
My use of "Trash" is very rare - like you I hardly delete anything.
Likewise my use of Selects - it's just not how I do things - but obviously many people do even though some of them do not see the purpose of a Selects folder (or proxy name as it really is that can be used to point to your folder of choice.)
I do use the Output folder. It's very convenient and I rarely need anything beyond that but, if I do, C1 allows me to send selected outputs wherever I want.
There are, in my opinion, many benefits to be discovered in C. For me not being forced to use a catalogue (C1 did not have them when I started to use it) was one of them. It was about a year of using C1 before I bothered to try to understand what the Session concept could offer if I wished to make use of it more fully. I year wasted I realised once I become more receptive to the concept.
HTH.
Grant0 -
[quote="tallrob" wrote:
Man, I'm just getting going with Capture One and finding the DAM is really poorly implemented. It's like they just threw out a bunch of arbitrary containers with no real concept of how they should be used. Somebody forgot to say "no" ☹️
Coming from Aperture, the king of DAM, it was like this:
Library>Folders>Projects>Albums with photos living inside Projects. Simple, powerful and easy to use.
I can't make heads or tails of what the heck is going on in C1, even after watching and reading half a dozen tutorials. Seems like you're just supposed to leave multiple copies of things laying around and somehow keep track of what you're doing. Importing photos is far from a clean process and waaaaaaaaaay too many manual steps to setup.
Can someone point me to a CONCISE guide to how the hierarchy was conceived? And why oh why can't I drop photos into a project without first manually creating an album called "all photos"? Seriously?
/frustrated rant
I wrote this up some time ago. http://www.bobrockefeller.com/blog/my-c ... ne-catalog
I'm a ex-Aperture user, too, and have found C1 to be a good replacement. But I do have frustrations and find myself using Lightroom, only to get more frustrated and come back to C1.0 -
Hi,
I too am coming from Aperture and arrived, via Adobe Lightroom, to C1.
About the structure: I wrote a reply in this topic. It might be of help.
My current workflow is
- import the images and store them in folders per year/month and give them a reasonable naming convention (using the 'tokens', something like <job name> <YYYY><MM><DD>-<image name>, and I then type in the job name, e.g., MUS Concert Encantadas. As such, the filenames are more meaningful than just the image number and a date). If the SD card has several different sets of images, I either import them separately or I rename the files after import.
- select the import collection in the "Recent Imports" of the "Catalog Collections" and rate the images. When done, I have a bunch of rated images and a bunch of unrated ones.
- I select the rated ones (filter for 1 or better, Select All) and use the "Create album from > selected" menu (context-click only or keyboard shortcut. Oddly enough, these commands are not present in the main menu!).
- I select the unrated ones and mark them red (shortcut bound to 'x', You may opt for '9' instead).
- I move that newly created album into the User Collections hierarchy.
From that moment on, I'm no longer interested in the Recent Import collection.
- Further editing happens on the images in the album.
- I have a smart collection (top level of the hierarchy) that filters the images marked red. Once in a while, I select all images in that smart collection and delete them (you'll get a dialog box whether to remove them or keep them in place. I normally remove them).
I do agree that C1's DAM is not in the same league as Aperture's, but it's OK-ish (if not too big). OTOH, the quality of the image processing is way better than Aperture's.
HTH,
Peter.0 -
[quote="tallrob" wrote:
Man, I'm just getting going with Capture One and finding the DAM is really poorly implemented. It's like they just threw out a bunch of arbitrary containers with no real concept of how they should be used. Somebody forgot to say "no" ☹️
Coming from Aperture, the king of DAM, it was like this:
Library>Folders>Projects>Albums with photos living inside Projects. Simple, powerful and easy to use.
I can't make heads or tails of what the heck is going on in C1, even after watching and reading half a dozen tutorials. Seems like you're just supposed to leave multiple copies of things laying around and somehow keep track of what you're doing. Importing photos is far from a clean process and waaaaaaaaaay too many manual steps to setup.
Can someone point me to a CONCISE guide to how the hierarchy was conceived? And why oh why can't I drop photos into a project without first manually creating an album called "all photos"? Seriously?
/frustrated rant
Welcome to Capture One! That's why I stick to LR and use CO only in certain special cases. I would love to completely switch to CO but I need a strong DAM. It's so easy and simple in LR I just don't know where the problem is to create proper file handling.0 -
[quote="tenmangu81" wrote:
Hi,
I'm coming from Lightroom, and, even if the C1 DAM is far less effective than Lightroom catalog, for instance, I can retrieve a picture very easily, import all my pictures from my SD card very quickly (3 to 4 times faster than Lightroom, for instance), can create albums and delete pictures within albums without any trouble,.....
My way to proceed is to open and display all the folders (and subfolders when necessary) of my external HDD - my catalog is referenced - into the library tool. I am very organized (I mean my external RAW HDD is well organized) and I don't have any problem.
Right, the C1 DAM could be far better if the Phase One developers wanted to seriously work on it rather than continuing to favor Media Pro AND Capture One simultaneously (business is business...). But the catalog, as it is, is almost satisfactory for me.
Never never is CO import 3 to 4 times faster than LR! My results on MacBook Pro with 500Gb SSD I import images (after importing them with Photo Mechanic to tag them) with LR. 800 images took me 5 min with LR and 25min with CO! Maybe it's the sidecar files but file handling is so slow in CO. One of the speed factor here is the fact, that in LR the previews are generated afterwards in the background while all files are imported so you can start your editing.0 -
OK. Maybe I had a problem with LR, then. With C1, it takes me about 2 minutes for 30 files,.... and it took far more than 5 minutes with LR !!
I don't know if the problem is sidecars, as I don't use them.0
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