Adjust Dates and Times (C1 and Photo Mechanic)
Hi.
Relatively new Capture One user, coming from being an Aperture user for 10 years and iViewMedia Pro for 7-8 years before that. I've been shifting my Aperture libraries over to Capture One slowly, and only recently have I attempted a soup-to-nuts workflow that began with dumping cards and ended with finished images.
It hasn't gone very smoothly. Most of this is due to my negligence to set the time and date in my cameras.
In other DAMs, I've taken for granted that capture time and date can be modified on ingest or even after ingest. I always took advantage of Aperture's timezone shift / capture time adjustment capabilities and sort of figured that with Capture One being an 8.0 product, there would be something similar. Ooops.
In any case, I imported roughly 1500 images, rated them and processed the selects, and now have to export the selects in folders that correspond to the different days of the event. This is proving to be a nightmare since I can't change the capture time in Capture One.
So I've purchased Photo Mechanic. What I'd love to be able to do is export originals from Capture One, adjust the date and time in Photo Mechanic, then reimport the originals and somehow have the image processing adjustments I've already made respected on the new files. I'm guessing it's not going to be that straightforward. Please tell me I'm wrong.
So what I've resigned myself to do (other than make sure that the time in my cameras is correct, which seems like the kind of thing I last did in the year 2003) is:
Though it'd probably be easier for me to just deal with the exported selects in Photo Mechanic, I'm using this opportunity to dial in my workflow. Since Capture Date adjustments don't exist in Capture One and metadata editing seems a little less efficient than what I'm accustomed to, I need to train myself to do the culling process in Photo Mechanic first.
On the plus side, I'm very happy with the image processing aspect of C1--my results are good and it's pretty intuitive for an Aperture user. But oh boy, the DAM features in C1 (which are actually the more important features to me) are unintuitive (to me) or, as is the case here, non-existent.
Relatively new Capture One user, coming from being an Aperture user for 10 years and iViewMedia Pro for 7-8 years before that. I've been shifting my Aperture libraries over to Capture One slowly, and only recently have I attempted a soup-to-nuts workflow that began with dumping cards and ended with finished images.
It hasn't gone very smoothly. Most of this is due to my negligence to set the time and date in my cameras.
In other DAMs, I've taken for granted that capture time and date can be modified on ingest or even after ingest. I always took advantage of Aperture's timezone shift / capture time adjustment capabilities and sort of figured that with Capture One being an 8.0 product, there would be something similar. Ooops.
In any case, I imported roughly 1500 images, rated them and processed the selects, and now have to export the selects in folders that correspond to the different days of the event. This is proving to be a nightmare since I can't change the capture time in Capture One.
So I've purchased Photo Mechanic. What I'd love to be able to do is export originals from Capture One, adjust the date and time in Photo Mechanic, then reimport the originals and somehow have the image processing adjustments I've already made respected on the new files. I'm guessing it's not going to be that straightforward. Please tell me I'm wrong.
So what I've resigned myself to do (other than make sure that the time in my cameras is correct, which seems like the kind of thing I last did in the year 2003) is:
- Export all originals to a folder
- Comb through them in Photo Mechanic and adjust dates
- Reimport them into C1 into a new folder
- On selects, copy the adjustments I made before onto the newly imported images
- Remove the original images.
Though it'd probably be easier for me to just deal with the exported selects in Photo Mechanic, I'm using this opportunity to dial in my workflow. Since Capture Date adjustments don't exist in Capture One and metadata editing seems a little less efficient than what I'm accustomed to, I need to train myself to do the culling process in Photo Mechanic first.
On the plus side, I'm very happy with the image processing aspect of C1--my results are good and it's pretty intuitive for an Aperture user. But oh boy, the DAM features in C1 (which are actually the more important features to me) are unintuitive (to me) or, as is the case here, non-existent.
0
-
Can Photo Mechanic work on images "in place"? That is, can you point it to where the images are now, and do the date/time changes needed without having to move everything?
If yes, there is a good chance all you will need to do after that is choose to synchronise in C1, and the changes should then be recognised by C1 and you can then do the date filtering.
I don't think export/reimport will be necessary.0 -
That's a good idea, though right now my images are in the catalog.
In Aperture, I would change these from managed to referenced images. I'll look for something similar in C1.
Thanks!0 -
The catalog is not a file, it's a package. That is, a folder. Right-click on the catalog, and choose Show Packge Contents in the Finder, and you'll find the files within. 0 -
Understood. Aperture Libraries were packages too.
The issue is that the photos from this event are in a catalog with other items as well. No matter, I created a folder in C1 and moved them out of the catalog and am working through them with Photo Mechanic now.
The absence of little features such as capture time adjustment and "don't import duplicates" is driving me nuts; I'm amazed at the lengths I'm finding I have to go to for things I've long considered everyday functionality. But I'm on my way to fixing this problem (and will do everything I can to avoid it in the future). So thanks!0 -
If you find things that are missing that are important to you, please be sure to put in a support ticket to request it. I know there are at least a few requests in for not importing duplicates, but the more the merrier.
C1 is a great piece of software, and does most things really well. Some areas do need some work, and Phase One has a pretty good record for incorporating what is needed in new versions.
With the catalog and where images go, have a look at the import recipes, you can set up a really good structure that gets followed automatically so things go exactly where you need or at least very close to how you are used to in Aperture. I always used referenced files in Aperture, so do similar in C1. Capture One's import system, aside from the duplicates, is far more powerful than Aperture's.0 -
Meanwhile, on the whole I'm pretty happy with C1. I think the processing results are better than what I could get in Aperture and in the end, that's what matters, even if my processing is very minimal. With a few notable exceptions (like the color editor, which I think is brilliant), the UI seems engineered rather than designed.
I'm moving to a referenced file (folder) workflow in C1 as a result of this trial run, and I think it'll work out better for me in the long run.
I've got a running Evernote note with feature requests. It's pretty long; I should submit it soon.
On import recipes--I'll look into them. So far (after about 12,000 images) I find C1's import capabilities pretty anemic, at least as exposed in the Import dialog. In Aperture it was pretty standard for me to pop a card in, adjust date or time, tag all the images with the tags that apply to the whole shoot, auto-stack them, apply metadata presets (not just copyright), and many more things that I never used. As far as I can tell, very little of this is possible in C1 as of now, so it looks like I either adjust my workflow accordingly (which I'm open to) or involve helper applications like Photo Mechanic (which I don't really like doing).0 -
Export all originals to a folder
Comb through them in Photo Mechanic and adjust dates
Reimport them into C1 into a new folder
On selects, copy the adjustments I made before onto the newly imported images
Remove the original images.
for this purpose you dont need expensive software like Photo Mechanic 🤓
1. all you need is free Exif tool editor look in App store or google.
2. if you use C1 in Catalog Mode you have to point first the Exif editor Apps as External Editor inside C1
3. select one or moor then one Image inside C1 and use the function " Open with or Edit with " to send the Images to your edit software
4. reworks all Date or Capture Time then go back to C1 and check your Exif image Date.0
Post is closed for comments.
Comments
7 comments