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Coming from Aperture, very confused by file management

ymatto
This is a bit of a cry for help. I'm trying to move from being a very long-time Aperture user to Capture One. I love Capture One's power in actually working on the images themselves, but I have to admit that no matter how much time I put into it, no matter how many documents and tutorials I read, the organization scheme totally baffles me. Has this been the experience of any other former Aperture users? Will this all magically make perfect sense once I look at it differently?

I think the biggest thing is that the meaning of libraries, catalogs, folders, sessions, groups, albums, and projects seems extremely weird. I really can't figure out when to use what and why. With Aperture it was very clear that folders were pure containers (and clicking them showed you everything contained within), projects were the "real" location of the photo, and albums contained references to photos in projects (and could be wherever you like).

In Capture One, I thought there was something similar going on. Groups act like folders in that they can contain anything (although clicking them shows you nothing, which is kind of odd). I thought projects were the same in both apps, but in Capture One you *must* add a photo to an album within a project. Okay then, I figured that albums must be the "real" location of the photo and projects were just a grouping convenience. But dragging an image between albums -- either within a project or between projects -- just makes a copy of it. And deleting a photo with either its project or album just removes it from its album, but it's still there -- not visible in *any* project or album -- only to be found in the massive unorganized catalog. So apparently the catalog is the "real" location, but why all these arbitrary limits on projects and albums? And why do I have to laboriously dig through my catalog if I actually want to delete something? Why can't I have some kind of container in my organization that has a singular location for my photo? Argh!

Another thing that I don't understand is that no matter what I do, I can't get more than one catalog to show up in the pull-down list at the top of my library. Whenever I create a new catalog, it just replaces the one I had and I have to manually open up the other one. Am I missing something? Does Capture One want me to use lots of catalogs, or generally just a very few, if more than one? I'm not sure how Capture One intends me to use catalogs at all, and I'm not even getting to "folders", the meaning of which within Capture One is completely beyond me.

Basically Aperture from day one felt like there was a clear correct way to use it, with enough flexibility to define one's own organization. With Capture One, I feel like I must be missing something because even very simple organization workflow tasks seem extremely difficult and counterintuitive. I really don't mean this post to just be a lengthy rant. I desperately am hoping that somebody can help point me in the right direction because I really want to love Capture One.
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Comments

61 comments

Date Votes
  • ymatto
    Maybe I can distill this down to some more direct questions. My main couple:

    - Is there any way to delete (ie. move to trash) images directly while working within the user collections area?

    - Is there any way to move items between elements in the user collections area (projects, albums, whatever), rather than copy them? I am realizing that these are all just references to the file in the catalog itself, but from a user's perspective, I'm very frequently wanting to recategorize photos and having to dilligently drag them to their new location, then remove them from their old location seems really strange, especially as default (or perhaps the only available) behavior.

    Basically what's bothering me here is the disconnect between the "catalog" -- which gives you direct access to your files (deleting and moving) but cannot be organized -- and the "user collections" -- which give you organizational tools, but in my mind can very easily become "unsynced" from the files in a file management sense. I fundamentally would like to have the confidence that I can deal only with my user collections and know that all my files are represented there, in some form, in a 1:1 sense, as I have with Aperture's implementation of "projects". Currently every organization element I have available to me in Capture One very easily allows me (even encourages me) to have multiple copies of photos in the user collections, or have photos that appear nowhere in the usercollections but are still taking up space buried somewhere in my catalog.

    Or am I missing the point of how organization is supposed to work with Capture One?
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  • bml
    My way from Aperture to COP8 is a bit like playing minesweeper 😊

    I'm now at the state using a catalog, and folders inside that catalog, which can be hierarchical.
    Photos can be moved between folders, without copying them.

    The next step will be groups, hopefully without mines.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="bml" wrote:
    My way from Aperture to COP8 is a bit like playing minesweeper 😊

    I'm now at the state using a catalog, and folders inside that catalog, which can be hierarchical.
    Photos can be moved between folders, without copying them.

    The next step will be groups, hopefully without mines.


    How do you create folders inside a catalog? From what I can figure out (which may be entirely wrong), you have your catalog, and then you can separately map in folders on your hard drive and the catalog file will sort of keep track of them, but they're still separate from the actual catalog of images, which Capture One manages.

    Speaking of which, I don't really get what the plusses and minusses of using the catalog versus folders is -- especially once you start getting to a very large library.
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  • Stephen Scharf
    I'm with all you guys on this, I've been using Capture One since January 2013, and also can't figure out all the differences between all these classes of folder and file heirarchy management. I find it very, very confusing, and I even watched the Luminous Landscape training video on Capture One 7!

    It's an exercise in frustration, is what it is....
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  • bml
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    How do you create folders inside a catalog?

    I exported my Aperture library into a folder structure and then created a new catalog in COP8 using this structure.

    pictures
    +-plants
    +-animals
    +-buildings

    If I mark a folder, e.g. animals, and click on the little '+' beneath 'Folders', a window titled 'Add Folder' opens and I can create a new folder, e.g. horses. After clicking on the Add-button, the folder appears in the catalog.

    pictures
    +-plants
    +-animals
    +-horses
    +-buildings

    Deleting is simpler: mark folder and press cmd-backspace.

    These Folders are real folders in the filesystem.
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  • Alan Disler
    You are not alone.

    After the double debacle of CNX2 for Nikon NEF's being terminated, and then Aperture development terminated, I am very leery of going all in on yet another proprietary system for my photos. Also for that reason, subscription-based systems are anathema to me. Having said that, I find COP8 to be an excellent editor of raw files. Unfortunately, the filing system is incredibly complex and IMHO not adequately explained, either in CONCEPT or use.

    Curiously, there doesn't seem to be an actual User's Manual, other than a compiled Help document, which doesn't really explain the WHY of things, beyond the HOW. With so many users trying COP8 after being orphaned by the two applications mentioned, it cannot be assumed that a built-in knowledge of the basics of the program by previous users can obviate the need for a comprehensive new user's guide from scratch. Also, third-party manuals by experienced users with real-world work flows would also be a big help.

    For the PhaseOne people reading this, I offer this as constructive criticism and hopeful suggestion, as I do like the results I am getting so far during the trial period.

    -Alan D.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="bml" wrote:
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    How do you create folders inside a catalog?

    I exported my Aperture library into a folder structure and then created a new catalog in COP8 using this structure.


    Ah, okay, so the photos aren't located in the catalog file, they're in the "folders" section below it. Yeah, oddly, mostly ignoring Capture One's organization tools and just having it point to folders seems like possibly the most predictable way of working. But I wonder if that's really scalable, or if that will cause problems once you get to a really massive library.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="NN635465205411689233UL" wrote:
    You are not alone.

    After the double debacle of CNX2 for Nikon NEF's being terminated, and then Aperture development terminated, I am very leery of going all in on yet another proprietary system for my photos. Also for that reason, subscription-based systems are anathema to me. Having said that, I find COP8 to be an excellent editor of raw files. Unfortunately, the filing system is incredibly complex and IMHO not adequately explained, either in CONCEPT or use.


    Yes, that's exactly my concern here. Aperture was fantastic for organization and so I relied on it totally. However, its editing tool development stagnated and then it was discontinued entirely. So when looking for alternatives, I was actually quite pleased when I found Capture One and discovered that the tools were so much more powerful than what I had been working with. But the fact that I'm not "getting" the organization part makes me really leery to move my life of 14,000 images over into it, which I really want to do. I actually bought COP7 days after the Aperture announcement, then put it on the shelf after realizing that moving from Aperture was going to be difficult and confusing. Then when COP8 came out with a dedicated Aperture library import feature, I was thrilled and threw down the $99 to upgrade. But now I'm worried again.

    I'm still holding out hope here that maybe there's a trick of customization or usage that I'm missing, or that Phase One can make a quick tweak and make this perfect.
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  • Flow_Berlin
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    I have to admit that no matter how much time I put into it, no matter how many documents and tutorials I read, the organization scheme totally baffles me.


    Wow, what a relief to see you guys exchanging your experiences here. Same issue here: long-time Aperture user, used CO7 sometimes before but mainly relied on Aperture for quick editing and DAM, and Photoshop for 'real' editing. Now really wanting to move my whole library to CO8, but still afraid of the data management.

    Would you mind sharing some of the tutorials that you watched? I'd like to dive into this as well soon. Thanks!
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  • ymatto
    [quote="Flow_Berlin" wrote:
    Would you mind sharing some of the tutorials that you watched? I'd like to dive into this as well soon. Thanks!


    Sure, it's probably all stuff you've found before but the main locations are:

    The Capture One 8 manual page on catalogs:

    Capture One 8 tutorial videos ("Managing a Capture One Catalog" in particular):

    A blog post on deleting images:

    Between those and a lot of trial-and-error in the application itself, I'm starting to get the basics of how it works.

    That said, I have to say that I feel like I'm still missing something as my understanding (as reflected in my first post) doesn't lead me to an organization workflow that makes sense to me: I'm supposed to import the photos to an album, but then if I want to delete unwanted images later (after it isn't the most recent import), I'm supposed to dig through the unorganized catalog view to do it rather than the album where I put them? If I want to reorganize my photos into a different album, I'm supposed to drag them over, and then go back and make sure to delete them from the previous album, lest I have duplicates? If I accidentally delete things (or rather the reference to them) from an album rather than the catalog view, then I'm going to have a bunch of zombie images taking up space in my catalog that don't actually appear in any album in my organization scheme? It just seems too weird to be true.

    The suggestion earlier in this thread to use folders instead of the catalog file itself seems like the most logical right now. Everything behaves as one would expect, although then you're stuck having a total UI break between your file management and any albums or secondary organization you might want to have (which is what I gather happens when you import an Aperture library directly), which is really disappointing. And the fact that the documentation is silent on when one "should" use the catalog file or folders makes me not want to rely even on that. I've read references on this forum of potential performance impacts, but I can't find anything concrete.

    I really want Phase One to tell me clearly how I "should" be using their tool. Again, Aperture did a great job offering a very clear, logical, and flexible way of organizing that seems like it (or something similar) could be offered in Capture One, unless I'm missing something about how it's supposed to be done.
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  • Doug Peterson
    P1 provides a lot of help in their videos and manual.

    If, after looking through all of those, you're looking for something more I'd suggest a formal training class:
    http://www.digitaltransitions.com/event/training

    We offer them (link above) as do other dealers around the world.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="Digital Transitions, Doug" wrote:
    P1 provides a lot of help in their videos and manual.

    If, after looking through all of those, you're looking for something more I'd suggest a formal training class:
    http://www.digitaltransitions.com/event/training

    We offer them (link above) as do other dealers around the world.


    Training is well and good (and I would consider it), but from the discussion here, I'm curious if you (as somebody who clearly knows the ins and outs of C1) think if us Aperture refugees are failing to understand something about the way C1 is supposed to be used?
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  • Alan Disler
    "If, after looking through all of those, you're looking for something more I'd suggest a formal training class:
    http://www.digitaltransitions.com/event/training"

    If those webinars were archived for future reference I would gladly pay for them. Apparently they are not?

    Thanks,

    -Alan D.
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  • nggalai
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    [quote="Digital Transitions, Doug" wrote:
    P1 provides a lot of help in their videos and manual.

    If, after looking through all of those, you're looking for something more I'd suggest a formal training class:
    http://www.digitaltransitions.com/event/training

    We offer them (link above) as do other dealers around the world.


    Training is well and good (and I would consider it), but from the discussion here, I'm curious if you (as somebody who clearly knows the ins and outs of C1) think if us Aperture refugees are failing to understand something about the way C1 is supposed to be used?

    Basically, Capture One isn’t primarly a DAM, but a RAW developer with roots in tethered shooting. Aperture primarly was a DAM, with RAW development features put on top.

    Catalogs have only been around in C1 since Version 7, prior to that it was Sessions only. Session = Folder structure, optimised for a tethered workflow or for folks who either didn’t like catalogs to begin with or used an external DAM such as Media Pro or Photo Mechanic to do the organisation bits of their workflow.

    So, many of the ways you Aperture guys are used to organise collections, single images, manage uploads and versions simply aren’t there yet. This can be a hard transition, depending on what you heavily relied on in the past. Phase One has ironed out a lot of hard spots with Version 8 in the organisation department, but further ironing will take time. Two suggestions in the mean time:

    1) Take a sheet of paper and a pen. Then draw the way an image takes in your current workflow from camera to publication. Start from an eagle’s eye view, then add details such as “here’s where I usually add keywords†or “here’s the moment I normally prune my catalogâ€. Then, slim it down to the important bits and check what tools you used in the past are available in C1, or what tools could complement important steps C1 doesn’t cover. Say, entering metadata while importing images -> use a third-party importer as a workaround. Upload to online portfolio -> use the site’s app instead, etc. Or you might realise your workflow was overly complicated to begin with and that Capture One 8 can deal with the slimmed down workflow just fine. Say, “how to work with SilverEfex <-> oh, 99% of the work can be done in C1 itself by now.â€

    2) If 1) showed too many white spaces, there’s always the option to stick to Aperture for organisation and run Capture One in Session mode. You won’t see your C1 edits in your catalogue (unless you’re of the stacking TIF/JPEG versions crowd), but you can send images from your Aperture catalogue to a C1 session for final processing / output. This generic session will keep all edits (the ones you won’t see in Aperture), but you can wait out this one missing catalogue feature you rely on by sticking with Aperture for the organisation bits until this one important C1 update that fills up the one white space that hinders you the most at the moment. Once your must-haves are covered, import your Aperture catalogue, then add / import the C1 “output†session.

    Edit: You guys have at least a full year for the transition. Support for new cameras is handled on an OSX level, you just won’t get more or refined features. But it’s not as if Aperture stopped working once 10.10 is out. Apple might rework the RAW framework in 10.11, but as said, that’s at least a year off. So plan a transition strategy, and take your time – you have the time. Capture One makes the transition easier, but only once you (or C1) are at a point where you can say: okay, I won’t miss anything critical. And you still have at least a year for it. So, use your time wisely. Or, shorter: Don’t panic. 😊

    Cheers,
    -Sascha
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  • ymatto
    This is an excellent post, thank you, Sascha. It confirms my assumptions about some things which is a little disappointing, but it's very good to hear an experienced user provide a grounded perspective. To snip a few of your comments:

    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    Basically, Capture One isn’t primarly a DAM, but a RAW developer with roots in tethered shooting. Aperture primarly was a DAM, with RAW development features put on top.

    Catalogs have only been around in C1 since Version 7, prior to that it was Sessions only. Session = Folder structure, optimised for a tethered workflow or for folks who either didn’t like catalogs to begin with or used an external DAM such as Media Pro or Photo Mechanic to do the organisation bits of their workflow.


    Ah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems like the "folders" option in the current catalogs is sort of patching in the "sessions" functionality into a catalog-based workflow?

    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    So, many of the ways you Aperture guys are used to organise collections, single images, manage uploads and versions simply aren’t there yet. This can be a hard transition, depending on what you heavily relied on in the past. Phase One has ironed out a lot of hard spots with Version 8 in the organisation department, but further ironing will take time.


    Got it. Just knowing this does make a difference as I won't keep beating my head against trying to figure it out. I think it's great that Phase One has decided to go the catalog direction, and I'm very happy that they've built in the Aperture import. I just hope they go "all in" with it, and allow a user to have a totally managed-catalog-focused organization workflow. It's so close already actually, but as you say, it seems that they are slowly building a fully-featured DAM tool.

    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    Two suggestions in the mean time:
    ...


    These are great. I suspect that I could probably close the gaps, but the solutions currently seem very fragile. Nonetheless, it's a worthwhile exercise to go through.

    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    Edit: You guys have at least a full year for the transition...


    You make a good point. I suppose I'm impatient just because C1's editing tools are so incredibly good, and the DAM seems like it's so close. I dislike fractured workflows so I'm very eager to just dump Aperture early and move fully to a better tool. Maybe I need to think through if there's a reasonable halfway solution I can use until C1's catalog DAM features are fully baked.
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  • ymatto
    ---
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  • bml
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    But the fact that I'm not "getting" the organization part makes me really leery to move my life of 14,000 images over into it, which I really want to do.

    I'm managing 12,000 images in my folder structure without problems. What I'm missing is a better keyword/IPTC management (bulk processing) and the ability to see the images in the subfolders of a marked folder.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="bml" wrote:
    [quote="ymatto" wrote:
    But the fact that I'm not "getting" the organization part makes me really leery to move my life of 14,000 images over into it, which I really want to do.

    I'm managing 12,000 images in my folder structure without problems. What I'm missing is a better keyword/IPTC management (bulk processing) and the ability to see the images in the subfolders of a marked folder.


    That's really good to hear that you're not having fundamental issues with using a folder structure with a large library. Do you mind describing how you're organizing that?

    And yeah, I haven't looked into the keyword/IPTC stuff in COP8 yet, but it's certainly something I'm also going to be very interested in having a robust solution for, coming from Aperture.
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  • Ario
    The basic principle I follow is to keep separate and indipendent the physical organisation (OS based) and the logical organisation (DAM based) of the same. This is because I need to be free to use any DAM tool I feel is appropriate now and in the future.
    Whenever I bring new picture files into my computer system they get renamed and organised in folders in a way which make sense to me, allow me to find out any file even without the help of a DAM tool, and I never change after the ingestion (they are ORIGINAL's).
    In this way I can use (and I do) Capture One , Lr and Aperture all in the referenced mode without any problem and without the need to duplicate any raw file.
    Then the logical organisation I use with any of my DAM tool is basically the same, projects, groups, collection (in CO terms) and is totally indipendent from the physical organisation of the originals.
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  • Flow_Berlin
    [quote="nggalai" wrote:

    Edit: You guys have at least a full year for the transition. […] So plan a transition strategy, and take your time – you have the time. Capture One makes the transition easier, but only once you (or C1) are at a point where you can say: okay, I won’t miss anything critical. And you still have at least a year for it. So, use your time wisely. Or, shorter: Don’t panic. 😊


    Sascha, thanks very much for your post on this, that helps a lot. However, I don't feel I have a full year for a transition, as every edit that I make in Aperture from now on is partly lost in the future, and the sooner I start using CO8 fully, the better.

    The DAM indeed isn't very elegant, but I would like to refrain from using more tools to compensate for this. The beauty of a non-destructive editor like CO8 is its one-stop character. I have Photoshop for heavy editing and used Aperture before as my image tool for everything else. Browsing, light edits, crops, color correction and the like, well I don't have to explain what it does. I don't want to start using another tool for file managment and CO8 as a somewhat-in-between tool.

    So as I understand it from what I've read here and in the documentation, this folder thing is the best workaround so far.

    Does anyone know of a more in-depth description of how files are managed/affected when using projects, collections, albums and all that? The short paragraphs on the documentation page (http://help.phaseone.com/en/CO8/Library ... spx#item19) are a bit... well, compact.

    Thanks,
    Flow
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  • meanwhile
    Are you using Managed or Referenced libraries in Aperture?
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  • Flow_Berlin
    [quote="meanwhile" wrote:
    Are you using Managed or Referenced libraries in Aperture?


    Referenced.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="Ario" wrote:
    The basic principle I follow is to keep separate and indipendent the physical organisation (OS based) and the logical organisation (DAM based) of the same. This is because I need to be free to use any DAM tool I feel is appropriate now and in the future.
    Whenever I bring new picture files into my computer system they get renamed and organised in folders in a way which make sense to me, allow me to find out any file even without the help of a DAM tool, and I never change after the ingestion (they are ORIGINAL's).
    In this way I can use (and I do) Capture One , Lr and Aperture all in the referenced mode without any problem and without the need to duplicate any raw file.
    Then the logical organisation I use with any of my DAM tool is basically the same, projects, groups, collection (in CO terms) and is totally indipendent from the physical organisation of the originals.


    Yeah, I'm starting to think this is the way to do things to avoid any DAM issues in the future.

    Ugh, now I need to somehow extract my Aperture project/album organization into a Finder folder structure, which isn't trivial either... I don't suppose anybody else has figured out a clever way of doing this?
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  • ymatto
    [quote="Flow_Berlin" wrote:
    [quote="meanwhile" wrote:
    Are you using Managed or Referenced libraries in Aperture?


    Referenced.


    Lucky you. I'm starting to think that I should never have gone Managed.
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  • Dan Perfect
    Me too.. I'm just wondering how to put all of my stuff into a referenced, easily accessible structure that I can use Capture One as a front end to. At the moment its all in the incomprehensible nests of Aperture's library.
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  • ymatto
    [quote="NN124716UL" wrote:
    Me too.. I'm just wondering how to put all of my stuff into a referenced, easily accessible structure that I can use Capture One as a front end to. At the moment its all in the incomprehensible nests of Aperture's library.


    I started looking into this a bit. If you right-click on "photos" at the top of your aperture library (in the lefthand pane), there is an option to "relocate originals for library", which seems to allow you to export your managed library out into a reference folder structure. There are a lot of options for defining how that folder structure is created. I wish there were a simple way to just have the folder structure mirror the organization in Aperture itself in some way, but it seems like you can get something that's not terrible, as you can at least include the "project" as a primary folder feature.

    I still want to give this some long hard thought and a good bit of experimentation before committing to anything, but there may be a path here.
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  • Dan Perfect
    Yes, I think that is the way to go.. I've made a start on it, but for me it means a lot of work renaming the originals and adding metadata where I have created versions that were edited in Photoshop and then stacked..
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  • ymatto
    I've done a little more testing, things are looking promising. Here's a possible transition flow for those with a managed library in Aperture wanting to move to a referenced (ie. folders-based) catalog in C1:


    • In Aperture, at the top of the catalog pane, right click on "photos" and select "Relocate Originals for Library". If you have any straggler files that are referenced or broken/missing, you'll have to resolve that before this works (I had a couple)

    • Select where you want your folder-based library to be, and then under the "Subfolder Format" pulldown, select "edit..."

    • Drag elements into the "Folder" input box so it reads: Folder Name/Project Name/Original File Name. Accept the Relocate Originals.

    • Now in Capture One, do the Aperture catalog import, selecting the Aperture file (which no longer contains the originals, but still tells Capture One where they are, about edits, etc.)


    From my testing, if you've organized your library in Aperture with folders and projects, that will do a pretty darn good job. One thing to keep in mind is that for that to work, projects in Aperture must be your bottom-most organizing element. It's actually possible to create folders within projects (to contain albums), but that's always seemed a bit odd to me. But Aperture will even correctly create folder nesting. So if you have, for example, a "2014" folder containing a list of "Location" folders, which in turn contain a number of projects, the export above will indeed create a folder structure with a 2014 folder, containing Location folders, which contain projects.

    Now Aperture also seems to create a folder for each individual original file, which is a bit weird. I haven't figured out if that's any sort of problem for my workflow. And I haven't messed with the workflow of bringing additional images into C1 and into the folder structure. But there does seem to be A Good Path to smoothly moving a large managed Aperture library into a folder-based C1 catalog where one should, in theory, not need to worry about DAM issues in the future.
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  • ymatto
    Oh and another little trick related to the above. If you want to try this out on a subsection of your library (as I did), you can select a folder in Aperture, and export that as a new library (including the option to copy over the originals). Then open this library in Aperture and you've got a microcosm to try out whatever transition flow you like, including the above.
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  • ymatto
    Ah, I screwed up with the above. I shouldn't have included the file name in the subfolder format definition; that's what creates folders for each individual image. I should have just done "folder name / project name" and then there's a separate pulldown for the filename format to use.

    Also, I think it's better to use "version name" than "original file name", as C1 doesn't have the concept of a names for photos separate from their filename and so your updated names in Aperture will otherwise be lost.

    However, I would note that I have found what seems to be a bug with Aperture: when using "version name" in the library relocation as above, some photos mysteriously still export with the original file name. I really cannot figure out what's different about these photos that would cause them to ignore their version name (which still shows up correctly within Aperture after the relocation process). If anybody can figure out what's going on with that, I'd be thrilled.
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