Session or Catalog?

2eyesee

• December 02, 2014 05:15

I was just wanting some advice on whether a Session or Catalog would be best for the way I use Capture One.

My entire library of digital photos is in folders by year (2012, 2013, 2014 etc). The vast majority I don't do anything with - it's just the occasional RAW I like to develop.

I started using Capture One in Catalog mode, which seems to be much like Lightroom. This seems OK, but I thought Session mode might be better for if I ever move folders around or change the folder structure of my photos.

So I have just tried using a Session, but then I find Capture One creates a massive Capture One\Cache\Proxies folder. It seems to generate .cop and .cof files for every image in the folder, which seems overkill when I only want to work on a handful of files.

So I'd appreciate some feedback on the best way for someone like me to work in Capture One - large folders of images but only every work on a small fraction of them.

Also, I shoot in RAW + JPEG mostly. Is there any way to get Capture One to ignore the JPEG if a RAW is present? It would just save seeing double images when viewing my folders.

Thanks for any feedback.

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  SFA

  • December 02, 2014 10:51

  I use sessions.
  
  I tend to keep jpgs in a separate folder - for much the same reason that one would shoot RAW + jpg in the first place - security backup in case of error. However I am not obsessive about doing so. Alternatively you can sort the images in the folder by extension to avoid double displays or use the Preferences settings to control whether C1 allows editing of jpg files if you only wish to work on raw files for period of time.
  
  You could also use a filter/album to separately select raw and jpg files to work on.
  
  The Capture One folder and files associated with a folder of images is usually useful for a new shoot and follows the principle of pre-processing for fast access to the images. The files created are not normally very large compared to the size of the original images. Not a significant overhead (in my opinion).
  
  TO pick individual files from an historic collection would suggest perhaps copying each file (at the operating system level) to a specific folder in a session in order to separate it from all those images you do not wish to see using C1. You could use the Capture folder, for example. It would serve the purpose although its original intent is as the default folder to capture files created by tethered shooting. It's just a folder.
  
  Of you could create your own named folder into to which to drop the images you want to access with C1. Access that folder through the C1 system folders explorer and, usefully, make it a "favourite" of the session. Do that will mean that only images in that folder are considered to be part of the session. If you are using other applications that take a different approach their integrity will be maintained so long as you copy the original file rather than move it. I don't think an extra copy is much of an overhead to satisfy your needs if number are low as you state.
  
  I tend to work with large numbers of images so there is little point for me trying to keep things separate. I rarely shoot jpg only and rarely do anything with any jpgs that have been shot alongside raw files as "card failure backup". Once I have the RAW files imported and backed up I'm not very interested in the jpgs.
  
  C1 is quite flexible enough to allow people to take either let it do its thing or to take charge of how they want to work with it for a very small amount of additional effort. However I really would not worry about what seem to be redundant process files. Half the pleasure of using C1 in a non-commercial approach is to revisit old favourite images to see how they may be differently interpreted and, perhaps, enhanced. It's very easy to do this using the pre-prepared previews.
  
  HTH.
  
  Grant

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  2eyesee

  • December 02, 2014 20:34

  Thanks very much for your reply.
  
  It looks to me like Sessions are very much for keeping everything in the same Sessions folder. You import images into the Content folder to work on. My idea of just creating a default session, then browsing to other folders outside the session folder doesn't look like a good solution.
  
  I may be better off just sticking with a Cataglog. Then I can just import images I want to work on to the Catalog without a copy needing to be made, and without Capture One creating a huge Cache folder with .cop and .cof files for every image in the folder.
  
  One thing I'm not sure about though is are Catalog links to my image files relative or absolute?

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