feature requests for professional workflows

I am a photo assistant in san francisco. I assist about a dozen photographers, 6 of whom are using the 1dsmkII + C1 combination. I use this software on a daily basis--more even than photoshop these days--and am intimately familiar with every detail of its operation.

I have collected a number of recommendations directly from the photographers for feature requests/improvements to CaptureOne. Most of these feature requests will seem trifling and picky. However, considering the sheer amount of time that we use this software, and how crucial C1 is to our current workflow, it makes sense lobby for every possible improvement to the software.

This is our kit, for reference: 1dsmkII with mac g4 powerbooks, running tiger os. We shoot mostly to cf cards, sometimes tethered. For one shooter, re wifi a jpeg to another laptop running indesign, and drop the image directly into the art director's layout. One of the photographers shoots retail catalog products, frequently using one of the three tilt-shift lenses available, and finishes approximately a dozen shots a day. The other shooters are stock photographers, and will shoot between 1 and 2 thousand images a day--fast a furious cf card management is the rule on those days.

Many of these suggestions are very minor improvements, but every little improvement will make the software more efficient and enjoyable to use, and hence a more attractive choice than the competing software choices.

Here we go:

Add an option to automatically import upon mounting the cf card! Even better, add an option to automatically import and then automatically unmount the cf card, so that we can just plug it in, wait for the images to come up, then pull out the card, without having to click the mouse once.

Add a button to the toolbar to eject the cf card. Also, please add an eject keyboard shortcut! It is annoying to always return to the one window to have to press the eject button every time.

Along the same lines, you could add a small little symbol to the toolbar that indicates whether the cf card is mounted or not. Pulling out the card without unmounting causes C1 to freak out, and requires a restart. A little green cf card icon in the upper right corner that shows up when the card is mounted would be perfect.

We measure the aspect ratio of the art director's layout and enter a crop ratio for the image. Then we shoot versions of the same shot until it is approved. The \"inherent from current image\" choice allows us to maintain the crop that we have entered--but only when we are shooting tethered. The request: fix the \"inherit from current image\" button to work not only with tethered operation, but also CF card imports. As it is, we need to click on the apply settings button and hit return to apply the crop every time--annoying.

How about a keyboard shortcut for the crop tool? May I suggest \"c\" to agree with the photoshop shortcut for the same? Also, how about \"h\" for hand, \"i\" for eyedropper. This seems like such a simple yet crucial improvement.

A toggle switch that can go in the menu bar to turn the existing crop for an image on and off; this way we can view and process the image with and without the crop just by toggling a button, rather than always redrawing it. This is like a \"hide crop\" option.

Add an \"apply crop to selected\" button, just like there are \"apply white balance to selected\" and \"apply levels to selected\" buttons.

Add the ability to have sublevels of custom crops in the crop pull-down menu, so that we can efficiently organize the most common crops according to client, layout, etc.

Add a keyboard shortcut to bring up the \"apply settings\" dialog.

Add a command that will reset ALL image settings to \"as shot.\" Currently, we have to three different palettes and hit the reset button in each one, just to get back to the initial state of the image.

Add a button that will bring up the exposure info. We don't care about the other metadata; we just want the camera exif, shutter speed aperture exposure compensation, etc, prominently and easily displayed.

I would be more than happy to discuss or explain the details of any of these suggestions, if they are not clear, or if solutions already exist of which I am unaware.

thanks,
Matt Holmes
970.275.3110
matt@mattholmesphotography.com