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New user - many questions - Photoshop refugee

Sausalito
Hi-

I've been trying to get my head around CO7 for about a week now (after almost 20 years of photoshop think, I need some help).

My biggest issue at the moment is whether to go Catalog or Sessions. I never used Lightroom due to the catalog issue and it seems to be pretty much the same with C07 (though the catalog is a bit more compressed and useful). Sessions also seems more complicated than what I'm used to ...searching for a file in Media Pro, opening it in the editor (usually Photoshop) and tweaking a bit and saving and printing. I have gobs of Photoshop plugins, though the most used ones lately seem to be NIK and Perfect Photo Suite (PPS seems to work fine with CO7 if a bit klunky to find).

Can anyone comment on my dilemna? I suspect sessions is the way to go, but I'm a little bit open to catalogs - I have more than 140,000 files in Media Pro - this would create an overwhelming catalog. I just did a test with about 18,000 and it works but it's somewhat slow to launch and then it's fine. Part of that might be that I load stuff like catalogs for media pro in dropbox so I can use them on both my iMac and Macbook pro.

I have about a dozen questions and I don't want to just do a data dump here and expect someone to fish through it, but I'm really stumbling on this really basic strategy question.

I'm quite happy with the editing, it's the saving etc that is puzzling me. So far I've really made a mess of my hard drive with bits and pieces of CO7 stuff everywhere 😊... Help... Please...

thanks,

Tom O'Connell
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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • NN634685736257195808UL
    Hey, Ive been using C1pro for about a year and a half, and I came from a lightroom-photoshop background. My experience is this-- Capture one catalogs tend to have a lot of trouble at this point, when they get really large. They tend to become useless files that crash your machine if they get too big. 1000 images in a folder seems to crash the application on my machine every time. (2010 Macbook pro 2.83ghz intel core2duo, 8gb RAM, mountain lion) The benefit, in theory, to the catalog is that you open one file, and access tons of images, but like I said, I have had difficulty with large C1 catalogs at this point. Sessions, on the other hand, are meant to be used much like their name suggests... 1 session per shoot. A new session will create a handful of files on your hard drive, and a few folders. You must keep them organized on your harddrive on your own, whereas catalogs are more meant to organize large groups of files on your hard drive through 1 (or few) catalog files. The benefit of sessions... each shoot you do has a contained little area on your harddrive where it lives, and you can access it through finder, or organize using something like MediaPro.

    It seems like making this choice has a lot to do with what type of photography you do, and your personal preferences on file storage. If you shoot for one client after another, every day, then a sessions workflow allows you to keep all of the jobs separate. If you are a stock shooter or a photo illustrator, you may want to have all of your images in one place.

    I hope some of this helps. God knows I have put a lot of thought into it this past year and a half!!
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  • Sausalito
    Thanks. That does pretty much confirm my fears about large catalogs.

    I think that for now I will just use sessions, save the edited file to my montly PRINTED folder and delete all the sessions folders that get created. I don't see the need for additional groups of folders and files once the image is edited, printed and saved. I've stopped saving files with all the layers except in very very unusual situations where I want to repeat prints with changes to just a layer or two because with all the new larger files I have, the size just balloons to unmanageable size if I don't flatten and save.

    It sounds like you are still somewhat into using PS as well as CO7. I'm trying to make the break completely and that is tough to do all at once, so I have one foot in each rowboat for the time being. I want to move all at once, but there is really a lot to learn first 😊

    Thanks,

    Tom
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  • Cheekytinker
    Hi Tom,

    I too am a new user having migrated from Bridge/Photoshop.

    The past couple of days I've been trawling through a shoot I did on Friday and trying to get my head around how it works to make the break completely, this is my first time using it. I thought this would speed up my post production and it does seem great in some aspects but a bit slower in others. It's painful that it regenerates previews every time you click off that image - whereas once Bridge had generated them you could click between instantly to assess which shot you wanted and so on.

    Having said that the processing element is great as is the copy/apply adjustments.

    My main struggle before migration was catalogues/groups/albums etc but I think I've fathomed what I want/need to do but am now concerned with the size of catalogues and crashing. I've opted to use one catalogue but keep all my files in the current location so hopefully this won't crash anything. I've been working with a shoot of 1400 images and it didn't crash once so we'll see.

    Good luck!!!!
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  • Sausalito
    I'm still trying to figure out just how catalogs will fit in my workflow.

    I move images from camera to a "month folder" 2013-07 and create a new subfolder "dog pix at beach" and my thought is to import them to co7 with that same structure in a new catalog for each month. When I print pix, I flatten them and put them in a "printed" subfolder in each month. At the end of the month, I keyword them all with photomechanic (so no sidcar files) and then I copy the whole month folder to my external drives. And then I ingest them into Media Pro for my archive catalog.

    I'm thinking that I can just move the Month catalog over with the pix to the drives?

    That would basically mean that I would only really be working with the current monthly catalogs?

    Does that sound feasible to the group of experienced users here?

    Thanks

    Tom
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  • H. Cremers
    If you already have Media Pro and have your catalog in there, i'd say use that.

    It integrates quite well with CO7, you'd have to use session and does show the edits you do in CO.

    Only question is Phase One's strategy with both CO and MP.

    I, for one, wouldn't yet go with the catalog feature in CO. It's not mature enough if you ask me.
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  • Sausalito
    [quote="HCS" wrote:
    If you already have Media Pro and have your catalog in there, i'd say use that.

    It integrates quite well with CO7, you'd have to use session and does show the edits you do in CO.

    Only question is Phase One's strategy with both CO and MP.

    I, for one, wouldn't yet go with the catalog feature in CO. It's not mature enough if you ask me.


    Thanks for that. Where do you store all your session files? Seems like it makes sense to move them with the folders of the raw images??
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  • H. Cremers
    Frankly, i don't bother with the session files. I actually created one session for integrating with CO, i called it MP-integrated. I continue to use that one.

    I open my selects from MP into CO and after editing (and output if necessary) i delete the created album in CO (when you select more than one album, MP creates an album in CO, more or less like a work queue). Works pretty well for me.

    But, to do this, you'd have to do all of your meta data work in MP, that is keywording, selecting, labeling, etc.

    Maybe, one can hope, Phase One will allow CO and MP to share the catalog, for both reading and updating. MP for the more heavy duty DAM stuff and CO for the editing stuff and perhaps the light DAM work (first selects etc.). Who knows ...
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