consolidating images on one drive
How do I consolidate several catalogs + keywords (!) of the individual images onto a new folder on a new (faster) external hard drive?
Background: When importing and designating 'importing to' to the new location, I seem to lose my keywords.
Related: should I produce Sub Folders for the different catalogs or keep all images in one folder?
Frank
-
The first thing I would think about is how you want your image collection to end up being organised. It sounds as though you have several catalogs. Do you want to keep having several catalogs, or when you mention consolidating them, do you mean you want to merge several catalogs? And how many images are we talking about?
You could just move the existing folders (from within Capture One) if you want to keep your existing catalogs, but just move the images to a different drive. Or you could combine them into different catalogs if you wanted. Happy to share detailed procedures if you can say what you have in mind.
Ian
0 -
I would echo Ian's comments you need to give a bit more detail on exactly what you are trying to do. Certainly do any moving of images from within Capture One or you will find yourself in one hell of a mess from a catalogue perspective. If you want to move physical files within a single catalogue, then I could suggest creating a folder structure at the new physical location (this can be done in Windows Explorer), then add the folder(s) to your Capture One catalogue, then drag the files from their existing folder to the added folder (from within Capture One), Capture One will do the moving of files for you and also make sure the catalogue remains consistent.
As for merging multiple catalogues, I am not sure how this can be done, the tricky part is retaining existing edits. I think I would export edited files as EIP and then import the EIP package back into the the new catalogue. This method could of course be a long and laborious process but would retain edits made in the original catalogue. Others may have a more efficient idea as to how to do a multiple catalogue merge...
From a folder perspective it depends how you work and how you want to find your images. I tend to organise by year and month, so I have setup folders for, year and month. I tend to know when things have happened and therefore can easily find the images I am looking for. I supplement the folder structure with User Albums. Coming from Lightroom I have found that I am used to this type of organisation. But you could quite easily organise by topic or trip, etc. It is perfectly possible to work from a single folder, but I don't as I think this would become a little unwieldy as the amount of images grows. The other thing to think about is naming convention for files. When importing into my catalogue I took/take the opportunity to prefix the file name with the image date as I find this useful for my workflow, there are of course many other Tokens you could use in a naming convention should you feel the need.
0 -
Thanks, that already helped a lot. Sorry for being so amateurish (which I am) and thus slow in getting it. Put differently: I have different catalogues which link to different physical folders that are all on different, external, hard drives (partly due to the history how I got into C1). Recently I purchased a new, bigger and faster external had drive upon which I'd like to consolidate what I have for it makes traveling easier. Obviously, don't want to lose any metadata, especially keywords. Though I am nearer to getting this done after your answers, I still wonder how I should go about it. I have some 9-10.000 images. I have to work with original photos taken and, for research purposes, a lot of scans.Since I am not a photographer professional, I am not that time stressed in my operations.
Does that make my quest a bit clearer?
Thanks again, Mark and Ian
Frank
0 -
Frank, I suggest that you make some dummy catalogs, dup some files, make some edits, add some keywords, etc just like you do now. And then use them to test the process you want to try. I find this is a very safe way to "learn" what not to do and what does work.
Kevin
0 -
Frank,
It does look like Capture one (C1) has the ability to import other C1 catalogues, but I must admit I have never tried it so I don't know if and how it works. I would do what Kevin suggests and create a dummy/test catalogue and give it a try. I would suggest backing up your catalogues before 'playing' with these functions to make sure you are safe and don't loose anything.
Once you know the catalogue import function works as expected, then I would think about how to get all your images onto the target drive. This could be done in a few different ways, you could do what I suggested above (in my previous post), in creating a folder structure on the new drive, adding them to your existing catalogues then use C1 to move the files around, then merge the catalogues with the catalogue import function. In effect moving the files and then merging all the catalogues.
Alternatively if the catalogue import function works, then create a single catalogue, import all your existing catalogues (creating an uber catalogue) with the files in their original locations, then create a folder structure on the new drive and finally drag the files within C1 to the new drive and folder structure. In effect merging all the catalogues and then moving the files.
Note that if you merge your catalogues then start moving the files around, your old catalogues will become out of sync and therefore obsolete, so you have no way back once you start. Probably the safest method is to move the files to the new folder structure within your existing catalogues, and then merge the catalogues. This way if something goes wrong with the merge then at least you will still be able to use your existing catalogues. I hope that made sense.
Finally you could move your existing folder structures to the new drive through Windows Explorer and use the Locate function, the video below shows you how. Then once you have moved all the folder structures within each individual catalogue to the new drive, then you can use the catalogue import function to merge the catalogues. Personally I like this method the best as it means that you can keep your existing folder structures (assuming what you have currently works for you), but moves them across to the new drive. If there are problems, then just move the files back to their original location and drive and all will be as it was. Note that this method is reliant upon you keeping your existing folder structures and does not work so well if you are looking to reorganise your pictures into a new folder structure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoXCP1P5KVU
The one thing I would say is that C1 does not deal with subfolders very well, i.e. adding a top level folder does not automatically add any subfolders within it. When I have created elaborate folder structures before, I have had to add each folder to the catalogue in turn, making it a long process. I would suggest that you try and make your new folder structure as simple as possible to fit your needs, meaning you have to add less folders to C1 manually.
I have not used the catalogue import function before so you will be blazing an trail here :), but I have created new folder structures and used C1 to move files around. I can confirm that C1 does retain edits, keywords, etc when files are dragged to new physical locations from within C1.
Good luck, and let us know how you get on with it.
Mark
0 -
Dear Mark and Kevin,
I was easy, yet I probably made a big mistake, doo time consuming to rectify. Alas:
- I added the folder where the images were via ‘Folders +’
- Imported them to the new location
- 22 hours later ca. 6500 pics were loaded in the new location and all metadata was transferred as well.
The Big Mistake: I must have selected something wrong in the import instructions, for I now also have ca. 6500 folders with 1 image each! I presume redoing that will be a nightmare. However, Capture one otherwise works much faster than before. (The Source ‘All’ in the screen short was different then, it pointed to the original source)
It might be a good idea to write somewhere on the forum a step-by-step instruction as to how to do that, for I can’t be the only one with that chore.
Thanks for you interest and thanks for indulging a non professional language for this technical stuff.
Frank
0 -
Hello
It looks to me that under 'Import To' under subfolder you have the token image name, I suspect that having the token in subfolder was the reason for the creation of all the subfolders.
0 -
Yep - life goes on. Covid is worse!
frank
0 -
Moving files/folders in capture one via Folders and then import was painlessly easy. All relevant metadata are transferred as well.
However, the attribute 'processed' is not any longer available. Pretty disappointing. Hopefully, in a new release that could be fixed.
0
Post is closed for comments.
Comments
9 comments