Single current version of all images to live in a Catalog AND in the their Sessions
Implemented
This is what I want: I want to search, access, and edit all images from within a single Catalog, but keep all recent edits and attribute values in the respective Sessions where the images reside.
I do NOT want to export-import images from Sessions to the Catalog, for two reasons:
1. I want a "single version of the truth". If I need multiple versions of an image I use the variant feature, not export-import. If images would live in different versions in the Sessions and in the Catalog I would soon not anymore know where the current version would sit. I would probably forget to export-import some of them, would after a change want to export-import them back again, but then forget it in the one or other case.
2. Export-importing images is a cumbersome manual process which I want to avoid.
If I would really want a Session to be frozen while the images are touched in the Catalog, I would move or copy the Session to a different location on my NAS which would be outside of the realm of the Catalog.
So, how would the realm of the Catalog be defined? Just simply by a root folder under which the Sessions in scope for the Catalog would sit. I am having a folder called C1 on my NAS. It has sub-folders by themes or topics and years. And in there I have Session folders. So the Catalog would automatically pick up all changes in all the sub-folders of its root folder in case I just opened and worked in a Session or moved a Session from my PC to the NAS.
When I would open the Catalog and attribute or edit images, the changes would be stored to disk within the respective Session (the .cosessiondb files and the individual files for images in that place) unless the attribute type would be Catalog-specific, i.e. not be available in Sessions.
Why do I want to keep the Sessions up to date? Because I can take them with me on my laptop any time, edit them on the go, share them with others without sharing all of my work, and they would always open fast and allow quick access.
Why do I also want a Catalog? Because with more and more Sessions I am loosing overview. I cannot easily search, filter and compare images across all of my work. But I need that capability. Why do I need to edit images or update their attributes when viewing them in the Catalog? Because it is natural: When filtering and looking at keywords I want to add missing ones or align keywords across Sessions. I want to adjust some star ratings because my judgment changes. My best images get edited again and again. Maybe I would just adjust the overall brightness or I see a spot which I never saw before so I would want to Remove Spot now, or heavier edits.
Will there be a performance challenge for using Catalog and Sessions this way interlinked? When working in a Session, no. But when working in a Catalog, possibly yes. Obviously, when the user would make certain changes a lot across the entire body of work, many .cosessiondb files would by opened in parallel for updates. The user would need to be aware of this and possibly close and reopen the Catalog if the memory size of the process grew too much and the system is just paging and paging. (I am experiencing this already now with single Sessions on my 8 GB RAM machine.) But just for searching, filtering, viewing there should be no need to open all the Session specific files. That means the Catalog files would need to contain a copy of these attributes like a cache. This would be the case for keywords, rating stars, color tags, dates, and all EXIF data for searches - the usual means of filtering.
I am happy to explain in further detail, in case anything is unclear about this request.
-Peter
My current version: C1 20 Build 13.1.2.35 .
My OS: Windows 10
A screenshot showing the folder structure of my Sessions is contained in the closed support request "Catalog and Sessions" (ID #23474, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/requests/23474)
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Hi Peter,
Thank you for feedback on Capture One - this is always welcomed and encouraged among our users and we appreciate the time you've taken to contribute towards the development of the software.
I have forwarded your comments and suggestions on to our Product Management team as something to consider in a future release.
Whilst we cannot comment on future releases, we take all suggestions on board and hopefully your feedback contributes towards a future version of Capture One.
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I am also struggeling with catalogs vs. sessions for pretty much the same reasons. The current implementation of a catalog with imported sessions is only good if you want to have the sessions as a never-to-be-changed archive, or if you can accept that edits in sessions and edits in the catalog go out of sync.
A catalog with its catalog (DAM) functionality into which you can "plug in" (and plug out) sessions at any time, in which you can edit images but these edits are stored in the sessions folders instead of in the catalog file, (and the cache files are stored in the session cache folder too) is very very high on my wish list.
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As I see it, the problem with this is the different way in which catalogs and sessions store edit information. In sessions this is stored in the .cos files that are in a subfolder of the Capture One folder that is in turn a subfolder of the image folder. In other words, the edit information is stored in sidecar files in the computer's file system. But in a catalog, the edit information is stored within the catalog database.
So to keep the edit information from a file in sync in both a catalog and a session, it seems to me the options are
- allow the session to access the catalog database to read the edit information and update the edits stored in the .cos files in the session folders
(Would you allow this to happen all the time, or would it have to happen as a one-off update each time the session was opened? How would the session know which catalog the image was also in? In fact it is possible for an image to be added to more than one catalog, and for there to be different edits in those two catalogs - which should be synced with the session? And if it happened all the time - continuous syncing - that would slow the system down a lot.) - allow the catalog to access the edits stored in the session folders, and update the catalog edits to match. Presumably this couldn't happen unless the catalog was open, so would the catalog have to work its way though all the (potentially tens of thousands) of images it contains checking whether any of them had been updated in a session somewhere every time the catalog was opened? That would grind any system to a halt!
- change the way that catalogs store the edit information to use the same sidecar files that the session uses. But that would destroy the possibility of working on images in a catalog with the original image files offline.
Or is there some other solution that I haven't thought of?
Ian
0 - allow the session to access the catalog database to read the edit information and update the edits stored in the .cos files in the session folders
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Good analysis.
1. I would leave the normal catalog where you import images as is. No regression, no take away anything from the catalog user base.
2. Then you have the users, probably mainly the pros, who work for a job with a session or a few sessions and once they finshed this job they never actually touch the session anymore, unless in rare cases when they have to provide images from an older job at a later time for a different output media or alike. The current concept may work just fine for them, they would open the session indiviually or work in the catalog across a few sessions and commonly edit for a common output format or change of style etc. In this case they don't use the edits in the session but rather are fine to do this in the catalog (advantage: copy /apply across sessions) and leave the sessions intact.
However even in this scenario, if they want to move the old sessions to a backup media (clean up and create free space for their more current work), the latest edits are only in the catalag and they cannot just move the sessions into the longterm backup as they would be losing the catalog edits.3. I was actually thinking about your last option, a plugin/plugout feature for sessions into/from a catalog (which also means that images in offline sessions (= not accessible when the catalog opens) would not be editable at all. The session itself as an item in the catalog could be visible and an easy switch (online/offline) could be implemented to force sessions go offline even when they are accessible on the file system.
But actually, whether or not edits are stored in both the catalog database and the session sidecar folder and consequently a sync function (automatic, as a session item property, or on demand by a user click) would be implemented, or if the edits are only stored in the session sidecar folders and whether it is fast enough to read all sidecar edits directly into C1 memory when opening the catalog (which would be simpler but may probably require a more powerful computer) is something I don't have a strong opinion on. I have a preference for the latter though, although I acknowledge that working offline even with such a session catalog has advantages for those people to use to work offline.
A mixed catalog (where you can import images directly AND import sessions) is not necessarily needed, imo. A pure "sessions master catalog" could be a straight-forward setup which would fully satisfy my needs, and probably also the users from my point 2 too. I would even export my existing catalog images into a session or multiple sessions (e.g. per year) and plugin the sessions into such a session master catalog.
cheers
BeO
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I am not a pro, and not in your category 2. But I usually load my images into a session on a laptop (MacBook Pro) in the first instance. It's convenient to be able to work on images anywhere, at home, or away from home. Generally I use a new session every month, with extras for special occasions such as holidays, special events, and so on.
But I want to be able to access all my photos particularly to find images I want quickly. I take a lot of nature photos, especially birds, and I want to be able to find any images of Species X from over the years. So I need a catalog for that (since the demise of Media Pro). Therefore my sessions end up at the end of the month, or the end of the holiday, etc, being copied to my desktop iMac, and the keepers (for which I use the Selects folder in the session) are added to my master catalog.
My goal in the end is to have all my images in my catalog, and I have no real need to edit them again in the sessions they came from once they are safely in the catalog. Any more edits are done in the catalog. (In fact I could delete the session file and the Capture One folders that the session keeps its edits and previews in once they have been imported to the catalog, but I don't out, of a sense of caution - they are still there if something goes horribly wrong.)
Ian
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Thanks to Ian and BeO. You bring live to the thread. I couldn't believe that others who start with sessions don't run into the same issue: not being able to search images across the sessions. But there was no support for my feature request, so far. Now there is.
I think my vision is very close or identical to BeO's: "A pure 'sessions master catalog' could be a straight-forward setup which would fully satisfy my needs". This is what I regard as ideal. Because:
- Sessions would stay 100% intact, always current and if a user wants to edit an image still after years (and I do so) he/she can. He/she can do this offline on a laptop by copying or moving the entire session's folder with it its sub-folders to the laptop.
- The 'sessions master catalog' would allow searching across all sessions and allow editing the images within their sessions.
This 'sessions master catalog' would only contain additional index information that allows finding/locating the images, maybe thumbnails for fast presentation of the found images.
I think I would try implementing without sync between sessions and catalog. In all my long IT experience a single version of the truth was the best concept - all sync policies created error situations and headache. So, all image edit information should exist in one place only, the sessions' side car files.
I also do not want any check-in / check-out of sessions into and out of the catalog. Because that is error-prone. I would forget to check a session in or I would forget checking it out. In the latter case I would edit a copy while the master would still sit in the catalog. Worst case I would thereafter edit also images of the session in the catalog and finally would need a side by side comparison to sort out the mess that I made.
What I do need to do is moving the session folder from the laptop to the central place, or move them from the central place back to the laptop or somewhere else. So, my only criterion for a session to be part of the catalog would be that the session's root folder would be under the root folder defined for the catalog. C1 would always watch this folder and its sub-folders and automatically start indexing images of a session once the session's folder is moved under the catalog root.
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Hi Peter,
I think I would try implementing without sync between sessions and catalog. In all my long IT experience a single version of the truth was the best concept - all sync policies created error situations and headache. So, all image edit information should exist in one place only, the sessions' side car files.
I fully agree. And this is my first main point with the current redundancy in C1 catalogs, when importing sessions. I usually work with the latest (or a few of the latest) session(s), at my home base but sometimes in the field, but sometimes I want to gather images across all my sessions and do additional metadata work or prepare them for printing. Then, when I go to the field again and want to take a former session with me e.g. when travelling to a location I have been before I would like to take the full session(s) with me, not a catalog with offline images because I am limited to the preview resolution then. The full catalog with all originals is too big. Exporting relevant sessions/images would be ok but how would I import any changes back to the catalog...
And even at home I need to remember which session I have already imported and need to edit in the catalog, and which I did not yet (or don't want to have permanently) in the catalog, e.g. sessions with lens test images).
The plugin/plugout or checkin/checkout idea is not so important, but I did not mean a complicated feature or workflow. I was rather thinking that you are haviing a list of all sessions, and filter etc. work across all sessions, but you can temporarily "deactivate" a session in the catalog with the result that the collection "All Images" would not take their images into account, as simple as that. No need to use it though, just an option to temporarily reduce the number of images for viewing and filtering (and folders to scan with the next C1 start).
I couldn't believe that others who start with sessions don't run into the same issue: not being able to search images across the sessions.
That's my second main point. I don't want redundant storage but I want to search and edit across sessions. That's all I really need.
Btw, C1 is almost there.
I could create a "sessions master session", that is a new empty session to which I add all folders with images from other sessions to the Favorites.Then you can search and edit across all these sessions images, and the edits are stored only once, in the same sidecar files, and the same cache folders (thumbnails, previews) would be used.
But because session favorites are not hierarchical organized, adding them is a lot of manual work and you'll end up with a lot of folders in the Favorites; easy to lose oversight and you have a hard time to know which sessions you have "faved" already and which you did not. Ian would have at least 12 Capture folders each year.
C1 would only need to implement sub folder support for session folders and session favorites (at least for the latter) and then we would have a easy "sessions master session" setup. One could just add the top most folder in which all sessions are stored (root folder) into the Favorites. A comfort function then would be if C1 then shows all sub folders which have images in the Favorites in a hierarchy, or all sessions (database files) so you see which sessions are in the Favs, for a good oversight.
WIth the current C1 implementation, if you'd rename each Capture folder, Selects folder e.g. 2021-08-Capture for the current month session, then oversight in the Favorites would be easier. Maybe I'll try this setup. At least one could test the speed of such a setup when you'd create such a master session.
One downside to the "sessions master session" setup is when updating C1 to a higher version, new sidecar folders would be created for each version, but maybe this is not a real issue.
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