Moving Catalog
So my old computer crashed and before it did I managed to move all my folder to an external drive.
now I opened the catalog in each folder but the files appear "offline" and I can't edit in photoshop.
I have to re-import the photos from those folders but I lose all the adjustments I had made, the ratings..everything.
I never backed up the catalogs when closing C1..is that why??
for some reason, catalogs and sessions confuse me sooo much..
I would like to work on the pics of a folder, I would like that worked to be saved somehow, and I would like to be able to move the folder, copy it on an external hard drive, and continue my work from that new location...is that doable??
confused...
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Hi Jim,
Yes, you can do that. When you change the location of a folder in the windows browser / mac finder, remember to open C1 and relocate those photos in the new directory. If there are no changes in file names or subfolders C1 relocates everything quite wellSalud!
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What you want to do is indeed doable, with either catalogs or sessions.
Catalog
If you are in a catalog, you can avoid having to relocate the images for Capture One if you use Capture One to move them in the first place. So say you have a folder of images on your internal drive called "Wedding" and you want to move it to your external drive, you just drag the "Wedding" folder from the internal drive to the external one using the Capture One Library tool. That way Capture One keeps track of where they are and keeps them connected to its database of edits you have made.
Session
If you are in a session, you can just move the whole session folder to the external drive. Then you open the session, but NOT from the recent files list in Capture One - that will be looking for it in its old location. Instead you go to File>Open and navigate to the session file in its new location.
The main difference between catalogs and sessions
The big difference between catalogs and sessions is where the edits are stored.
- In a catalog, information about the edits you have made is stored in the catalog, as are previews of the images.
- In a session, information about the edits, and the previews, are stored along with the images in "Capture One" subfolders of the folder the image is in.
The main advantages of each are
- in a catalog you can have access to a whole lot of work in one place, so for example it is easy to find images of a particular subject (perhaps all images taken over the years of a particular person). It is well suited to a large collection of images.
- a session is compact and self-contained: you can easily pick up and move the whole session, perhaps even moving it to another computer. It is best suited to a small collection of images, perhaps from one holiday, one event, etc.
The method of editing and adjusting images is identical in either case.
Hope that makes sense!
Ian
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Also, the problem you described is not the result of not backing up your catalogs BUT backing them up is a good practice. It is quick and easy to do: you can effectively set it and forget it. My catalog is set to back up every time I close it, but if I know I haven't done anything - perhaps just checked and exported one image - then I can always click the button to skip it this time. One a reasonably fast computer, the backup takes very little time. (But be aware that it doesn't back up the actual image files, only things like the edits, keywords, etc. It is an addition to a good system backup routine, not a substitute for one.)
Ian
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thx Luis and thx Ian! that s very interesting
I am not sure i totally understand. let's say:
I have a folder Wedding on my internal drive...once I am done with it..no more work to do, I want to move it to an external drive and make a second copy of it to another external drive while keeping all the edits I have made..eventually I will delete the folder in my internal drive.
if I open the folder that is now on my external drive 6 months later..if I click on the catalog file like I did now, I lose all the edits and stuff. if I re-import the files from that folder, same result.I think what you are saying is that I can move the original folder from 1 place to another with the library tool, right? but how do I make a copy of it, or copies so that I have the same folder on 2 different drives.
And how do you move the folder with the library tool? I plugged an external drive and it doesn't show in the tool ( which is logical I guess coz the tool only shows the drives where the files are, right? )
still confused..
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Some answers:
- Folders won't automatically appear in the catalog. That's to stop Capture One having to monitor the whole of your computer. But you can add any folder you like to the catalog. So you could create a folder on the external drive (or you may have one already) called something like "Finished Photos" then in the Library tool add it to the catalog. You can then drag and drop the Wedding folder (using the Library tool to do it) to the "Finished Photos" folder. Capture One will see to physically moving (not copying) the files for you and keeping track of the edits. You could then use Capture One to work on the Wedding images in their new location if you wanted and all your existing edits would be intact.
- Keeping a second copy is a bit more difficult. Obviously you can copy the Wedding folder from the "Finished Photos" folder to some other location called perhaps Archive or something (perhaps just for safekeeping - effectively a backup?). But Capture One can't keep track of the same image being in two places at once. It has a database of edits and it can link them to the images in "Finished Photos" or to the Images in "Archive" but not both.
- Is the safeguard you want to achieve not satisfied by having adequate system backups of the existing drives?
- If you want to keep a separate copy of the Wedding shoot, together with all its edits, apart from the main catalog, there are several things you could do. One of them is to export just the images as a new catalog. See the explanation here.
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002517297-Exporting-a-Catalog
Note especially the bit about including referenced originals. Also note that if you were later to make more edits to the photos in the original catalog, they wouldn't get synced with the exported catalog.
Ian
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I think the last thing is what I want to do.
here is my process so everything is clearer: after a shoot - I go to my computer (internal drive) and create a folder, say Wedding, where I want to put all the photos from the shoot.
then I go to capture one and create a catalog called wedding Cat. and as location for the catalog I use my Wedding folder.
I then import all my photos from my memory card using capture one.
so now all my photos and my catalog are in the same folder.
and now I go to work.after say 2 weeks I'm done with that. and I want to copy all that to 2 external drives and delete it from my internal drive.
I thought that by a simple copy/paste of the folder I would keep everything. ratings, edits...since my catalog was in that folder.
but when I clicked the catalog file to open it in c1, all my photos were "offline" - the edits and everything were kept but I couldn't edit further in photoshop. so I re-imported them and all was lost..so the last solution seems the better one right?
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When I suggested the solution in my last bullet, I was imagining that you had a large catalog, and the wedding was just one thing in it. If you are creating a new catalog just for the wedding anyway, you might be better to use a Session. Everything is contained within the Session folder, and you could copy all of that on to another drive if you wanted.
Ian
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aha !! so I do all my work...then copy the folder to my external drive...delete the one in my internal drive
and If I want I can continue working from my external drive 6 months later??
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ok..so apparently you can do what I did...you end up with an "offline" file and to be able to edit it further, I need to locate the file again
a bit tedious but it will work..
next time I'll just move the files through the library tool I guess
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and If I want I can continue working from my external drive 6 months later??
If you are talking about how this works if you are using a session, then all you do is in Capture One go to File>Open and find the session file. (The .cosessiondb file.) There is no question of images being offline - that is a Catalog thing.
Ian
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ok thx I'll try that on my next shoot
thx a lot for the help!!
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