How to select files in multiple folders? If not possible, what is the next best alternative? Albums cannot be nested
I am trialling Capture One as I am considering migrating away from Lightroom (for Windows).
Is it true that Capture One still does NOT give you any option to select files in multiple folders? I understand this has been requested multiple times but never implemented, and there is no indication if it will be implemented in version 21 - right?
If this is still not possible, how do CaptureOne users get around this limitation?
The typical answer I have found suggests using some combination of keywords / collections etc.
But I have 15 years of photos already filed into folders. No matter how much I like CaptureOne, I am not going to manually add keywords to reflect 15 years' worth of folders and subfolders; is there a relatively quick and automatic way to do it?
For new photos I will take, arguably filing by keyword / album / group doesn't take much longer than creating folders and filing the files there. But how exactly would you go about it?
Albums cannot be nested one into the other, so how could I create some kind of hierarchical structure like, for example:
---- 2019
---- ---- Laura's wedding
---- ---- ---- Wedding
---- ---- ---- Honeymoon
---- ---- New York Holiday
---- ---- ---- Manhattan
---- ---- ---- Brooklyn
---- ---- Christmas
I'd also need to be able to export into folders and subfolders retaining this folder structure. This is important when sharing photos with other people, or when exporting jpegs to be viewed on the TV with Plex.
To be honest this is the only reason keeping me from switching away from Lightroom; I am willing to keep an open mind to consider alternatives not based on folders, but the alternatives need to be functional and not cause me to waste a lot of time unnecessarily.
Thanks!
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This is an annoyance for many people (me included) and likewise I cannot understand why C1 have not made it a priority to implement the ability to show images in sub folders. I like you have 10's of years of photos and it's a complete pain in the behind that I cannot do this. I had to go to the trouble of completely reorganising my file structure and I didn't appreciate I had to do it at all.
I have played with albums, but it seems a lot of work that could be removed if C1 would just implement this functionality. If C1 implemented this in the next version then it would be a no brainer to make the purchase.
Many people have also said that it is the reason that is stopping them moving from Lightroom.
I am sorry that I don't have any answers for you as I am not sure what the answer is.
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What do you mean when you say you had to go through the trouble of reorganising your file structure?
Did you have to add hierarchical keywords? What did you do exactly?
Maybe if there were a way to create hierarchical keywords based on the nested folders / file path of the file...
Exiftool is very flexible but IPTC keywords are not hierarchical, so one would need to understand how CaptureOne exports them, and if it can read them back. What a mess!
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Hello,
I moved from Lightroom, and classically on import Lightroom imports in a folder structure of 'year' , then folders 'yyyy-mm-dd' . So per year I had too far to many folders to navigate with Capture One (for me anyway), since to find the images I wanted meant that I had to navigate many photos. Granted this was probably not the best organisation, but in Lightroom it did not matter so much as I just selected the year and with a quick scroll I could find what I wanted. With Capture one I was initially selecting each folder in turn, this was taking far too long to find what I wanted.
I have tried using albums and they work quite well for the bigger events, but it takes some time retrospectively create the albums and then some discipline to create albums for each shoot going forward. Regardless of the use of albums I decided to reorganise my library in to folders following the structure 'year' and the 'month' only, example, '2020' , with subfolders '01 January' to '12 December', meaning I have less folders with more images in each. This structure also makes it easy for me to import, I just import to the month the images were taken. I also took the step of when importing into the C1 catalogue of importing with a file name change, example 'yyyy-mm-dd original file name', meaning that within each month I can also know the date a file was taken with an easy look. As you can imagine this change was quite a drastic step, and all because C1 does not show me images in subfolders, pfff.
I don't tend to use keywords, although again I have tried this out. I think the issue for me is that my shoots tend to range from very low volume shots of a particular topics, example astro or wildlife or landscapes, to very large volume shoots, example motor sport, travel and architectural. For the low volume shoots I am not too interested in the overhead of keywords or album creation, but for the high volume shoots I am. My opinion is that the use of albums and keywords is sort of an all or nothing thing if I want to be able to search effectivly. I have a catalogue with maybe 250,000 images and going through all these images and implementing keywords is an unrealistic prospect for me. Even implementing albums was a pain and does not cover all images taken, I have only done this for the larger events. People will I am sure disagree, and probably yes it is lazy of me to be not so organised, but that level of organisation takes more time than I am willing to put in. Generally I know when things are taken although I might not know the exact dates, example motorsports tends to be in the summer months, travel tends to be late summer, etc, so organising into months makes sense to me. I can also see the number of shots will be large in the months where I had a high volume event.
All of the above may be a bit weird for most, but hey we all have our own method.
In all this C1 have neglected to understand that there is a legacy aspect to be considered for people moving to C1, yes albums and maybe keywords possibly mean that the ability to read subfolders is not required, but for people moving to C1 with existing folder structures it becomes a real pain in the backside.
How you organise really depends on your workflow. I can recommend albums they work well and can be made hierarchical, but as I said earlier you would have to go through your existing archive to create these, and then be disciplined in creating new albums as you shoot going forward. This is certainly a way around the inability to view subfolders. By the way, you can create a hierarchy through the use of Groups, Projects, Smart Albums and Albums,
There is a video about organising here:
(20) Capture One 20 Tutorials | Importing and organizing your photos - YouTube
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Well, the video doesn't say much because it only shows one level of nesting.
I think this post sums up the utter confusion of the CaptureOne filing system in albums groups projects: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4027190
It is a very dysfunctional mess. Groups cannot contain photos but can contain albums and other groups.
Albums cannot contain other albums.
So, if I understand correctly, you need to know from the very start which level will contain sublevels; changing that later is very clunky and time-consuming.
Let's say that I start by filing all the photos of a weekend in the album "Spanish holiday".
I then realise there are many photos so I want to break that down between "Madrid" and "Barcelona". The "Spanish holiday" album cannot contain an album within it. I need to create a group "Spanish holiday", with two albums in it. If I want to further divide Madrid into 2, I have to create a group "Madrid" etc etc.
Also, unlike a folder, a group cannot contain photos, so I cannot have photos in the root of "Spanish holiday" - I'd need to create an album called "Misc" and place them there.
It's not over! Even if you go through all this trouble, there doesn't seem to be a way (or I haven't found it) to select all the images within a group.
If I go to Spanish holiday - Madrid - Day 1, where day 1 is an album and the others are groups, ctrl + A selects all the images.
If I click on Madrid or Spanish Holdiay (both groups) CTRL + A doesn't do anything and the export button is greyed out.
The summary is that not only does Capture One not support selecting multiple folders - it doesn't even provide any kind of alternative hierarchical structure where you can select one element and all its nested sub-elements.
AFAIK it is the only software with this limitation. I get it that everyone's needs are different but this is a huge oversight and many people have been complaining it's the only thing keeping them from switching to CaptureOne. I wonder if the company will ever listen.
Why, could someone please explain me why? It is all so unnecessarily clunky and time-consuming.
I want to keep an open mind and be open to the alternative of a different way of doing things, ie without folders. But CaptureOne does not offer an alternative at all.
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