Multiple Catalog merge into new one

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JP Bousquet

Hi!

I have read multiple threads talking about catalog management, export/import in some form or another, but I need help with a specific workflow problem...

I have several existing catalogs, and all of their respective images saved inside the catalog. Two drawbacks I am now facing are a) the large catalog is becoming a bit difficult to manage because of their size but more to the point b) it makes searching for metadata very difficult across several catalogs.

What I am looking into doing is:

  • create a new catalog
  • new catalog will have all metadata and user collection from all other catalogs
  • all adjustments from old catalogs images will be preserved (e.g. exported and re-imported)
  • images will not be stored in the new catalog, but all exported from multiple catalogs and all saved into a single folder on internal storage

In other words, the new catalog will have the merged user collections from all previous catalogs, with all merged metadata and with the images externally saved in a folder.

I think this is possible, but again have not been able to clearly make all those steps work.

Hope somebody can help :-)

Many thanks!

JP

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4 comments

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  • ericnepean

    A) in each existing catalog, move the images out of the catalog. You can do this with the Library tool, just drag the files out of the catalog into the folder where you want them to be.

    There are two potential problems.

    1) the folder where you want to save the image files may not show in the Library tool. Solution:  Create a dummy image in that folder, and import it into Capture One. The folder becomes visible once Capture One has at least one image in it.

    2) On processing a second or later catalog, you may find that some image files in the catalog are already present in the traget folder. Solutions: 1) Create a target folder for each Catalog OR 2) Create a dummy folder for each catalog, put the images which are already present in the target folder here. With FInder, delete the image files, start CaptureOne an reconnect the images with missing files to files in the target folder

    B) Import all the catalogs into your one catalog Uisnf Capture One's Import Catalog command.

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  • JP Bousquet

    Hi!

    thank you for the suggestion :-) 

    I will think I backup again everything first before attempting this, but instructions are clear... I'll come back here once done, or if running into problems

    Cheers,

    JP.

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  • ericnepean

    I have Capture One's Autobackup set to backup evrytime I close a catalog. C1 asks if it should backup, and if I didn't do much I say "no".

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  • JP Bousquet

    Hi

    Reporting on this multi catalog merger... took about a full day to MOVE media out of my multiple catalogs, import the catalogs into a new one, and starting to rearrange the user session chronologically, but it worked!

    Now instead of having up to ~500GB catalog with embedded images, my new merged one is only about 30GB, and all my photos on an external thunderbolt 3 drive. There is a bit of lag at times reading the images, but manageable.

    Thanks again :-)

    JP 

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