How do you manage multiple storage locations in Capture One?
I'm running Capture one on my 1TB SSD and am running low on space. I installed a second 12TB hard drive to provide a second home for my files after I am done editing (I will back this up with BackBlaze). My idea is to use the 1TB SSD for editing new images and then move them over to the larger slower disk for long-term access and storage.
Is there any suggested workflow for handling this? I know I can have one catalog on each drive, for example, but constantly exporting and deleting from my drive feels like a pain.
I would be curious to see how others handle this.
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I keep my catalog and session files on my internal SSD. I keep all images on an external SSD. The catalog and session files reference folders on the external SSD. When I outgrow the SSD I buy a new one of larger capacity and transfer everything over to the new drive. I'm currently using a 2G SSD for images that is about 1/2 full. I expect 4G SSDs to be available by the time I need it.
The external SSD is backed up to both a time machine drive and to a separate images only backup drive. Time machine backups are automatic. The image only backups require me to physically attach the drive and fire off a clone process to do the copy.
That is not the most cost effective way of doing things, but I like all my images to be located in one place and be available all the time. I've tried off line storage in the past and didn't like using it. Also, I can do this given the rate I add images and the size of the images I take. My scheme would not work well for someone shooting hundreds of images a day using high resolution cameras.
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You might try having a single catalog and (within Capture One) moving images you're finished with from your SSD to your external drive. Keep backing up as you now do. All you should need to do is add the external destination folder(s) to your C1 catalog.
Moving files within C1 is straightforward. One benefit of having a single catalog is that it's easy to find images regardless of where they are as long as they were filed by C1 and not in Finder or another app.
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I work in sessions so there is no exporting, deleting, or keeping track of multiple catalogs. Generally I shoot to a session on my laptop then transfer that to my desktop for retouching via external drive. Once I do this I have 3 copies of the session.
When the job is finished and the client has received their images I delete the session from the laptop to free up space. I have a backup on the external drive and the completed session lives on the large hard drives in the desktop. If I ever need to come back to it for any reason it will be right where I left it.
Some people have a master catalog or session to keep all sessions or selects in one place but I don't have a problem navigating to images based on project names and dates so I don't do this. I do have giant catalog for personal work but that is in Lightroom and just stays on one computer.
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I run a combination (catalog & sessions). Mostly I shoot sessions (portrait sessions, tethered headshots and product sessions, and vacations), and then I copy the session, when done on the laptop, to desktop's RAID drive (the referenced raw file folder structure).
On the desktop, I have an over-arching "master" catalog (its database is on internal SSD and referenced Raws are on the RAID) so I can easily search all Sessions.
After the Session gets copied to the raid from the laptop, I simply go into Desktop catalog and do "File, Import Session" and I'm done. (I then delete the session from the laptop). The Desktop gets backed up locally too and also to Backblaze.
In your situation, you could slice it a lot of ways, but I find that having the database on the SSD and the raws on my RAID is fast enough for general catalog use. I don't really feel the need to temporarily have the raws on the SSD (granted, my RAID is 8 drives and quite fast, you'd notice a bigger slow down with a single external spinning disk).
That said, putting them on the SSD and moving them within the C1 interface is a great suggestion if you are catalog centric. I'm becoming less of a fan of the C1 catalog as time goes by and am much more a fan Sessions. Catalogs also bog down at maybe 100k images or so (my experience) and that becomes a consideration.
----- possible session only workflow ----
I only suggest this because it might be what I'd do if I started over
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shoot only sessions. They just work, don't require importing, and are easy to transport.
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put all sessions , when completed , on to a large storage drive (RAID most likely)
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Export the best images (e.g., maybe those rated '2 stars and above') to that Session's "\output" folder.
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Use a more generic catalog (Photomechanic Plus, iMatch, IDimager, etc) hand have it ONLY import at all the Session \Output folders. Super fast, lots of great features. This becomes the over-arching "master" catalog.
Why do that? Well, first off the catalog systems are better than C1s (IMHO: faster, easier to search, with ability to click on multiple folders at once) and they handle huge number of images extremely well - I find C1 to be lethargic at maybe 100k images. I also rarely go back to edit files once a job/project is complete. If I do for some reason need to re-edit, I just go to the C1 Session, edit and re-export to the \Output folder.
... just an idea I had.
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I have an iMac with a larger SSD now, but with my old one what I used to do was
- start with sessions and edit the images as required in the session - generally one session a month
- import the keepers from the sessions (the entire Selects folder plus the Output folder) into my master catalog - and after that only do any further editing in the catalog, not via the session
- keep the catalog and recent folders of images (the folders from more recent sessions) on the internal drive
- keep folders of older images on an external drive
To move folders from internal to external, just drag and drop them using the Capture One library tool. That makes sure that Capture One always knows where the images are and keeps them connected with their edits.
If my folders were like
>2017
>>Jan 2017
>>>Capture
>>>Output
>>>Selects
>>>Trash
>>Feb 2017
>>> etcI could drag and drop the whole Jan 2017 folder from the internal drive to the external drive using the Capture One library tool. It wouldn't matter that only the Selects and the Output folder were part of the catalog - Capture One would move all the subfolders on disk.
Worked well for me with a catalog of over 40,000 images. (Now up to about 46,000 but all internal at present on a 2TB SSD.)
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