How to export per photo adjustments?
I don't usually keep the whole photo album in Capture One but I just use it to develop photos related to a theme and then save them all to my media server.
So each time I select a specific folder, process the RAW files (RAF, I use a Fujitsufilm machine) and produce the JPEGs to send to the media server, then I switch to another folder.
In doing this, however, I memorize the RAW files used and I would also like to have files with all the adjustments related to each single JPEG generated, so that I can resume them later and possibly modify them producing a new JPEG.
In the end, for each selected photo, I would like to have: original RAW file, JPEG produced with Capture One, files of the adjustments used to produce the JPEG.
Is there any way to achieve this? Or is it an unexpected feature?
Thanks in advance for any answers or suggestions.
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You said "files of the adjustments" so I assume you use sessions, not catalogues.
Adjustments are stored in the .cos and comask files.
cos and comask file hold the settings for all variants of an orignial raw image.
If you have a raw image and create a variant for each (relevant) photo variation edit, which you would export to a jpg then, then you don't have a separate settings files. And, the export settings (e.g. Adjustments, crop, sharpeneing, resultion etc) used for a specific export are not stored, nowhere.
If you copy your raw file for each jpg you want to have separated, then you have as many .cos and comask files as you have raw images, which would partially fulfil your needs. Not nice but I see no other chance, unless...
...you don't use layer masks, and you write a script which takes a .cos file as input and creates a new file which only contains the relevant information of the variant at the time of export. But having this file in a repository is not enough, you must also setup a way that it will be used when you need it.
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Two toughts.
The edit instruction files are quite useless without a copy of Capture One to understand them.
Perhaps a solution would be to consider having a "Master" Catalog with all original files saved internally.
Alternatively a "Master" session would work too.
Secondly, one can save the original file and the edits, masks, etc, as an EIP file - basically something like an automated zip file that allows work to be archived or shared in a relatively complete form.
Both at the same time would also be possible.
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I thought he would like to keep track of all his exports, including historic variations, so I implicitely concluded he would like to work with a variant for each variation of the same image, also to see them side by side.
Let's say he has 3 different exports of the same raw with 3 different adjustment settings and wants to manage 3 different jpgs on the media server, maybe he deletes one of them somewhere in the future, but he still has two with different settings.
The problem then is that the .cos (or EIP package respectively) has all 3 variants and if he loads it to C1 again then he will again see 3 variants, not knowing which of the 3 were used to export the jpg he is currently interested in.
A solution for this can be to assign a keyword or edit a metadata field for the to be exported variant which then would be in the cos section for this variant as well as in the jpg.
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Thank you for these first replies and sorry for the delay in mine; work always takes me a lot and I have little time for hobbies ...
So, a fundamental point is that - as far as I understand - a .cos file is useless without C1. This makes sense because each photo tool has its own image manipulation algorithms.
However, I wonder if it is not possible to memorize some information that will allow, in the future, to reproduce the variant generated by a RAW with a fair approximation, or at least that indicate which types of parameterizations had been adopted.
After all the crop, rotation, exposure and probably other changes should be reproducible with other software as well. In the limit not reproducible to perfection but it would be useful even only the indication that a certain type of processing has been used.
Obviously you could write everything yourself in some readme.txt file associated with the RAW, but it would be a bore; some form of export software is much better.
Unfortunately, we are now used to replacing software tools with some frequency and - even if it is perhaps my exaggeration - I am sorry to think that of a photo I care about, only the original RAW is stored and not the process that generated the variant.
I know at least a couple of photo tools that save the processing parameters in a text file in an intelligible way and I am sorry that with C1 it is not possible, because I consider it superior in quality.0 -
The C1 .cos file is an XMP file and therefore one can consider it to be a sort of text file.
The problem one might have, either reading the file or trying to come up with some sort of conversions tool for use with other applications, is that unless the changes can be easily interpreted and cross-converted they instructions are not of very much use.
Most EXIF data and all IPTC data are, at least in theory, "standard" data types with mostly known content values or plain text entries that can be relatively easily "shared" across systems and applications.
But adjustment values would need to have a common understanding of a start point and range (for example) as well as what the value changes mean if converted from one system to another. If one was trying to build something that could convert settings from one application to those for another application the amount of effort required could quite significant. And continuous as applications change, add features and adapt.
Currently, and for some time past, the idea of creating a TIFF file that embeds the changes from an edit made with any application has been the method by which uncompressed maximum resolution edits can be shared between applications.
The penalty for that flexibility is that TIFF files tend to be quite large (to retain maximum data content in an "open" form) and would require an individual file for each variant edit produced. It's easy enough to create the files of course, but the storage capacity required could be a problem for some users.
Also some information, lens adjustments for example, would be "burned in" to those output files, just as they would be from out-of-camera jpg files for example.
Beyond the basic edits one has to consider the more application-specific features - like layer and masks and so on, and how they probably would not be at all easy to "convert" between applications. (Unless, of course, all applications were the same and produced the same results ... in which case (and when that happens) the matters raised here will have been overcome for future use, although probably not resolved if one wishes to go back into the archives. Unless the archived file is a TIFF file.
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Maybe it is not so important as you think to exactly replicate your old images processed with the software used at that time. Ansel Adams made a lot of prints from the same negatives during his life, and his later prints were really different from the earlier ones. If you will be changing software you possibly also have fun to redo old images, to start from scratch, new tools, maybe new monitor, and probably a new, fresh perspective in your mind onto what the final output could or should be.
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I like this last consideration.
Maybe I thought too much about the possibility of reproducing some variations and this is not as important as it seemed to me.
Knowing the development parameters is more a matter of style to be applied to series of shots, let's say reportage and particular collections. But this is of course solved with costyle files.
I am convinced.
Thanks a lot to everyone for the answers, you added some knowledge pieces to me.0
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