Feature request labels
As users have pointed countless times, the feature request label "Completed" is misleading. Please consider introducing more useful labels; for instance "Recorded" (if a request has been added to your internal feature request list), "Working on it" (to indicate that you're working on a feature), "Completed" (if a feature has been completed and introduced).
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I'd add
* "Seen" to indicate that a request has been read, but has not made it into internal records yet.
* "Rejected" to indicate that a request will never be considered (perhaps in its current form".
I'd use
* "Implemented" rather than "Completed". The latter is still somewhat ambiguous and has a known meaning (which is not "Implemented").
It would be nice if Capture One employees could post themselves, e.g. to inform users which C1 version number is the first to include a new feature or elaborate on why a request cannot be considered in its current form. They should also ideally try to enter a discussion with users to see if a clarification of a request could help push it up the priority queue. Often, there are subtle misunderstandings that may preclude a request from being considered, that could easily be addressed with a bit of dialogue.
Finally, if Capture One is serious about user involvement, why not collate the best feature requests, including those that do not originate from this forum but perhaps are from focus groups and/or Capture One employees, and then poll all users to create a ranking (to remain valid until the next poll). This would make the feature selection more democratic and transparent.
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Class A:
It would be nice if Capture One employees could post themselves, e.g. to inform users which C1 version number is the first to include a new feature or elaborate on why a request cannot be considered in its current form. They should also ideally try to enter a discussion with users to see if a clarification of a request could help push it up the priority queue. Often, there are subtle misunderstandings that may preclude a request from being considered, that could easily be addressed with a bit of dialogue.
This would be a great improvement.
You're right about "Implemented" being less ambiguous.
Regarding polls, the question is whether the users participating in polls, for instance in this forum, are representative of the total user base.
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Thanks, Thomas.
A link to the poll could be posted to the complete user base via email and/or a notification could be used in C1, when a user installs a new version, for instance.
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Yes, that would be a solution.
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I brought up the same issue to "Alexander Flemming" who CO Product Manager in one of the FB forums. He said that CO is getting lots of requests every day and don't have the resources to follow up on all the requests.
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That's probably true. For a start, though, they could change "Completed" to something less misleading.
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Has anybody seen C1 staff picking up requests from this forum topic in recent months? I have the impression they stopped doing this a while ago.
Even at times when they did they were quite selective e.g. a few of my topics here have not been picked up at all.
If that's true then I think we should always submit a request via the link on top of the page.
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You're right, it appears to be 10 months since a request was labelled "Completed".
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You are absolutely right... They used to acknowledge all requests and then started doing it for selective requests. Now it is completely gone to ZERO. I was disappointed and lost interest submitting requests. In one of the FB forums, Alex (Project Manager) told clearly that they don't have resources to monitor this forum. He also said they get lots of requests every day. It sounded like they have different pipeline to get requests from specific set of photographers.
During Paul's session with CEO, there was a specific question about this. He said they are brining in new tool and interestingly he said that they are listening to customers and internal team who are also photographers. I am sure he meant different crowd of customers not from this forums. It is unfortunate that features from last few releases are less impressive and my guess is targeted for specific industry like Wedding, Studio and fashion photographers.
Will wait for CO's next move.... Hmmmm
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In one of the FB forums, Alex (Project Manager) told clearly that they don't have resources to monitor this forum
Ever increasing prices and deteriorated conditions for a part of their customers (perpetual licence holders / upgraders) and not enough ressources for anything (no new valuable features to fight against the catching up of the competition, low software quality of new releases, virtually no forum participation, except JackW once in a while) means that the company is not investing but only increasing short-term profit and maybe find a new investor to sell the company to.
I think it's not the (regular) employees to blame but the main investor Axcel and the CEO, maybe a few other managers who own a share of the capital, though it is usual practice that such minority shares don't have decision power at all but are only the trial to keep valuable ressources on board.
I hope for the employess (and for C1 users) that they (or a new major shareholder) will turn the ship around before they execute a common cost cutting practice, offshoring of the development and support, if that has not yet been done already. Seldom that is really benefical for the company, long transitions periods (which means stale or slow-pace development), higher on-shore management efforts and costs, higher employee fluctuation, lesser quality, loss of existing customers, most often not offset by the predicted lower cost of the off-shoring endevour.
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The number of employees at Capture One I have heard ranges from 175-200.
Yet we are told the development team is very small which is why they have to strongly prioritise development (and hence cannot respond to many user requests) and the requests do not seem to be properly managed anymore.
Genuine question: What are all these employees doing?
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I have been using Capture One since version 6. I have made many enhancement request and reported many bugs. When they responded at all it took 5 years before they addressed a (admittedly minor) feature bug. Normal response is zip.
CO guys are only targeting professional photographers who are selling photos. Everything they do is for that market. They don't care about amateurs/hobbyist photographers. That is something that has been clear to me for a long time.
But something has been changing there (not for the better). I do not know what they are thinking with this new licensing, "preferred customer" stuff. Seems needlessly complicated and confusing. Probably they have too many marketing people trying to keep themselves busy. They should exchange some marketing staff for technical people maybe (I am just guessing.....).
Fact remains CO is the best for image processing (not for cataloging), but competition is catching up...... And it seems that customers are becoming increasingly unhappy....
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I really would be interested what the proportion of professional photographers to amateur photographers is. And the prospective growth in each customer segment.
Of course only those who are using a(ny) raw converter. That number if probably not available, probably not even for the camera (hardware) market.
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Not being in Capture One's management heads, it is hard to figure out what is going on there. It used to be a Hardware company, with some software development to support the Phase One backs (and, later cameras).
Their expertise in dealing with large number of pixels coming from these sensors has proven to be highly valuable when they started to open the application to smaller ones. Their RAW conversion was then unparalleled to the inexistent market of Adobe tools and ACR.It is important to understand the history and the current trajectory of Capture One, now, simply a software company, competing with close to a dozen contenders for a market which is slowly shrinking. Their primary goal is to make profits. How is that done: milk the shrinking market and focus on those segments that will pay for better Culling, Smart adjustments, i.e., functionalities that saves time to those having sessions or events where thousands of shots are taken and need to be published as fast as possible.
To add insult to injury, the largest camera maker is raining the market with cameras where the internal processing of JPGs is excellent. For many of their users, if they are entry-level or amateurs, this will be enough. No need for RAW and the best conversion available.
But we all need some DAM, or keyword management or easy web publishing or Social Communications. Areas where C1 is not as agile as LR. C1 Live tool has little, if no impact, on the large universe of amateurs using C1, and how many pros?
One way to get C1 to improve is to support it and make sure that they have enough sales to be in business for many years to come. And accept that some 'obvious' improvements will simply not happen.
And to, whenever possible, create tickets with the hope they will be attended to.
Participating in the Beta program may also help. Though they could learn a few lessons from Microsoft Insider Program.
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> Jerome Boyer: One way to get C1 to improve is to support it...
I used to, but soon after installing v20 I decided to wrap it up, and the process is now near complete. I have not developed new images in C1 since early summer last year, and I have not recommended C1 to anyone after 2019. I can't remember filing a single feature request, the feature set is not part of my decision. It is not even about price. The company's attitude is. Like one forum member puts it, Capture One is not a charity. Neither am I.
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So true. We all make mistakes. How we deal with them is where the difference between individuals and corporations is. C1 has no reputation (good) of dealing with its customers (or prospects) in a timely fashion. And charity has nothing to do with it.
Your comments, OddS. reflect that many of us may feel about C1. I wish some of their executive could pay attention to these exchanges.
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Just finished viewing a C1 YouTube on Sessions. It really confirms, in my mind, that the primary target of the company is the professional - studio, market. The functionalities of the Sessions, from acquiring images to exporting them are geared to volume images, as generated in studio or by professionals, like wedding photographers. (I see LR much more focused on amateurs/consumers, in general.)
While these Sessions functionalities can be used by amateurs shooting a few 1,000 images a month, they will only become critical if you shoot thousands per session. And justify the price of C1 subscription.
It is a different business model compared to the 'Catalog' approach taken by many in the past.
When talking to some pro friends, I also realized that (they are wedding - product photographers) they keep the pictures organized by shooting sessions. And use very few keywords or any 'catalog'.
And they smile when I ask about their organization... a mess, as many, if not all, their pictures are stale rather quickly.
The idea that C1 may change their model and cater to people like us is a bit of a dream.0 -
Jerome,
I agree with you, but I still think that Sessions are also useful for "amateurs".
When I go on a road trip I take about 200 - 500 shots each day. These I put and process in Sessions. So my sessions are small and manageable, easy to use and easy to backup c.q.archive.
But out of these are some 150- 300 images that I want to keep with proper metadata in a Catalog.
One should never edit data in a Catalog in my opinion. That is not what Catalogs are for. Catalogs are for managing, selecting and exporting data. (I come from a data management background in a completely different domain).
So I put only processed, final images in my Catalog. In principle fairly easy and logical, but poorly implemented in CO. It just needs a few tweaks.....
I think I will make a specific Feature Request for this one once again, even though CO does not have the resources to read them. :-).
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I did create a nice mess in the 'collection' of images I try to manage. I am slowly entering the Session world. I agree with your paradigm: Catalog(s) to store and retrieve, Sessions to handle image changes.
And I am sort of confused on how to move from Sessions to Catalog(s). Currently, I keep one catalog per year and when I tried to cover many years in one Catalog, C1 sort of 'froze' -- but I was trying to 'correct' images, not simply displaying them.
I now have as Session with Favorites for such editing. Seems to work at the cost of adding session data to every folder I touch. And I am not sure these edits flow back to the Catalog.And, yes, Sessions are also great when traveling with a laptop. So easy to copy them across to my main system.
As an aside joke: the C1 streaming videos do not seem to attract many C1 staff. Similar to these forums...
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> Jerome Boyer: C1 has no reputation (good) of dealing with its customers...
Bad as that may be, I think the company's attitude towards their own product is a bigger issue. Since I am not going to use C1 much longer, I will just mention QA and regression bugs.
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Jerome Boyer
I keep everything in ONE Catalog. I mostly make one Session per "shooting day". I am very careful about naming the Sessions: format is "YYYY-MM-DD SomeName" for example: '2014-07-20 Bratislava'. That way sessions sort properly and are recognizable. I archive sessions on a raid system, so they are kind of online but not on a fast disk [ 4 TByte for all the sessions].
In the Catalog I use "Import Session". This will import all you need into the catalog. But the imported session creates a bit of a mess in terms of albums and smart albums that you do not really need. I just hide them in a Group.
If you change something in the session use the Synchronize option. This will import new images and remove the ones you removed from the session. This works kind of ok.
However if you change metadata in a session, synchronize does not help you. You need to use "Load metadata" on the images. This should replace the metadata, although I sometimes have some issues there. I have not gotten to the bottom of that yet. Just need to verify everything carefully after every step.
Sessions do not push anything to the Catalog. The Catalog has to suck it out from the session. It works, but not very smoothly. It require two steps 'Synchronize' and 'Load Metadata' and is not 100% failure proof.
I am not sure what you do with your "Favorites" session, but I think if you have sessions that overlap, having some of the same images (??), that would create confusion and chaos. I would leave Sessions as when images are first received and do all the organizing in the Catalog.
My Catalog has 60,000 images and I have some 750 sessions and this works ok in terms of performance. But I never do editing in the catalog.
The catalog is "portable" in the sense that it has previews. You do not need to have the Sessions with RAW files connected all the time. [ But viewing images properly apart from just browsing previews, is another topic, another area that needs improvement ].
I hope this can give you some ideas.
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However if you change metadata in a session, synchronize does not help you. You need to use "Load metadata" on the images. This should replace the metadata, although I sometimes have some issues there.
Jozef, once a session is imported into the catalog and you adjust an image e.g. exposure, how do you bring this change into the catalog?
I do it similarly to you but with some variation. I use a staged approach, in the first stage I use sessions until I sort of finish my metadata and editing of the images.
Then I move the whole Capture folder content (I don't use the Selects folder) including the CaptureOne subfolder with Settings and Cache to the final destination, which is a folder structure like yours but each shooting folder only contains the images and CaptureOne subfolder. The .cosessiondb file itself is of no interest anymore and I delete it.
I have a utitily session / browsing session / dummy session, whatever you call it, which has no images in the Capture folder, and I use it to browse my image folders with the library tool. Whenever I make a change to an image this will be stored in the CaptureOne/Settings subfolder (as if it were a "normal" session). It has exactly one album, which is empty at this time, and my controlled vocabulary keywords.
Second stage, I import the images (not session) from that final image folder structure into my big catalog. I use the catalog to search for images, mainly using search, the filter tool and smart albums.
When I want to edit one or more images (the images can be located in very different image folders) I put them in a dedicated catalog album so that I remember them.
I then drag and drop them from the catalog browser to my opened dummy session, into that special album.What happens is that the Capture One session process will be passed a list of these images including their paths, and put into that session album, even if the images reside in different locations.
Until version 22 this works (because all variants of an image will be put into an album) I don't know for version 23 though (where only specific variants will be put into an album).
Now I do all my edits and metadata changes in that utility session.
To bring the changes back into the catalog I completely remove them from the catalog (that's the reason I put them into the catalog's album, to find the ones I need to remove) and then synchronize the top most folder of my image structure (or the topmost fcommon older of all images in the album e.g. the year).
Removing them from the catalog and importing again will import all (old and new) adjustments and metadata and all variants.
EDIT: I then clear the utility session album.
So, I keep all edits in the catalog and in the CaptureOne subfolders (for later session editing) in sync, I edit only with a session.
This somwhat complicated approach (if you want to keep edits in sync, which I do) is necessary because synchronization of edits is not a feature of C1 yet (upvote my request if you like:
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BeO
What I found so far:
- Import Session works for new session.
- Synchronize works for new images in the imported session.
- Load Metadata sometimes works, but is unreliable
- Image edits are not part of the metadata and they do not get transferred.
It would be nice if these things are fixed by CO but while we wait for that the easiest solution for me seems to be this:
- remove any image that has been re-edited at source in any way from the Catalog
- run synchronize. This will bring back the edited image including metadata.
- Note that for this to work the image has to be completely removed from Catalog, you need to empty the Catalog Trash folder.
Sometimes it is easiest to remove all the images from an imported session (without deleting the imported session) and then synchronize. This is not elegant but it is quick and seems to be reliable.
As for your method: seems a bit complicated, but everyone has different requirements so what is important is to come up with a set of conventions that work for your workflow and circumvent the deficiencies of Capture One.
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Hi jozef,
the easiest solution for me seems to be this:
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remove any image that has been re-edited at source in any way from the Catalog
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run synchronize. This will bring back the edited image including metadata.
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Note that for this to work the image has to be completely removed from Catalog, you need to empty the Catalog Trash folder.
Yes, that's exactly what I do.
As for your method: seems a bit complicated,
It really isn't much different from your method, and not a lot more complicated actually. Once you have done it and therefore really understood you might find it very valuable.
The only two differences I see are
(1) that I store my images in a folder structure by year/date/event without the overhead the sessions have (I have only the CaptureOne subfolder, but no Selects, Output, Trash folders), and the library in the catalog is also more streamlined compared to a session import. But your method to store the original session completely is also fine, that's a matter of taste, especially how it looks in the catalog library tool after import.
(2) I described how I can edit images from the catalog in a session even if the images span over many shootings, years or even different harddrives. There is no need to do it like this, one don't need to do it everytime, you can also start with editing within a specific session. But if you do it like me you can fully utilize the catalog to search the images you want to edit. That's why I have the catalog in the first place.
And it's very easy to remember which images to remove from the catalog, by putting them into an album. I don't know another way how to remember them other than taking a note, whic is less convenient.You can use this method to find images and pass them to a utility session also with your method to store and import the original sessions, it actually doesn't matter at all with which session you edit an image, the changes are always stored in the CaptureOne/Settings subfolder.
but everyone has different requirements so what is important is to come up with a set of conventions that work for your workflow and circumvent the deficiencies of Capture One.
Fully agree.
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