Questions and details about workflow, etc migrating Lr > C1
I have just noticed the length of my first post so I would advise some tea or coffee before continuing.
Dear Phase One/Capture One ladies/gentlemen,
First, I would like to congratulate you all with an outstanding product with C1 8.
I am long time Lr user and the main drive to move my workflow to C1 has been the speed and the colour editor (a great feature)
However, I do have some questions and I hope you are able to help me. First, I will explain how I work to give a bit of context to my questions.
In my work, I would have jobs that last days. When working with Lr, I would make a Master Folder with the description of the job, say “Job 1â€. Inside this folder, I dump all images from the day. I open Lr and create a new catalogue and place it inside the Job 1 folder and call the catalogue the same. Lr creates a folder inside of which is the Job 1.lrcat file.
After Lr re-launches, I import all images of the day in there and do a rough edit (selection). As the job progresses (say a week) I would be dumping images into that Master Folder Job 1 and importing the new images into Lr with every dump. At the end of the shooting period, I would have anywhere between 1000 and 4000 photographs, all of which are already imported into Lr for further processing and editing.
Next job, “Job 2â€, would have the same procedure and thus I would have two different catalogues in two different folders. Makes for easy organization and archival since all I have to do is move Job 1 and Job 2 Master Folders to a new drive and that is that. I can open those catalogues from those back up drives without re-linking or anything. So, if I need to go back to a job, all I do is navigate to the .lrcat file inside the Lr folder inside the Master Folder and open that.
My set up is an SSD run Windows 8.1 PC where images lay on two internal 7200rpm HDDs with i7 quad core (8 threads) 32GB RAM, Quadro K2100m.
Now, the questions:
1) I read that Catalogues in C1 8 are not the same as those in Lr however I have yet to find out why. One common thing appears to be that C1 8 is still best suited for Sessions, especially if working with large amount of photographs like I do since Catalogues appear to slow down considerably the more images you import into them.
2) If I was to work on Sessions exclusively, would I be right to assume that I can do the same folder-structure workflow as I do with Lr catalogues (Master Folder -> Images/Sessions folder-> sessions file) and be able to archive as I do with Lr? Thus, if I was to go back to a previous job, I would just navigate to the Sessions folder inside the Master Folder and launch C1 8 from there and it will have all image of that particular job linked properly and I can “continue†if I need to? Even if they are on another drive than the drive I originally imported them in?
3) Is it correct that every Layer created in the local changes tool can only have one change? So, if I would like to have two areas with two different changes I need two Layers?
4) Every time I re-open C1, on a folder with roughly 800 photographs, it reloads all previews. Why?
5) With Lr, there is an option (albeit a costly one in storage) to build full size previews with selected images, speeding up the changes and work done to the images. Is there a way to optimize C1 to be faster or must it always rely on the graphics card and CPU to draw changes and refresh when navigating around a 100% viewed image?
6) Speaking about refreshing the preview. After applying a number of adjustments to an image (curves, sharpening, NR, levels, colour editor, colour editor, white balance, some local adjustments) there is a point when every change (regardless of the tool) I make will make the image first reset to its “default†setting and then show me the change I created. The patter happens in this order: current state-> change (ex) HDR setting -> default state -> new state. Using GPU-Z I see that the graphics card is barely being used every refresh. Worth noting is that I am using an external monitor constantly being pumped up by the Quadro card. Again, any way that I can optimize C1 to make it speedier? This is one of the reasons why I am migrating from Lr, where Lr would slow down after working with a couple of images.
7) How are NR defaults calculated? I ask this because I notice a very strong initial NR setting which needs to be dialled down. Is this a preference of C1 developers or a trend you noticed that you wanted to tap into? Normally, I prefer more naturally looking images and thus I set the following for an ISO 3200 image, exposed 1 stop to the right and dialled down in post:
Sharpening: 250
Radius: 0.3
Threshold: 0
Luminance noise: 0
Detail: 50
Colour Noise: 40
Single Pixel: as needed, leaving an even granular feel without noticeably brighter pixels around
Clarity: -20
Structure: 0
This would bring the image more or less to the ACR/Lr flavour where grain seems to be favoured before “smoothnessâ€. Then again, NR is a matter of taste but I thought I would ask.
😎 Requests (maybe) – Would it be possible to make the HRD tool have “negative†effect? Lr, in a similar way, can do the “rescue†part of Highlights and Shadows but it can also go the other way, darkening shadows and brightening highlights. Would you also develop your own in-house film emulation presets? A Replichrome-alike set would be good enough for most, I believe.
Apologies if this appears to be a tedious post but the first 5 questions are the ones that have driven me nuts in my quest to quit Lr and fully integrate into a C1 exclusive workflow.
Many thanks,
Hexagonal
PS: How do I change my username here to what I want instead of NNN63....?
Dear Phase One/Capture One ladies/gentlemen,
First, I would like to congratulate you all with an outstanding product with C1 8.
I am long time Lr user and the main drive to move my workflow to C1 has been the speed and the colour editor (a great feature)
However, I do have some questions and I hope you are able to help me. First, I will explain how I work to give a bit of context to my questions.
In my work, I would have jobs that last days. When working with Lr, I would make a Master Folder with the description of the job, say “Job 1â€. Inside this folder, I dump all images from the day. I open Lr and create a new catalogue and place it inside the Job 1 folder and call the catalogue the same. Lr creates a folder inside of which is the Job 1.lrcat file.
After Lr re-launches, I import all images of the day in there and do a rough edit (selection). As the job progresses (say a week) I would be dumping images into that Master Folder Job 1 and importing the new images into Lr with every dump. At the end of the shooting period, I would have anywhere between 1000 and 4000 photographs, all of which are already imported into Lr for further processing and editing.
Next job, “Job 2â€, would have the same procedure and thus I would have two different catalogues in two different folders. Makes for easy organization and archival since all I have to do is move Job 1 and Job 2 Master Folders to a new drive and that is that. I can open those catalogues from those back up drives without re-linking or anything. So, if I need to go back to a job, all I do is navigate to the .lrcat file inside the Lr folder inside the Master Folder and open that.
My set up is an SSD run Windows 8.1 PC where images lay on two internal 7200rpm HDDs with i7 quad core (8 threads) 32GB RAM, Quadro K2100m.
Now, the questions:
1) I read that Catalogues in C1 8 are not the same as those in Lr however I have yet to find out why. One common thing appears to be that C1 8 is still best suited for Sessions, especially if working with large amount of photographs like I do since Catalogues appear to slow down considerably the more images you import into them.
2) If I was to work on Sessions exclusively, would I be right to assume that I can do the same folder-structure workflow as I do with Lr catalogues (Master Folder -> Images/Sessions folder-> sessions file) and be able to archive as I do with Lr? Thus, if I was to go back to a previous job, I would just navigate to the Sessions folder inside the Master Folder and launch C1 8 from there and it will have all image of that particular job linked properly and I can “continue†if I need to? Even if they are on another drive than the drive I originally imported them in?
3) Is it correct that every Layer created in the local changes tool can only have one change? So, if I would like to have two areas with two different changes I need two Layers?
4) Every time I re-open C1, on a folder with roughly 800 photographs, it reloads all previews. Why?
5) With Lr, there is an option (albeit a costly one in storage) to build full size previews with selected images, speeding up the changes and work done to the images. Is there a way to optimize C1 to be faster or must it always rely on the graphics card and CPU to draw changes and refresh when navigating around a 100% viewed image?
6) Speaking about refreshing the preview. After applying a number of adjustments to an image (curves, sharpening, NR, levels, colour editor, colour editor, white balance, some local adjustments) there is a point when every change (regardless of the tool) I make will make the image first reset to its “default†setting and then show me the change I created. The patter happens in this order: current state-> change (ex) HDR setting -> default state -> new state. Using GPU-Z I see that the graphics card is barely being used every refresh. Worth noting is that I am using an external monitor constantly being pumped up by the Quadro card. Again, any way that I can optimize C1 to make it speedier? This is one of the reasons why I am migrating from Lr, where Lr would slow down after working with a couple of images.
7) How are NR defaults calculated? I ask this because I notice a very strong initial NR setting which needs to be dialled down. Is this a preference of C1 developers or a trend you noticed that you wanted to tap into? Normally, I prefer more naturally looking images and thus I set the following for an ISO 3200 image, exposed 1 stop to the right and dialled down in post:
Sharpening: 250
Radius: 0.3
Threshold: 0
Luminance noise: 0
Detail: 50
Colour Noise: 40
Single Pixel: as needed, leaving an even granular feel without noticeably brighter pixels around
Clarity: -20
Structure: 0
This would bring the image more or less to the ACR/Lr flavour where grain seems to be favoured before “smoothnessâ€. Then again, NR is a matter of taste but I thought I would ask.
😎 Requests (maybe) – Would it be possible to make the HRD tool have “negative†effect? Lr, in a similar way, can do the “rescue†part of Highlights and Shadows but it can also go the other way, darkening shadows and brightening highlights. Would you also develop your own in-house film emulation presets? A Replichrome-alike set would be good enough for most, I believe.
Apologies if this appears to be a tedious post but the first 5 questions are the ones that have driven me nuts in my quest to quit Lr and fully integrate into a C1 exclusive workflow.
Many thanks,
Hexagonal
PS: How do I change my username here to what I want instead of NNN63....?
0
-
Hi and welcome.
You should be able to change your user name in the account details when logged in. I have not tried it in recent times. The facility may be a little hidden. Maybe someone else can be more specific or a search will probably produce the answer to the question.
For you main questions ...
I have a similar work flow requirement with multiple transfers from memory cards over a period of days (sometimes).
I use sessions. When I started with LR1 many years ago the Catalogue basis was something I never liked so I moved to something I preferred and later to C1 V6 which had sessions but no catalog facility.
I stick with sessions today. I have looked at using catalogs for legacy output files convenience. I may go more deeply into that at some point. Cataloging the jpgs may make some sense in my case but only if I can think of a way to market the older stuff thus justifying the effort to tag/keyword and build a catalogue or two. Right now I'm not convinced it would be time effective.
On to Q3.
You can create multiple masked areas per image and apply changes from multiple tools. However the adjustments apply to all the masked areas - not different adjustments in different masked areas. I think this is quite typical for application with which I am familiar. You can seek to modify the effect of the changes by opacity adjustments to different parts of the mask of course but I'm not sure that alone answers your question as asked.
I think it might be best to discuss some specific needs by example.
Q4. By "reloads" do you mean "recalculates"?
It may be worth checking the settings for the default size of the previews compared to the native resolution of the monitor. If using multiple monitor with different resolutions things might get interesting.
In addition you might need to check what is happening with the Output Recipe settings. I won't attempt to explain that at this stage without knowing how familiar you are with output recipes. (and even then I may leave it for others ....!)
Q5. See above answer to Q4.
Q6. The graphics card (or cards) may not be used much at all. Unless it has some clear benefit over the CPU there is no point in deploying it for current implementations of OpenCL (Or at least that is my understanding).
My Notebook has a Quadro1000M which is ignored. All C1 processing is via the CPU. Some of the edit tools are not able to use a GPU anyway (or at least that was the case and I don't think it has changed to date but I stand to be corrected on that. HDR adjustment, for example, will mean the image is skipped for OpenCL/GPU processing. The speed is still fast enough for me - delay is minimal even working with an external USB3 drive reading files and writing changes. (I have not tried moving the temp cache to the external drive - given the way Win7 seems to manage external drives I fear that might not be a great idea.)
As for the recalculation - C1 is a cumulative adjustment based on the RAW file rather than an adjustment from the previous tool's output value as some applications work (at least in screen viewing/ edit mode). As such I think it explains the apparent calculation overhead and the screen visible adjustments you observe. A pair of really fast OpenCL capable GPUs powered by a small nuclear facility would probably minimise the delay to be almost invisible! 😉
I think others may have already given their thoughts on this and I would hope some will comment. A search of the forum may also prove useful.
Q7.
Also discussed (not necessarily conclusively!) in other forum posts and iirc there are one or two video that mention the subject. It may be worth seeking them out for a more complete discussion.
Basically the default settings are established by camera model (as I understand things) and the sliders are set to what the developers have assessed to be the appropriate start points for relative adjustments not absolute values. In other words there are no certain guaranteed value transcriptions to convert LR adjustments to C1 adjustments. Given that is likely different approaches are in use this is probably no surprise.
For the requests ... if you want official answers or to make an official request Phase One work from Support Cases, keeping the forum to be a User to User forum in principle. Although Phase staff do participate here very usefully it is not an "official" channel of support or idea transmission. The Support Case system is and is the basis for managed and measured problem and suggestion control.
I can't think of a way of doing negative HDR using the dedicated tool but of course that is just making changes in one tool that can be achieved using other tools individually. However if you have not already investigated the Curves available in the Base Characteristics tool it may be worth having a look to see if something there gets you close to a starting point for your inverted HDR changes. That or (and?) Styles and Presets.
HTH.
Grant0 -
Hi Grant,
Thanks for the detailed answer.
I may be warming up to NNN63... It's catchy.
What do you mean when you say "legacy output files convenience"? It sounds to me that you cannot keyword in Sessions? That is very important for me, filling up the metadata's title, description, author, copyright, country, city, etc and keywords.
Q3. Thanks. That helps a lot. I see you used Lr1 but using Lr5.3 is a completely different thing. From 4 onwards, one is able to do local adjustments without needed to "create layers". Basically, brushing means creating one layer and you select that "layer"/brush change by clicking on the dot that is created on the first stroke. It makes changes easily manageable without having to create layers although I am thinking of C1 layers more like layer masks in Ps.
Q4. Apologies for this. I just noticed it again this morning and it is "loading metadata for images". It does that every time.
What are output recipes and what are they for? I thought, by the name, they just implied "actions" for exporting images.
Q5. I have the previews res set at 2880. My main monitor is a 24" 1920x1200 and I only have the viewer there. My laptop's display has the browser and the tools without viewer. I chose the largest preview size because I thought it would help with the refresh of the changes as I process the images. Processing, for me, means doing changes to all aspects to an image from WB to local adjustments, levels, NR, sharpening, etc.
I hoped this would help the situation I have in Q6, where after a some changes done to the image, C1 first displays the "default" image and then shows the "new image" when doing changes. Since OpenCL and Cuda are something that really speed up Lr, I was expecting a faster preview refresh with C1 since, from the get go, it appears to run smoother and 100% previews are faster displayed than Lr. However, after some changes, speed decreases but C1 has not really taken advantage of my hardware. Granted, neither does Lr and I have always regarded Lr as a "resource-idiotic". Premiere Pro, on the other hand, will take everything you give and I like that.
Now, I don't have much delay. It takes roughly two seconds to show a change. What is annoying is that with every step back (ctrl+z), or forwards (ctrl+y) to see a change in the image, there is this 3 step refresh so its difficult to see small but meaningful changes.
Q7. I imagined there was no particular conclusion on this matter. I thought to ask anyway.
I will get in touch with Phase One about the requests. The reason why I would prefer an HDR "negative" effect slider is because I think C1's HDR selection on what it believes to be highlights and shadows is more "rational" than that of ACr/Lr. With this in mind, I would love to keep that "selection" when doing negative changes instead of having the more variable/flexible/slightly less controlled algorithm of Curves/Levels.
Thanks again for your thorough response.
Hexagonal.0 -
Regarding local adjustments - my experience is that If I paint in an adjustment layer on a portion of an image, multiple adjustments can be made to that layer. If I paint in several different areas on that layer, all adjustments will apply to all areas. If I want those different areas to have different adjustments I create them as a separate layers. I find the local adjustment feature to be very powerful and use it often. 0 -
[quote="NNN635503166415709961" wrote:
Hi Grant,
Thanks for the detailed answer.
I may be warming up to NNN63... It's catchy.
What do you mean when you say "legacy output files convenience"? It sounds to me that you cannot keyword in Sessions? That is very important for me, filling up the metadata's title, description, author, copyright, country, city, etc and keywords.
Q3. Thanks. That helps a lot. I see you used Lr1 but using Lr5.3 is a completely different thing. From 4 onwards, one is able to do local adjustments without needed to "create layers". Basically, brushing means creating one layer and you select that "layer"/brush change by clicking on the dot that is created on the first stroke. It makes changes easily manageable without having to create layers although I am thinking of C1 layers more like layer masks in Ps.
Q4. Apologies for this. I just noticed it again this morning and it is "loading metadata for images". It does that every time.
What are output recipes and what are they for? I thought, by the name, they just implied "actions" for exporting images.
Q5. I have the previews res set at 2880. My main monitor is a 24" 1920x1200 and I only have the viewer there. My laptop's display has the browser and the tools without viewer. I chose the largest preview size because I thought it would help with the refresh of the changes as I process the images. Processing, for me, means doing changes to all aspects to an image from WB to local adjustments, levels, NR, sharpening, etc.
I hoped this would help the situation I have in Q6, where after a some changes done to the image, C1 first displays the "default" image and then shows the "new image" when doing changes. Since OpenCL and Cuda are something that really speed up Lr, I was expecting a faster preview refresh with C1 since, from the get go, it appears to run smoother and 100% previews are faster displayed than Lr. However, after some changes, speed decreases but C1 has not really taken advantage of my hardware. Granted, neither does Lr and I have always regarded Lr as a "resource-idiotic". Premiere Pro, on the other hand, will take everything you give and I like that.
Now, I don't have much delay. It takes roughly two seconds to show a change. What is annoying is that with every step back (ctrl+z), or forwards (ctrl+y) to see a change in the image, there is this 3 step refresh so its difficult to see small but meaningful changes.
Q7. I imagined there was no particular conclusion on this matter. I thought to ask anyway.
I will get in touch with Phase One about the requests. The reason why I would prefer an HDR "negative" effect slider is because I think C1's HDR selection on what it believes to be highlights and shadows is more "rational" than that of ACr/Lr. With this in mind, I would love to keep that "selection" when doing negative changes instead of having the more variable/flexible/slightly less controlled algorithm of Curves/Levels.
Thanks again for your thorough response.
Hexagonal.
Hi again,
Glad you got something from the first epistle. Let's see what I can do this time.
Legacy Keywording.
Keywording in sessions is no problem and improved with V8. I shoot a lot of events and the nature of them means that generic keywording is easy but to drill down to detail is time consuming no matter what - starting with the effort to get useful information to deploy in the system. I VERY much doubt the effort would be worth the returns as a bulk exercise UNLESS is was part of a requested project for a specific selection in which case I would probably take the opportunity to deploy keywords on what I had identified.
Q3. It was LR catalogs that I was not keen on.
I discovered LightZone and preferred it. Then adopted C1 and can run them side by side when I wish to. This gives me 2 approaches to masking needs each with their specific wrinkles. Horses for courses in my view. C1, being a more rapidly developing commercial product tends to get the greater workout.
I would guess that PS layers is a more useful target concept for C1 to adopt than LS. PS is a "next application" destination for both Lr and C1.
Q4.
Sounds like it is syncing metadata. I don't have that need so I have no idea whether my installation does anything like that. Sync is turned off according to my interpretations of my settings.
Q5.
I do see activity that I assume is C1 aligning, when required, any pre-existing thumbnails and previews with the current Output Process setting IF the previews are set to work that way. You can select whether the preview takes into account the process recipe - notably for displaying how watermarks will appear but also pre-set aspect ratios and things. There is more potential in there than might at first be evident. It is well worth digging into it and considering how you can best make use of what is offered.
I would suggest experimenting with different sized previews and seeing what works best for you. The dual monitor/different resolution/different function thing might be a challenge. I don't often work with dual monitors because the notebook graphics card does not seem entirely comfortable even though both screens work at 1920px by something. Different resolutions may mean doing the processing twice.
Normally the recomendation is to set the preview res to be the same as the native screen res or one "size" down as that offers some useful compromise between preview file sizes and "as needed" re-creation of the images to smaller or larger sizes. If you set the preview always larger the re-calc effort will be greater to get to the set size and then that will need to be reduced to the smaller native size before you then re-process it as you zoom in and out. You may find benefit in experimenting to optimise for the 'normal' preview at first load.
Q7.
Interesting concept. I'm not sure how the maths would work on that one but you may be able to come up with some ideas by monitoring what happens with the levels, curves and the overall histogram as the HDR sliders are adjusted.
Have fun. There is much to discover in C1.
Grant0 -
[quote="SFA" wrote:
You should be able to change your user name in the account details when logged in. I have not tried it in recent times. The facility may be a little hidden. Maybe someone else can be more specific or a search will probably produce the answer to the question.
I got an answer from support on this not long ago. The editable user name field (in the user profile I believe) appears to have been removed. It may or may not reappear.
--
Odd S.0 -
Thanks everyone for the replies.
NNN63..., well, I guess we are stuck with these great usernames. How come that feature is gone?
SFA,
If your laptop has discrete graphics, I imagine it would work like mine where the external monitor is taken care of by the Quadro card and the laptop display is taken care of by Intel's graphics built in the CPU. I will try to fiddle with NVIDIA graphic's manager and see if I can up the processing power for C1.
Q3. Yes, PS layers would be an ideal target for Phase One to work aim for C1. Actually, I wanted to say from the beginning...it would be a KILLER feature if we could have local curves adjustments just like with Ps. That would be, just amazing.
One last question. I was looking at creating defaults for every tool (since I consider the NR and the Sharpening to be sometimes a bit OTT) and I managed to create some. However, they do not load. Is this a bug or is this how C1 works? I Lr, if you create a default, all images refresh with the default you made. How can I achieve that effect? I know for many things it is camera specific and iso specitic as well and I don't mind working out all of them for every variation I can find. I am dilligent.
Thanks again for all your help.0 -
[quote="NNN635503166415709961" wrote:
Thanks everyone for the replies.
NNN63..., well, I guess we are stuck with these great usernames. How come that feature is gone?
SFA,
If your laptop has discrete graphics, I imagine it would work like mine where the external monitor is taken care of by the Quadro card and the laptop display is taken care of by Intel's graphics built in the CPU. I will try to fiddle with NVIDIA graphic's manager and see if I can up the processing power for C1.
Q3. Yes, PS layers would be an ideal target for Phase One to work aim for C1. Actually, I wanted to say from the beginning...it would be a KILLER feature if we could have local curves adjustments just like with Ps. That would be, just amazing.
One last question. I was looking at creating defaults for every tool (since I consider the NR and the Sharpening to be sometimes a bit OTT) and I managed to create some. However, they do not load. Is this a bug or is this how C1 works? I Lr, if you create a default, all images refresh with the default you made. How can I achieve that effect? I know for many things it is camera specific and iso specitic as well and I don't mind working out all of them for every variation I can find. I am dilligent.
Thanks again for all your help.
I got the impression that my laptop was managing dual screens through the Nvidia driver application so presumably both going via the Quadro. I may have been wrong - it was a while ago now. I should probably try it again.
I doubt that it would be feasible (for a number of reasons) to try to copy PS layers directly within C1. They are products with different development objectives as far as I can see. However if one has a similar approach to layers there at least be some potential for exporting the layers as layers to another product where that product is using graphics editing techniques. At some point in the future it may be a useful design approach to have adopted. Perhaps not vice versa though.
I have not really used the defaults per camera/tool at all. I seem to remember I did look at it to see what happened some time back - probably V7 or maybe even 6. I don't recall it not working.
The help description seems quite straightforward though of course not all tools are valid for user revised defaults support.
Perhaps someone else will share their experiences. I may not get a chance to investigate much for a few days.
Grant0
La publicación no admite más comentarios.
Comentarios
7 comentarios