Capture One Express ; Don't understand importing, sessions, etc
I have Capture One Express for Fuji. I just don't get Projects, Sessions, Catalogs and Collections. All I really want to do it import a few images from my camera upload and edit them. I currently had duplicates in my photo collection pane on the bottom of COne. I deleted everything in it and tried to import the images again so I would not have duplicate. I select the images and it says it's importing them but then I continue to see nothing in my lower Collections pane, so I can't modify any photos.
I just don't get what is a very confusing set of menu options for Projects, Sessions, Catalogs and Collections. The online tuts all seem to start with creating a new Session with File, New Session - but I don't even have that menu pick.
It's a shame that I am finding such a nice looking tool so difficult and unintuitive wrt doing simple editing.
Any pointers or refs to qucik start guides for Express, that focus on this topic? Most tuts focus on changing colors etc not dealing with Projects, Sessions, Catalogs, Collections and Imports.
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This 7 min video should answer your questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=styRn2108AE&t=80s
You don't have the option of sessions with the free version.
Ian
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Thanks for trying Ian, but this didn't answer any of my questions. I already get how to use the photo editing stuff. What I am confused on is understanding Projects, Sessions, Catalogs and Collections, as mentioned in my post. I've made a number of mistakes with my (whatever is being used for imported photos) where I've imported duplicates or where I've deleted imported files and on reimport, non of them have thumbnails. In other words, I'm struggling with understanding how to get photos into cap one for various shoots, without having ALL my photos over time in Cap One. I've tired different options and only got more confused.
So, I have cap one open now. I have 114 images loaded and they have thumbnails. The thumbnail pane just says that I have 114 images but are they in my session, my project, my collection, my catalog and what does it mean to be in any one of those things? I am done modifying that set and I want to toss them. Do I just delete them? Is Cap One keeping a separate copy on my hard drive or will deleting them remove them from my Camera Upload dir from which they were imported? If I want to keep this set in Cap One but start with a blank state how do I do that? What does New Collection, New Project or New Group do? What does Set as Sets Collection do?
As you can probably see, I am trying to construct a repeatable workflow in which I can use Cap One to Create a blank slate, Import images from my camera upload dir, process those photos and then decide if I want to save that Cap One {session, project, collection or whatever it is} or toss it and start fresh with a new set of photos.
I've not found anything that even gets close to covering that. All the tuts I find jump right to the color editing tools, and those I get from using many other similar software packages. I think really want to understand all of the menu picks under the File menu.
Additionally I messed around with some of the settings inside Import Images, like Import to Destination and Import To Collection. Those, I think are what caused me not to see thumbnails or to get duplicates. All very confusing.
I would consider buying Cap One but not if I can't create a simple understandable workflow wrt the File Menu and Import Options. I must simply be making this harder than it is because of my confusion and if we can clear that up, I'd probably like Cap One a whole lot more.
What value does one get from a
Session
Project
Collection
Catalog
Album
Those are all words that generally describe an associated set of data grouped for the purposes of workflow. Beyond that, I can't describe the differences or value of each.
This video helped some. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mWfjnr6ZQ0
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>Jon Willard: ...process those photos and then decide if I want to save that Cap One {session, project, collection or whatever it is}
Capture One ("C1") operates in one out of two main modes, the Session mode or the Catalog mode. C1 come in different incarnations. The payware Pro has more feature than the gratis/free Express. I strongly believe Ian S. is right, the C1 Express does not have the Session mode. You are left with catalog, I think you can safely remove the Session problem from your list.
Start simple to get the hang of C1 catalogs. You apparently watched a ton of tutorials, but you may have skipped the basic ones. Try the simple 4 minutes introduction to catalogs and see if you can replicate the process on your computer: https://learn.captureone.com/tutorials/creating-a-catalog/
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I will try to do better but as I don't know what you know/don't know, stick with me :-)
The Fuji Express free version only has the option of catalogues so sessions are not relevant until you upgrade to a Pro version.I have never used the Free versions but you may also be restricted to having only one catalogue, I don't know for sure.
C1 is a parametric editor which means that it does nothing to your original files. When you are editing all that happens is C1 records a list of edit instructions (basically a small text file) and shows you how the edited image will look when you "apply" the edits by exporting a rgb file.
You therefore need to "import" the file into C1. This does not move the file, as long as you choose "Current location" during the import process. What C1 does is register where the files are and create a preview of the file for display. You can then edit your images as you wish. When you want to actually create an edited file as a Tif or jpg you need to Export/Process the file. When you do this C1 applies all of the edits you have made and creates the edited Tif/jpg image in a location that you specify. Because C1 needs to know the location of the file, if you move or delete files outside of C1 it will get very confused as it will no longer know where the file is.
If you then want to do further edits, create a different crop, size/type of output file etc you can just find the file in the catalogue you created initially and continue the edit. If you want to keep the edited version you have but want to create a new version eg a B&W of the file then you can simply create a new version of the file and edit this version completely independently of the original version. You have not created a new file on disk merely started a new small text file which describes the new version.
A session works in a similar way to a catalogue except that no catalogue is created and all edits/adjustments live in the file structure for the session. This makes the session portable because if you move the session folder everything moves and therefore there is no issue with locating files.
Projects, Collections and Albums are all to do with organising and viewing your photos. Normally to organise your photos you copy or move files from various locations into a new folder and then you can view all of the files together. What Projects, Collections and Albums do is allow you to do this but "virtually". That means that you don't actually move or copy the files you just tell C1 that you want all of my 5* images that are in the catalogue to show in a collection (think of it as a virtual folder" called "5 Star Images". C1 will go through your catalogue and show you all of the 5* images. Or you could set up a collection for all images with the keyword "New York". Or you could simply set up a collection and drag and drop images into that collection. No images are actually moved or copied simply their locations are stored in the "Collection" and C1 displays the associated preview for each file.
Albums and Projects are just refinements on this process.
You can remove images from the catalogue and C1 will forget about them. That means you will have to reimport the files if you want to edit them again and start your editing from scratch. Any key words etc you may have added to catalogue files will also be lost. There are ways round this but at this stage I feel that's what you should take from this.
The best way to understand is to view one of the many videos on catalogues to help understanding. I would start with these:
Organising Catalogue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWmT0kfLudU
Creating a Catalogue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXm7eI8YTyk
Comparison of Catalogues and Sessions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voz5vX-YOaw&t=2128s
Hope this helps.
Ian
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Thx, that is helpful narrative and I'll watch those videos. If am sure it's really quite simple once I get a few things squared up in the ole noggin.
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