Very useful video. Finally found a kind person who told in normal human language about organizing photos in this wonderful tool Capture One. Thank you very much!
Thank you so, so much for explaining how Catalogs, Sessions, Albums, Smart Albums, Projects, Groups work in such a straight-forward way. The help docs from Capture One could be more clear.
I very much appreciate your conceptual approach to how the catalog and sessions work. I find it a much better way of learning than the click here, click here, click here approach of many other RUclipsrs. I wish capture one though would make a language available to perform some of these database manipulations. Yes, a gui is a very helpful at times but other times a language works well.
Hi Zac, I've just found your channel and loving it. You've made using catalogues a simple and logical process, not the scary mystical process it used to be👍
Really helpful. I like the way you teach. Not too fast or slow. You might want to turn on "Mono Mix" on your recorder so your voice doesn't pan left any right for those of us who have two speakers... 🤪
Thanks a lot for your guide, mate. I'm learning how to quickly edit wedding pics to get some money from home - it's first experience with getting money out of editting for me and Im kinda worried if I'll manage it all but your calm guides get me in the mood that I'm gonna rock it! I'm sorry u didn't have more views but I believe it's due to Capture One being not that popular programme on its own. Perhaps guides for more populal editting soft with good thumbnails will help to boost a channel? Nevertheless, I enjoyed ur video a lot and subcribed. I wish u the best, bro!!
Thanks for the kind words! It means quite a lot. Just getting started, really. I've let it fall off a bit but plan to pick things back up shortly once we're on the road full time. Right now all my time is taken up working on our truck and camper. Hope to have more soon!
Hi Zac, I've just watch your video, and I must say THX to this guide over catalogs. Now can work much better and be much better organized. I understand that it's virtual, and I'd like to know how do you organize files in HDD. I mean, I used to have a year folder and in that folder all events, but just RAW files. Where do you recomend (folder, other HDD...) exports and backups?
Thanks for the kind words! I'm truly glad you found the video helpful. I'll likely cover this in a future video, but really the best organizational method for you will be the one that lets you know where your images are outside of a piece of software. This will likely change person to person, and maybe genre to genre. For me, personally, I have catalogs dedicated to genres of work. For example, I have a landscape catalog. I also have a folder on my hard drive named "landscape". Within that folder, I have other folders for the locations I've photographed, starting with country and narrowing down from there. My catalogs roughly mimic this system. For example, I have a group for a particular country, then a project for the region of that country, then albums for specific locations and features within that region. I like for my catalog to look like the folder structure on my hard drive and vice versa. For me, date of capture means less, so I don't organize this way, especially since metadata (including date captured) is automatically written to these images so they can be organized by date with nearly any organizational software (even finder). For backups, I recommend chronosync (again, will cover this in a near-future video :-)
Zac, thank you soo much. Last year I moved from using Lightroom my entire career to Capture One. Organisation, especiall which Tool creates virtual organization and which moves the Images was so confusing to me.
Hi Zac, great presentation ! This clarified much. How would you do to create a smart album with all B&W images of my project ? No obvious criteria... (I run C1 22). Thanks.
Unfortunately there's not a way I'm aware of to automatically organize BW images through creating smart albums, or through the "Show/Hide Filters" option found in the filters tool. The best way to organize all BW images in a given project in C1 would likely be to create a regular (dumb) album for BW images, press the ~` button on the keyboard to remove the viewer so that the browser takes up most of the screen, resizing thumbnails so that they are all quite small, then manually dragging each BW image into the new album. You could also highlight all BW images manually, then add a BW keyword of your choice.
Your videos are great to learn the capture one way to manage photos. and nice voice by the way. Thumbs up and subscribed . I have a question while using it : While I manage the photos in the catalog-libriary-folders, I delete and move photos, It works smoothly . But after I delete all the photos in the fold, there is no point to keep the FOLDER, I just want to delete the folder forever. I want the folder structure tidy rather than tons of empty folders. But there is no way to do in disk level in capture one . Has it ever bothered you? How to delete that folder ? Thanks. (PS： I think if someone do not use session as part of working flow, Adobe Bridge is also a nice way maybe better way to manage photos)
Thank you for watching, and for the kind words! I'm glad you find the videos useful. More are on the way :-) When I need to do what you describe, I generally just right click the folder in question, select "show in finder" on a Mac or the equivalent on a PC, and delete the folder there. In the Capture One Catalog the folder will still appear, but now with an alert icon indicating the path is no longer active. I then right click the folder while in C1 and delete it, removing it from the Catalog. I actually think its a good safety net to not be able to delete a folder on the disk level while in Capture One, as I'm of the mind that the software should easily be able to add folders and structure, but should be difficult or impossible to remove it.
Thank you Zac! super helpful tutorials. I still don't know why I would use catalogs instead of just keeping different sessions for different shoots. I know, personal preference but I am really looking for a reason to use catalogs any foresight?
Glad you find them useful! Like you said, it’s all about preference and your desired workflow. A Catalog’s primary strength is searching for individual images within a vast library, and perhaps over a variety of different hard drives. If you’re keywording a lot and prefer to search for individual images based off of metadata, catalogs can be a great asset. If sessions are working for you, or if your images are clearly defined by the individual shoot they were a part of, then the benefit of catalogs may be minimal and you may best be served by continuing to use sessions.
Thanks very much for this really helpful explanation. Early in the video you make the good point that you shouldn't import all your images into a catalog long-term since it will balloon in size and become cumbersome. Unfortunately I've been doing this for a couple of years and you're totally right. Do you know of a way to convert a big catalog with images imported into the format you describe: RAWs on disk somewhere and only adjustments stored in the catalog? E.g. do you know if I can export all the RAWs somehow and only save the adjustments to a new catalog? Thanks for your help!
Hi Ashton, completely understand. It's an easy thing to let happen. I'd avoid sending your entire library out at the same time, as it will be quite a lot of data and will take some time. I suggest moving chunks of images instead. My recommendation would be to use Capture One's "Export Originals" tool. File-> Export->Export Originals. In the following window you may check "pack as EIP". This will package the raw file in what is effectively a .zip file along with additional files capture one can use to understand what edits have been made to the image. Once all of your files are exported and organized to your liking, you can create a new catalog and import all of you recently exported images into it while keeping them in their existing location. Hope this helps!
This is a good video. However, I constantly move pictures off of the internal drive (because they take up too much storage). This would break the path... So what is a sensible workflow longterm?
Files certainly must be kept in external storage. Simply moving the files to their final archive using C1’s folder tool, or Re establishing a path after the files have been moved will keep your local storage clean. I import directly to external storage, but leave the Catalog file local for best performance. This “referenced” catalog makes best use of resources and external storage.
Thanks for the great video! I've been trying to move away from Lightroom to Capture One for awhile but it's hard to learn new software as I'm so tuned to LR and don't have the patience / enthusiasm like I did many years ago. Anyway, on a super basic level, is my summary comparing to LR right? - Folders in C1 are like folders in LR. - User Collection/catalogs in C1 are like Collections in LR I used to use Folders a lot in LR, and would only put my best images in collections. It sounds like you are suggesting working within catalogs almost exclusively? Isn't that just creating a duplicate filing system? Also, I understood the hierarchy for Groups, Projects, and Albums. But isn't that just a three tier folder/album structure? What's the purpose of giving them different names, why can't they just be called Albums for example and you can nest them, make smart albums etc just like you showed? I hope you able to reply. I'm not sure why I'm struggling with this move from Lightroom so much lol. I did finally buy C1 Pro (had been testing the free Fuji version for months) so I'm now all in and must learn it. Thanks!
great video! where are the edits you make stored? I am switching from lightroom and I am not clear how Capture One deals with it (the way lightroom did with xmp files)
Thank you! In a catalog, Capture One stores the edits in the Catalog database file itself, (the same database that, when clicked on, will open the catalog in capture one) This does away with sidecar files. In a session based workflow, the edits are stored in files inside of a folder named "Capture One" which exist in the same folder as the originating raw files. Hope this helps!
First thing, I've never used catalogs. Sessions seem to work best for me. Can catalogs help me find several objects in one photo? Here is an example. If I took a landscape photo, in a national park, of a river, with a pine tree and oak tree, on the side of a mountain. How could I look up each different subject? (A landscape style of photo, a National Park, a River, a type of tree, a mountain, and so on if I wanted to?.)
Hi George, unfortunately Capture One doesn't (yet) have an AI powered search ability to do what you're asking. This would be a welcome addition, no doubt, but currently the only way to do this would be to manually add keywords yourself, then use the search function to find those keyworded images.
Maybe a stupid question but in a workflow where i delete images from my user collection in catalog it is replaced to the trash. If i look to the original source the image is still there and i can still open and edit it in capture one. Is there a way to sync these 2 folders so that also if i delete a image permanently via user collection it gets also removed in my original source (let's say external hard drive)
Not a stupid question at all! You are correct, when you "delete" a photo while in a catalog C1 will send the photo to the catalog trash. If you navigate to the catalog trash folder, found in the library tool tab, you have the ability to select some or all of the images in the trash, right click, and select "delete from disk". This will remove the original file from the hard drive that Capture One is using to view the image. Hope this helps!
Hello! Yes, this is possible. Ideally you would store the catalog on a NAS drive. You'll need to ensure the catalog is closed on one machine before opening it on the other, as you won't be able to use them at the same time. You may run into issues with images appearing offline in a referenced catalog that require re-connection. It's not an ideal scenario, but from some quick research it does appear that some users have found a way to make this work.
it is not clear to me one point: how can i keep the raw files outside my Mac (in my ssd external drive) so that i do not fill the Pc but still being able to work on Capture One? the "catalogue" must import the raw files into the Pc or can it keep the raw files anywhere else?
It's totally possible to have the files stored on an external SSD while working on a local Catalog. This is what is called a "referenced" catalog. To import files that live on an SSD into a catalog stored on your local hard drive, open the import dialogue and, in the "Import To" section, select "Add to Catalog". This will keep the files where they are without duplicating them. When importing from a memory card, you'll select the card in the "Import From" section, then in the "Import To" section, you'll select "Copy to Folder" where you'll then select a folder on your external SSD to import the photos to.
Thanks for the question! Yes, certainly possible to move the entire Catalog database file to a different folder or drive, just be sure to have a backup made before moving, just in case.
Very useful video. Finally found a kind person who told in normal human language about organizing photos in this wonderful tool Capture One. Thank you very much!
Thank you so, so much for explaining how Catalogs, Sessions, Albums, Smart Albums, Projects, Groups work in such a straight-forward way. The help docs from Capture One could be more clear.
Great tutorial. No nonsense, no fluff and no over the top emotions. Thanks!
I very much appreciate your conceptual approach to how the catalog and sessions work. I find it a much better way of learning than the click here, click here, click here approach of many other RUclipsrs. I wish capture one though would make a language available to perform some of these database manipulations. Yes, a gui is a very helpful at times but other times a language works well.
Hi Zac, I've just found your channel and loving it. You've made using catalogues a simple and logical process, not the scary mystical process it used to be👍
That's great, Robert. Happy to hear it!!
This explanation made sense- finally! I have always been a session guy out of frustration. Gonna try- wish me luck!..lol!
Zac: You are an outstanding instructor! Thank you for your Capture One videos.
Thanks. Great and straight forward explanation.
Extremely clear and well explained. I am I new new C1 user trying to move away from Lightroom!
Thank you! So glad it helped.
EXCELLENT tutorial!!! So clear and intuitive... Thank you
Thank YOU!
BEST TEACHING AND EXPLAINED
Very well done. Thank you!
Great tutorial Zac. Logical overview, easy to understand. Great shooting too Zac, thank you.
Thank you for the kind words!
This was the best explanation. Thank you
Glad it was useful!
Really helpful. I like the way you teach. Not too fast or slow. You might want to turn on "Mono Mix" on your recorder so your voice doesn't pan left any right for those of us who have two speakers... 🤪
This was super helpful. As a new capture one user this gave a quick rundown of how to organize my pics. Thanks!
Glad it helped!
Thanks a lot for your guide, mate. I'm learning how to quickly edit wedding pics to get some money from home - it's first experience with getting money out of editting for me and Im kinda worried if I'll manage it all but your calm guides get me in the mood that I'm gonna rock it! I'm sorry u didn't have more views but I believe it's due to Capture One being not that popular programme on its own. Perhaps guides for more populal editting soft with good thumbnails will help to boost a channel?
Nevertheless, I enjoyed ur video a lot and subcribed. I wish u the best, bro!!
Thanks for the kind words! It means quite a lot. Just getting started, really. I've let it fall off a bit but plan to pick things back up shortly once we're on the road full time. Right now all my time is taken up working on our truck and camper. Hope to have more soon!
A well produced video as always.
Thank you for such a well made tutorial! This is really helpful.
I really enjoy this video, I do need to watch it again so I could really understand it but is my brain not you, you are a amazing instructor 🌺🌻🌺
Thank you for the kind words!
Hi Zac, I've just watch your video, and I must say THX to this guide over catalogs. Now can work much better and be much better organized. I understand that it's virtual, and I'd like to know how do you organize files in HDD. I mean, I used to have a year folder and in that folder all events, but just RAW files. Where do you recomend (folder, other HDD...) exports and backups?
Thanks for the kind words! I'm truly glad you found the video helpful. I'll likely cover this in a future video, but really the best organizational method for you will be the one that lets you know where your images are outside of a piece of software. This will likely change person to person, and maybe genre to genre. For me, personally, I have catalogs dedicated to genres of work. For example, I have a landscape catalog. I also have a folder on my hard drive named "landscape". Within that folder, I have other folders for the locations I've photographed, starting with country and narrowing down from there. My catalogs roughly mimic this system. For example, I have a group for a particular country, then a project for the region of that country, then albums for specific locations and features within that region. I like for my catalog to look like the folder structure on my hard drive and vice versa. For me, date of capture means less, so I don't organize this way, especially since metadata (including date captured) is automatically written to these images so they can be organized by date with nearly any organizational software (even finder). For backups, I recommend chronosync (again, will cover this in a near-future video :-)
Brilliant, thank you so much!
You're very welcome!
Super well explained. Thank you 😊
Glad it was helpful!
Great video. Everything is clear and helpful. Thank you! You should make some more about Capture One.
Thanks for the kind words! Don't worry- more to come :-)
Thank you so much; this was immensely helpful!
Glad it was helpful!
How have you only got 600 subs. This is PERFECT! thank you.
Thanks. I'm glad it's useful!
Thank you for sharing this. It is exactly what I was looking for. 🎉
I'm so glad!
Zac, thank you soo much. Last year I moved from using Lightroom my entire career to Capture One. Organisation, especiall which Tool creates virtual organization and which moves the Images was so confusing to me.
I'm so glad the video helped clear things up!
Hi Zac, great presentation ! This clarified much.
How would you do to create a smart album with all B&W images of my project ? No obvious criteria... (I run C1 22).
Thanks.
Unfortunately there's not a way I'm aware of to automatically organize BW images through creating smart albums, or through the "Show/Hide Filters" option found in the filters tool. The best way to organize all BW images in a given project in C1 would likely be to create a regular (dumb) album for BW images, press the ~` button on the keyboard to remove the viewer so that the browser takes up most of the screen, resizing thumbnails so that they are all quite small, then manually dragging each BW image into the new album. You could also highlight all BW images manually, then add a BW keyword of your choice.
Great explanation for a newbie. Thanks
Glad it was helpful!
You are amazing. Thank you.
Thank you so much, this really helped.
I'm so glad! More coming, and if you want to see something discussed, just let me know!
Great video! Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
Your videos are great to learn the capture one way to manage photos. and nice voice by the way. Thumbs up and subscribed . I have a question while using it : While I manage the photos in the catalog-libriary-folders, I delete and move photos, It works smoothly . But after I delete all the photos in the fold, there is no point to keep the FOLDER, I just want to delete the folder forever. I want the folder structure tidy rather than tons of empty folders. But there is no way to do in disk level in capture one . Has it ever bothered you? How to delete that folder ? Thanks. (PS： I think if someone do not use session as part of working flow, Adobe Bridge is also a nice way maybe better way to manage photos)
Thank you for watching, and for the kind words! I'm glad you find the videos useful. More are on the way :-) When I need to do what you describe, I generally just right click the folder in question, select "show in finder" on a Mac or the equivalent on a PC, and delete the folder there. In the Capture One Catalog the folder will still appear, but now with an alert icon indicating the path is no longer active. I then right click the folder while in C1 and delete it, removing it from the Catalog.
I actually think its a good safety net to not be able to delete a folder on the disk level while in Capture One, as I'm of the mind that the software should easily be able to add folders and structure, but should be difficult or impossible to remove it.
Awesome
Thank you Zac! super helpful tutorials. I still don't know why I would use catalogs instead of just keeping different sessions for different shoots. I know, personal preference but I am really looking for a reason to use catalogs any foresight?
Glad you find them useful! Like you said, it’s all about preference and your desired workflow. A Catalog’s primary strength is searching for individual images within a vast library, and perhaps over a variety of different hard drives. If you’re keywording a lot and prefer to search for individual images based off of metadata, catalogs can be a great asset. If sessions are working for you, or if your images are clearly defined by the individual shoot they were a part of, then the benefit of catalogs may be minimal and you may best be served by continuing to use sessions.
Thanks very much for this really helpful explanation. Early in the video you make the good point that you shouldn't import all your images into a catalog long-term since it will balloon in size and become cumbersome. Unfortunately I've been doing this for a couple of years and you're totally right. Do you know of a way to convert a big catalog with images imported into the format you describe: RAWs on disk somewhere and only adjustments stored in the catalog? E.g. do you know if I can export all the RAWs somehow and only save the adjustments to a new catalog? Thanks for your help!
Hi Ashton, completely understand. It's an easy thing to let happen. I'd avoid sending your entire library out at the same time, as it will be quite a lot of data and will take some time. I suggest moving chunks of images instead. My recommendation would be to use Capture One's "Export Originals" tool. File-> Export->Export Originals. In the following window you may check "pack as EIP". This will package the raw file in what is effectively a .zip file along with additional files capture one can use to understand what edits have been made to the image. Once all of your files are exported and organized to your liking, you can create a new catalog and import all of you recently exported images into it while keeping them in their existing location. Hope this helps!
That's super helpful, thank you very much!@@zendrson
Great video!
Thanks!
This is a good video. However, I constantly move pictures off of the internal drive (because they take up too much storage). This would break the path... So what is a sensible workflow longterm?
Files certainly must be kept in external storage. Simply moving the files to their final archive using C1’s folder tool, or Re establishing a path after the files have been moved will keep your local storage clean. I import directly to external storage, but leave the Catalog file local for best performance. This “referenced” catalog makes best use of resources and external storage.
Thanks for the great video!
I've been trying to move away from Lightroom to Capture One for awhile but it's hard to learn new software as I'm so tuned to LR and don't have the patience / enthusiasm like I did many years ago.
Anyway, on a super basic level, is my summary comparing to LR right?
- Folders in C1 are like folders in LR.
- User Collection/catalogs in C1 are like Collections in LR
I used to use Folders a lot in LR, and would only put my best images in collections. It sounds like you are suggesting working within catalogs almost exclusively? Isn't that just creating a duplicate filing system?
Also, I understood the hierarchy for Groups, Projects, and Albums. But isn't that just a three tier folder/album structure? What's the purpose of giving them different names, why can't they just be called Albums for example and you can nest them, make smart albums etc just like you showed?
I hope you able to reply. I'm not sure why I'm struggling with this move from Lightroom so much lol. I did finally buy C1 Pro (had been testing the free Fuji version for months) so I'm now all in and must learn it.
Thanks!
great video! where are the edits you make stored? I am switching from lightroom and I am not clear how Capture One deals with it (the way lightroom did with xmp files)
Thank you! In a catalog, Capture One stores the edits in the Catalog database file itself, (the same database that, when clicked on, will open the catalog in capture one) This does away with sidecar files. In a session based workflow, the edits are stored in files inside of a folder named "Capture One" which exist in the same folder as the originating raw files. Hope this helps!
thank you, it does help! @@zendrson
First thing, I've never used catalogs. Sessions seem to work best for me. Can catalogs help me find several objects in one photo? Here is an example. If I took a landscape photo, in a national park, of a river, with a pine tree and oak tree, on the side of a mountain. How could I look up each different subject? (A landscape style of photo, a National Park, a River, a type of tree, a mountain, and so on if I wanted to?.)
Hi George, unfortunately Capture One doesn't (yet) have an AI powered search ability to do what you're asking. This would be a welcome addition, no doubt, but currently the only way to do this would be to manually add keywords yourself, then use the search function to find those keyworded images.
Maybe a stupid question but in a workflow where i delete images from my user collection in catalog it is replaced to the trash. If i look to the original source the image is still there and i can still open and edit it in capture one.
Is there a way to sync these 2 folders so that also if i delete a image permanently via user collection it gets also removed in my original source (let's say external hard drive)
Not a stupid question at all! You are correct, when you "delete" a photo while in a catalog C1 will send the photo to the catalog trash. If you navigate to the catalog trash folder, found in the library tool tab, you have the ability to select some or all of the images in the trash, right click, and select "delete from disk". This will remove the original file from the hard drive that Capture One is using to view the image. Hope this helps!
thank you!
You're welcome!
Hey Zac how about using one catalogue between my Mac desktop and my windows laptop is this possible ?
Hello! Yes, this is possible. Ideally you would store the catalog on a NAS drive. You'll need to ensure the catalog is closed on one machine before opening it on the other, as you won't be able to use them at the same time. You may run into issues with images appearing offline in a referenced catalog that require re-connection. It's not an ideal scenario, but from some quick research it does appear that some users have found a way to make this work.
it is not clear to me one point: how can i keep the raw files outside my Mac (in my ssd external drive) so that i do not fill the Pc but still being able to work on Capture One?
the "catalogue" must import the raw files into the Pc or can it keep the raw files anywhere else?
It's totally possible to have the files stored on an external SSD while working on a local Catalog. This is what is called a "referenced" catalog. To import files that live on an SSD into a catalog stored on your local hard drive, open the import dialogue and, in the "Import To" section, select "Add to Catalog". This will keep the files where they are without duplicating them. When importing from a memory card, you'll select the card in the "Import From" section, then in the "Import To" section, you'll select "Copy to Folder" where you'll then select a folder on your external SSD to import the photos to.
@@zendrson thank you!
is it possible to move the whole catalog to Harddisks after we edit the photo. can we do that?
Thanks for the question! Yes, certainly possible to move the entire Catalog database file to a different folder or drive, just be sure to have a backup made before moving, just in case.