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CaptureOne 7 Help - Sharing Images Among Computers

dubes

New member
I've been using Capture One 7 pretty much since it came out, and it's quickly become my developer of choice.

My one big issue which I am having trouble sorting out is moving images and their associated edits around from machine to machine, for example moving from laptop to desktop or from local computer to an external drive for data backup.

On my hard drive, I organize images in folders based on date and then subject, so I might have something that looks like:

\My Photos\2012\201210-12\20121005 - Random Stuff\[bunch of image files shot on October 5, 2012]

When I add new images to the Capture One catalog, I simply point to the new directory (or directories). I know there's a setting where Capture One will copy the images into the catalog, but I have that turned off. So far, this mimics my workflow in Lightroom 3/4 as well.

Now, when I make backups in LR, I just copy the \My Photos\ directory containing all of my raw images neatly organized by date to the new drive, then I export the LR catalog which contains all of the edits. Done. (And I've done the reverse, so I know this is doing what I want.)

My confusion comes when I export C1 catalogs, because these are not a single file (or archive or whatever LR is doing) but a whole directory full of stuff...including what appear to be images. :confused: I’ve checked the online help for C1 on importing and exporting catalogs, but I’m still flustered.

So for you C1 users who are sharing images among multiple computers, how are you accomplishing it? Are you even using catalogs or have you decided to use sessions instead? (Coming from LR, I never understood the concept of sessions, but I do get how to make backups of sessions.)

Thank you!
Mike
 
I also share images among two or more computers (I am a Mac user) and what I do is the following:
I use one master external drive on which I store the folder containing the originals (organized by year/month/day), the folder containing the LR4 catalog files, and the CO7 catalog; the latter on my Mac it is shown as a single file but if I open the package I see inside the Adjustments folder, the Cache folder, the Originals folder (empty because I use the referenced approach) and the Catalog database file.
I use Carbon Copy Cloner to make two incremental back-up copies of the master drive, one as archival and one to move all my work to a different machine where it becomes the temporary master; when I have finished I can revert back to the main machine following the same route in the opposite direction.
The only difference I see is that LR4 is able to locate the originals without any additional step, with CO7 I have to do it manually (with a few clicks).
 

lkuhlmann

Member
Another method is to place your catalog including raw files on your file server.

You can access the same catalog from Captuere One, even at the same time. One of the computers will "own" the catalog, while the other will have read access - simultaneously.

Many options...

-Lionel
 

dubes

New member
Ario and Lionel,

A belated thank you for the ideas.

I was thinking about this a little more (unfortunately, haven't had time to do much more than think of late). I know that one of the features of the CaptureOne 7 catalog is that the images don't need to be present to navigate your catalog.

Thinking out loud, I wonder if I copy the main catalog that's on my desktop drive to my laptop, then while traveling add images to the laptop catalog, that I can then move the updated catalog plus the new images back to the desktop without hurting the older files? I think I'll give that a try with a test catalog, just as soon as I have an hour to play around....

Mike
 
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