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Capture One Catalogs or Session based workflow

jpaulmoore

Active member
Hello all, I had Capture One (version 7) for a short period of time and have just downloaded Capture One Pro 9. Coming from Lightroom (long time user), I just can't get my head around the session based workflow or the catalog workflow. I have looked at videos, but it's not sinking in. I really just want to test some existing files for starters but I want to get off to a good start. Any tips or additional resources would be most appreciated. I did look at the Luminous Landscape videos, and while they are quite good, I didn't understand the Catalog versus Sessions workflow.
Kind Regards,
J. Paul
 

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
You can create a new session and then just drop RAW files into the created Capture folder. That won't help with long term planning, but it will let you play with the processing engine.

I almost never end up using software the way I start using it, so I wouldn't worry about what you do now. Try it, then look at the videos or online docs. They'll make more sense. Then try it some more, read some more, repeat.

There *is* a book on Capture One available on Amazon, but I don't know how good it would be for someone starting out.

Doug will be along presently to offer training... ;)

Good luck,

Matt
 
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jpaulmoore

Active member
Matt, this is so helpful. Thanks for taking the time to respond and offer suggestions. This is what I love about this forum! So many people willing to help.
Regards,
J. Paul
 

DougDolde

Well-known member
I may be in the dark ages, but I use Bridge to sort and keep my files. When I am processing them in C1 I just create subfolders in Bridge then set my Capture and Process to the subfolder I am working in. That's a session as far as I know.
 

jlm

Workshop Member
i use sessions, easy if you jump over the quirky phase semantics.

when i have a new card of images:

1. open a new session. you can set the session name and location on your hard drive.
2. the above will also open subfolders under the session name for output, trash, selects, etc
3. you then select the card to import from, select the images you want, and they will be imported into the session main folder.
4. start tweaking images, when you process them, they go the output file for that session.

there are options for the above, but that is the basic method.
 

gazwas

Active member
Sessions is how Capture One started off and back in the early days was mostly aimed at commercial studios who created a new session for each new job which I suppose was similar to how most shot film. The session could then be stored on HD, CD, DVD and invoiced in pretty much the same way as its always been done with transparencies/polaroids/negs and if you needed to find the images again you looked in the filing cabinet for the archived disk. Sessions are still relevant today but rather than a filing cabinet they are obviously digitally stored and backed up. The great plus to a session is it can easily be moved from one computer to another as you just move the whole session folder that contains all the media, settings, output to that job. However, there is also a need to have an additional procedure in place to be able to identify what images are in each session.

A catalogue is one big data file for all your images that you group into individual categories as you see fit. Opening your catalogue gives you instant access to all your images and keywording helps you find those images quickly. Moving a whole catalogue or a series of images from a catalogue is not as easy as just drag and dropping a session file but finding images in session folders spread over multiple jobs means opening each individual session one at a time.

Plus and minus points to both and depends on how you like to work but I still use C1 in sessions mode which I prefer.
 

jpaulmoore

Active member
Thanks to all for your help with this. I am starting to grasp the concept now. I have processing a few files (with my rudimentary skills) to see how Capture One 9 compares to Lightroom. So far I am not seeing an appreciable difference, but I will keep at it (watch more videos) to get me up to speed.
J. Paul
 
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