Lessons

Lesson Info

Advanced Catalog Organization

Now that you know how to get images kind of into Capture One with a couple of different strategies, if they're existing on a hard drive or if they're on a memory card from a camera, then you can think about how you might like to import. The nice thing about importing from the card, when we next go to import again, we've already got our destination, our master destination set. The only thing we have to change is the sub-folder, and what a lot of customers do, that they never really have to change anything here, 'cause it's automated. We always want our images to go in "all my images", and we're gonna let the token automatically categorize them. So we really, we put a card in and we press import. We don't like at anything else, because we know it's already set up exactly how I want to use it. So yeah, for the more advanced stuff, then we can look to user collections, and really, the point of having...ooh, excuse me. The point of having a catalog is to use the kind of tools that we have i...

n user collections. We can organize in files and folders on the system if you wish, but that has various limitations because wallflowers should only exist once. Like, let's think this image here for example, or any of these images here. You think, "You know what I'd like to make a folder of images that I want to print". So I could do that within folders. I can hit a plus button, for example. I can make the catalog aware of a new folder so, here for example, I could say 'Stuff to print', for example. And then say 'add' And now the catalog is aware of this folder If I want to, I can simply drag and drop images to that, and Capture one says "Okay, it's gonna be moved", like so. So, now this image only belongs in this particular folder but, you know, I might like this image to be in my 'best portfolio shots' or something like that. So, unless you do a totally crazy thing of duplicating raw files, then raw files really should only exist in one place. That limits the kind of things that you can do with your images, for repurposing it for printing, for portfolio, sending to a client, and so on.. But, you know, if you want the security of organizing on files and folders, being able to see it, then you can do all that sort of stuff here. So, remember, plus button to make the catalog aware of a new folder. We can delete a folder by hitting the minus button. If we want to drag folders on top of each other we can do so as well. So, it's just all basic simple drag and drop moves, like so. Notice that, when I do a drag and drop I get a warning. We can say "Don't show this message again" if it gets annoying. But that does physically move it on disc, so if we look in the finder, then we can physically see that's been moved to that new location. Try to do all that stuff in Capture One. So, moving images around...because if you do those kinds of things within the finder or Windows Explorer then the catalog doesn't know you've made that move. So, then it becomes broken, as such. You can, of course, fix it, but, really, you've given yourself an extra step. So, any kind of moves, folder merges, and so on... Do all of that in Capture One. If you happen to move a folder or an image outside of Capture One, you can simply right click on it and say "locate" and then point to the destination that you've moved it to. But, really, you're giving yourself extra work with that. Just try to do all the moves within Capture One. If you've made a whole bunch of changes to a particular folder, like you've added to it, or you've removed images, you can right click and you can synchronize that folder. Then Capture One will look for images that have been taken away or images that have been added if you didn't go through the proper import process. But, really, you should go through the proper import process 'cause it gives you those automation abilities: Adding copyright information, metadata, all of that stuff... If you avoid the import window then you miss the chance of doing that. So it's best to try to do all of that kind of stuff in the catalog. But just remember, you can right click and locate entire folders if you move them outside of Capture One. You can right click and locate single images if you move them outside of Capture One. You can synchronize as well if you've done major changes, but my recommendation is to try to really avoid using those tools. If you wanna import more images into this folder, use the import dialogue, that's what it's there for. If you wanna move images around, do it within Capture One so you know it's all safe and it's gonna happen. Final note about that for people in Aperture, who are used to storing images inside the catalog, which is known as 'Managed Images', you can do the exactly the same thing in Capture One, even if you've done an import like this, where they're left on the external hard drive. If you drag an image over to the catalog icon, that will copy it inside the catalog itself. If you take the image and drag it back out, then it will move it outside the catalog back to the external location. So that can be interesting. if you think of my situation with, 20,000 images on an external hard drive, catalog on the internal hard drive. If I'm going somewhere, I can't take that big bulky hard drive with me, but i can think "Well okay, lets just pop these two images inside the catalog, and then when i get to wherever I'm going, we can use these, we can export them and so on. When we get back home, we can then drag them back to their particular location, like so. So, that's entirely possible to do for anyone who's thinking about that. Or drag and drop. With that in mind, then really, what we can do is exercise catalog organization much further in the user collections area. So, the user collections area is virtual organization. So, nothing gets moved off its location, whether that's inside the catalog, on an external hard drive, somewhere else, it's all virtual organization. The database just knows where to find that image based on the tools you do. So, I wanted to use a collection. We have four different organizational items. So "albums", "smart albums", "project" and "group" All of these I might refer to as a collection, 'cause it's a collection of images. So, if i say 'a collection' of images, that could be an album, it could be a smart album, it could be a folder. So, what's an album? Let's make an album and let's just call this "Las Vegas" for example. This makes me a little place holder over here which I can then drag individual images over to or I can drag a whole bunch of images over to, like so. If I click on that, then that just shows... Let's go bigger. That just shows those particular images in that album. But, of course, the same image can exist in two different locations so.. If I make another album, and let's use the same example, "Stuff to print". Then there's nothing to stop this image, belonging in this album, and this album like so. 'Cause I haven't moved it off disc it's just, the catalog has created this entry and knows which images I'm talking about. So that's just a simple album, like so. If we use a smart album A smart album populates itself, it does the work for you. So you just have to describe to the smart album what kind of images you want in there and the smart album will do the rest. So, smart albums are commonly used for holding images that have a certain rating, for example, or a certain color tag. So let's do "five star rating", for example. We can add our search criteria over here, so we can say plus, and find any of our millions of search terms and say "rating equals five", for example, or there's some basic presets over here on the right hand side. So rating must equal five, this is the rule of this smart album. So, if I click on it now then there's nothing in there because none of our images meet that criteria. But if we go back up to all images and we use number five on the keyboard just to make some images five stars, and we're going to do a whole section later on in a later lesson about selection. Then if i tap on this album now, you see it's automatically loaded with those images. If we take an image and, let's say, zero it. Then it disappears because it no longer matches that criteria. So, smart albums are really, really handy for monitoring all aspects. It could be key word related, and so on and so forth. Go back to "all images" and then we've got something called a project. So, a project... Let's use this example again, "Vacation 2017" for example. So, now we have a project. If I try and drag an image into it, I cant. The project cannot contain images on its own. If you look at the icon if it, I'm gonna zoom in a bit Cardboard box with a lid, I think is the best analogy. So, we need to open up that cardboard box, and we need to separate it out with different albums basically. So, if I right or ctrl click on the project itself And let's just drop an album in there and call it "all images" as an example. Now I can grab all the images from my "Whatever vacation" and drag them into that folder. So, now I have 16 odd images in that project, but you're gonna say "What's the point of that? I could've done that with an album." But there's one very, very crucial difference with a project is that it limits the scope of a smart album. So, now if I right click again and say "put a smart album in here" and we make a similar smart album "five star images" This one is project specific. So, rating equals five stars, but it's only going to find images that are in that particular project. So, if we look at my five star album here... And let's just add... Let's make, say, this one five stars, this one five stars, And we look at five star rating, we can see all those images. If we look at this one, you see it's project specific. So, the project item is really handy for just limiting the search scope of that particular project. So, if you imagine our cardboard box, we're only searching within that cardboard box- that particular smart album. Smart albums outside of any project search the entire catalog. So, they're really good for monitoring things like all your five star images, all your ones that you've key worded as "landscape" and so on. The final organizational item is something called a group, and that's just a handy, sort of, clean up item. Basically, you can imagine as your catalog grows and grows this area, the user collections area, gets very big. You have lots and lots of projects and so on. So we might like to just categorize this a little bit. So, we could have something like "personal work" and it looks like a folder, and that's all it is. So, I can just drop stuff, drag and drop stuff into here, which is my personal work, and then I could have... another group, which could be "commercial work" and so on. And then we could drop stuff in that, for example. So, all I do is allow you to clean up that area and just organize it better. So projects, albums, smart albums, projects and groups. Album's a simple collections for drag and drop. Smart Album populates itself based on search criteria. Project limits the scope of the smart album, and the group: just a handy way to tidy up that area, basically. Okay Jim, any questions on that section? (clears throat) we do, and also going back a bit, so forgive me.. -Okay ..if I reiterate a little bit. So, here's a question that says-- and you might have already showed this, but.. -okay To reiterate, 'is it possible to synchronize a folder if images have been moved elsewhere outside of Capture One?" Yes, yes. So, if you've done that, and tried to avoid it. (chuckles) Then simply right click and say "synchronize" and then Capture One will look for images that it doesn't recognize, and look for images that have been removed. Then it will just tidy up, basically. So, yes. Great. And..."is there a way to sync every image on a hard drive if I have a folder structure nested directly in the main folder?" Yes. So when you would say "import", you would target your-- let's just choose a folder. Let's say you wanted to ingest everything on this hard drive. I would just choose the top level, or everything in this folder, for example. And then I would say "include sub-folders" and then everything will pop up that's within that tree basically. So, as long as you, make sure you tick "include sub-folders" then it's gonna import everything within that folder tree and show you exactly how that looks in the folders area. So, yes, it's possible. Okay. And I have...no idea what this question means-- (laughs) hopefully I do So I'm just going to ask it, "Is there a separate folder made for each image when tokens are used?" There is a folder made... Well, it depends on the criteria, So, this token will make a folder for the date the image was captured. So, if there's five images that were captured on the same date, they will be one folder. So, basically, if the criteria matches a group of images, then it's only going to make one folder. It's not gonna make five folders for the same date. Or, for the example with camera serial numbers, And you've got 500 images shot over two cameras, you're going to end up with two folders: Camera serial number A, and Camera serial number B. So, the answer is no, but if you shot 100 images on 100 different cameras then you're going to get 100 different folders. Great. "If you have your images in multiple external drives, which are offline, does Capture One tell you which drive you need to connect?" You will... Good question, actually. If you right click and say "show in finder" then that wouldn't work because the drive wouldn't be connected. But I don't think there is a metadata entry of its location. So, I think the answer to that is 'no', but it's a good suggestion. Yeah, that that back to your team Exactly. Exactly. It's a really good suggestion (chuckles) and you work with the software developers at Capture One -[David] Absolutely So if you have other things you want to see in Capture One don't hesitate.. (David laughs) ..letting us know. Um, David, Jay Goodrich would wanna know a little bit, quickly, about your thoughts on having a catalog stored in, either Dropbox or iCloud drive folder. Yeah, that does work. But I think you just need to... Test it. Because I've seen some issues with some Cloud services, especially if, let's say, I'm working this catalog and it's on my Dropbox, or whatever, and then I close the catalog, and then I shut my computer down... But Dropbox hasn't finished updating. And then perhaps I go to another computer and try to open that catalog, then it's, kind of, half-written to. So, I think it's fine to use those cloud services, but just be aware, if you're making changes to the catalog, let that cloud synchronization finish before you then, want to do something else. But, absolutely, it should be absolutely fine. I've had good success in sharing a catalog with somebody over Dropbox, but the issues start if.. You know, you make that mistake of... Cutting your internet connection before that process has finished and then trying to access the catalog from somewhere else.