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Advanced Catalog Organization

Lesson 10 from: Get The Most Out of Your Photos with Capture One Pro 10

David Grover

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Lesson Info

10. Advanced Catalog Organization

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Introduction

08:11
2

What's Possible with Capture One: Quick Edit

06:50
3

Capture One Versions: Installation Basics

02:19
4

Interface Introduction and Customization

27:16
5

The Power of Keyboard Shortcuts

09:27
6

Image Management Basics

10:38
7

Organization Best Practices

09:53
8

Building your First Catalog

19:47
9

Image File Management Automation

06:42
10

Advanced Catalog Organization

17:41
11

How to Add Meta Data

12:42
12

Searching and Filtering Techniques

11:31
13

Further Catalog Strategies

07:09
14

Basic Selecting, Rating and Culling Techniques

15:31
15

Advanced Selecting, Rating and Culling Techniques

20:54
16

Basic Composing Techniques: Cropping, Rotation, Straightening

09:29
17

How to Correct for Perspective

12:35
18

Basic Tool Behavior

11:04
19

Tool Basics Part 1

22:44
20

Tool Basics Part 2

06:34
21

Converting to Black and White and Adding Grain

10:13
22

How to Apply Image Adjustments Globally

08:02
23

Sharpening and Noise Reduction

09:58
24

How to Create and Save Styles and Presets

07:40
25

Why Should You Shoot Tethered?

02:26
26

How to Set-Up Your Tethered Hardware

02:15
27

How To Set Up A Tethered Photoshoot Project

11:07
28

Basic Session Workflow Organizing And Making Selects

21:45
29

Basic Session Workflow Exporting

05:44
30

Advanced Session Workflow

15:00
31

Creating Selections With Smart Albums

06:20
32

Advanced Exporting

09:03
33

Saving Session Templates

03:14
34

Collaborating On Set With Capture Pilot

17:45
35

Using The Color Editor Basic Color Adjustment

15:26
36

Skin Tone Adjustments

09:30
37

Color Grading Using The Color Balance Tool

12:54
38

Image Processing Demo Perfecting Color

08:11
39

Create Masks for Local Adjustments using Brushes & Gradients

12:31
40

Advanced Local Adjustments using Masks

17:15
41

Dodging and Burning in Capture One

11:30
42

Creating Local Adjustments with the Color Editor

07:15
43

How to Use Local Adjustment Masks for Color Editing

03:43
44

How to Remove Objects in your Image

09:07
45

Image Processing Demo: Local Adjustments

05:57
46

Exporting with File>Export

08:07
47

Export Strategies and Proofing Previews with Process Recipes

11:49
48

How to Export for Social Media

05:11
49

More Clever Tricks with Capture One Pro 10

05:57
50

Final Q&A

13:11

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.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Capture One Discount Code
Wacom Discount Code
Tether Tools Discount Code

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Workspace Layout Visual
Windows Keyboard Shortcuts
Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
Session Users Glossary of Terms
Catalog Users Glossary of Terms

Ratings and Reviews

Stef
 

This is a good overview of Capture One 10. The course is well structured and presented logically and progressively with clear and concise examples. The software is intricate and the amount of details presented will benefit from a second or third viewing, along with sufficient practice. David is an excellent teacher, slow enough to follow, fast enough to keep the listener's interest. I would agree with a previous reviewer that the shooting session was uninspired but the tethered demo was thoroughly useful nevertheless for someone to become an assistant, for instance. If you have ever used LR in this role, you will appreciate the power and stability of C1 for tethering. With regards to the comment about this class being non-creative; before you can run you have to walk and this course is all about understanding how to operate the software not about what you eventually want to do with it. Capture One is well designed, speedy and its homogeneous interface makes it easy to get to a result once you have a good knowledge of its layout and principles, compared for example with LR which is all over the place with modes, inconsistent and slow operations. Likewise, the C1 color editor is miles ahead of LR color functions, in simplicity and overall efficiency. This class is about mechanics for a reason; creativity is a parallel stream. It would have been beneficial to have a module highlighting major differences with LR for people migrating to Capture One as the word on the street is that C1 is hard. I would suggest to listen in to convince yourself of the contrary. All in all, I recommend this class; it is time well invested if you want to become more comfortable with Capture One and discover its potential.

Maria Baptiste
 

I recently purchased Capture One because I needed a RAW converter that was more dependable and also more reliable when it came to shooting tethered. I also noticed that many of the photogs I follow really enjoy using Capture One and rave about its efficiency. After looking at a few YouTube videos I decided that I needed something more thorough and of course CreativeLive delivered. This is an excellent course and David Grover is a superb instructor. His in depth and thorough knowledge of the software is obvious but his manner of speaking and the simplicity with which he provides directions makes it easy to learn Capture One and lets you appreciate a sophisticated and expertly engineered software. If you're working with Capture One 11, layers is a little different than in version 10 but otherwise everything David discusses is the same. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and will continue to refer back to sections as needed. Thank you Creative Live and David Grover!!

user-b05602
 

The course is excellent and David does a nice job. However, I'm an advanced armature, not a professional. I had my own personal color darkroom, then Photoshop/Bridge, and NIK which I still use occasionally. My intention is to rely on Capture One which I purchased about 90 days ago. I would have appreciated a SIMPLE, here is how you load (Import) an image, "save" or "save as" and how to simply export an image (Variant). Yes those items are covered but, David has a tendency to casually and very quickly jump from Tool Tabs or Cursor Tools or the Tool Bar and then magically it's done and he has moved on. How did he do it. Based on David's training, I love the results I get with Capture One Pro. Yes, I know this is not Photoshop - it's much better. I never used Lightroom. I added variant to my vocabulary and I understand all the tools. I still struggle with the simple import, save, save as, and export of a image I worked on and cropped, then trying to consistently open that image as I see it in Capture One Pro. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I don't know why. I will continue to re-review the course materials and I will figure it out. I know there is something simple I missed as David navigated the various tools and pull downs. I recommend this class but it does little for the armature. Capture One Pro is second nature to him and he knows all the ins and outs. I would help me a lot if he just add a 5 minute intro, importing an image from a folder, just crop it, then export the variant and open it in Photoshop.

Student Work

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