Capture One: Catalogs and Sessions

As a photography editing software, Capture One introduces two distinct methods to organize your images: sessions and catalogs. They are similar, but learning the difference between the two can help in establishing a more organized project management workflow.

The software interface doesn’t present much of a difference between the two categories, the divergence becomes obvious behind the scenes, when it comes to the file and folder structure.

It is essential to identify the best method of image organisation and it may sound complicated, but a hybrid approach is best, because it leverages the advantages of both systems and enables flexibility in workflow management. In a case-by-case scenario, the duration and scope of a project should always dictate the use between one and the other.

Sessions

Sessions are designed to be used for individual photography shoots. Even for events spanning several days or weeks, they offer the flexibility to quickly organize files due to the small number of images involved. The same would apply for small photography series.

The folder structure of a session revolves around capture, selects, trash and output folders. This is especially useful when it comes to culling and selecting images. The adjustments made to the images are stored inside the capture folder, so if individual images are moved between sessions, their adjustment metadata needs to be transferred too, similar to an XML sidecar file. Since all files related to a session are contained within a single folder, it’s easy to move the entire session to a different location, as long as the folder structure is set up as relative to the session folder in the software interface.

They are recommended for client shoots, documenting a day for travel photography and event photography. The workflow speed enables the optimal use of tethered shooting, being able to preview and cull a quick succession of images makes sessions ideal on any location-based project.

Catalogs

Catalogs are used on large scale projects and have the main benefit of enabling the detailed organization of large amounts of data, either from different projects or one large-scale project that encompasses different image themes. Even if keywording, metadata and advanced search are also available in sessions, these features greatly benefit working with catalogued images.

When importing images into catalogs an option is presented to copy the image into the catalog infrastructure or to leave it at its original location. Upon copying imported photos in the catalog’s folder, month and day subfolders corresponding to the import date are created in the original folder of the catalog, similar to the session organisation. If left at the original location, the images will not be moved, but if their location changes, this needs to be resynced. The import of existing sessions into catalogs is also possible, but if changes occur to the session after the import, they will not be reflected in the catalog.

In the user interface, inside the catalog structure, user collections can be created for albums, smart albums, projects and groups. Albums are used for simple organization, while smart albums enable the versatile organisation of images based on varios parameters, such as star rating, color labels, metadata properties or keywords. Projects aren’t able to contain images and are best used in combination with smart albums to create powerful queries for specific projects. This way the organisation parameters are applied only to small parts of the entire catalog, speeding up the workflow. Because the images aren’t linked to the actual catalog infrastructure and creating a user collection doesn’t create folders on the disk, they can be part of multiple user collections without creating duplicates. They will sync their adjustments between these collections, so if adjustments need to be done for a collection but not another, it is best to create virtual copies.

Catalogs can be best described as a permanent, long-term solution and are recommended for extensive photography series, projects that encompass multiple products or an extensive image library created for a client. They can also be used for the entire collection of a portfolio.