Finding images in a large Session has been made easier with Filters but you can only look at one Session at a time. But how do I search for an image across Sessions? No way to do this. I like most photographers just publish 1 in 20 or more images. What I find my self doing is try to remember what Session or year I made a photograph. What I came up with is a Session Index not containing all images but just images I liked at the time. 

The Session Index is just a Session with a collection of downsampled Jpeg files with all the metadata to get you  back to the original Session.  Not a hard concept that can be automated each time you Process an image for you web site or FB or just for the Index.

One part of this workflow partly depends on a Script to fill in a metadata filed call Original Filename. This will give you the full path to the original RAW file.  Without the script you have to put all the data in by hand. Scripting is only available on the Mac and I will be glad to share the script to anyone that wants it. (Sorry Windows people, maybe someone out there can figure something out!) 

Since a picture is worth thousand works and I hate to write I made a movie of the workflow and set up. This is on my web site that is a mess at this moment but hope to have it in better shape during the Lockdown!

Moving to a Mac to Widows was easy for me but there are some little differences that may trip you up. What I have done to get you started is in the attached movie. It covers just the basics so don’t expect to much detail.

The interface is generally cleaner and follows some Mac rules for consistence that make the Mac an easier system to use. For example: Uninstalling a program you don’t need to find the Uninstall in the program. You simply drag and drop the program from Applications folder to the Trash. Easy!

One thing you need to remember to do that is different on the Mac is not to remove a device like a USB key or a Memory card before Ejecting the device. After using Windows for so many years and just pulling out the device this was hard for me to remember. I will say it is a safer way to work!

Other little things are covered as well and in a little more detail. Hope this helps…

Delta Mac Win

What happens if I type the chord Ctrl Alt Delete? Nothing! Mac has a simple way to get to administrative activities. The following movie shows what you need to know and where to find what you need to do by clicking on the apple in the upper left corner of the screen.  

CtlAltDelete

Numbers, Numbers what are all these Numbers!

There are three different ways to control Exposure on any camera and that is what we are talking about. I will try and make sense of all of this in this lesson. There is the ISO number and that controls the sensitivity of the sensor.  Shutter speed that controls how long the sensor sees light. And the f stop that controls how much light comes through the lens.

ISO Number:

ISO stands for International Standards Organization and is a measure of light sensitivity of the sensor. If you worked with film you would by film with different speeds know as ASA or American Standards Organization. Both systems are equal so ISO 100 and ASA 100 are the same.

The ISO number is just a number that you are either going to double or half. For example I generally work at ISO 100 for landscapes. So if I want double the sensitivity I would change to ISO 200. If I would need twice ISO 200 then I would use ISO 400 and so on. The next doubled would be 800 and again 1600. So at 1600 you would be 4 times the sensitivity,

So why not set it at ISO 1600 and be done with this number? Well there is a price you pay for using a high ISO and that is quality of the image. In the film days this would be more grainy but in the digital world there is what is called Noise in the pixels. So for day time shooting ISO 100 is your best setting.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the length of time the shutter is open. The shorter the shutter speed the more stop action you can capture and the slower the speed the more chance of blurring you will have, Again the hard double applies here as it does in ISO. For outdoor sunny days I use 250 or 1/250th of a second so if I need double the light I would use 125 or 1/125 of a second. If I needed more light then I would use 1/60th of a second and even more light the 1/30th of a second. The slower the speed you need a steady hand or a tripod!

The f Stop

The f number is the hardest to understand so let me confuse you to begin with. The f number is a ratio if the front lens element to the focal length of the lens. Are you intimidated yet! Well who cares about this ratio, lens designers! For use end users f8 is f8 no mater what lens we have and it will pass the same amount of light. Now the numbers are a bit confusing and it is just something for a good memory exercise. Here is the rule. f3.5 lets in twice the light as f5,6 and f 5.6 lets in twice the light as f8. The next steps are f11, f16 and f22. So again this is the rule of half and double but the number value doesn’t reflect this.

The way the lens woks is there is an ires in the lens that opens and closes just like you eye purple gets wider at night and smaller in the sun. You can see this looking at the front of the lens if you use the preview button to the right of the lens on the camera body,

So why be concerned with this number? Well other than controlling the amount of light the lens will pass it also controls the Depth of Focus the lens will see. The wider the lens opening, f3.5 the less depth of focus. So what! Well the closer you are to the subject the less the depth of focus is. So making photos of flowers you wouldn’t want to use f3.5 you would want to go to f11 or f16. Now this depth of focus works a little different that you may expect. If you focus on the center of a flower the depth will go 1/3 toward the camera and 2/3 away from he camera. So if you have a depth of focus of focus making close up of a flower of 3 inches then from the point you choose to focus on everything that is 1 inch from the focal point toward the camera and 2 inched away from the focal point will be in focus.

Well tis is enough to digest for one session. Next we can start applying these principals  and why,

First conclusion is RAW image files are very efficient and in the smallest formate possible at this time. I tried two different compression routines and the size difference between compressed and not compressed was about half a MB on 44MB files. Just not worth my time! The two compression routines were ZIP and RAR.

The next was packaging to EIP in Capture One. My conclusion is EIP does no compression. They don't state this in the documentation but still I had to test. Basically EIP combines the RAW file and the .cos or Settings file in a single package to be shared with other's. That is the sole reason for EIP as I see it. Not a bad concept but it is not intended to solve the above issues.  The foot print on the disk is still the same if you modify or open an EIP file on your machine or others open the file. As I stated the EIP file stores two tile, RAW and .cos files from a Session. When you edit an EIP file Capture One creates the Cache files that include the Proxy files and Thumbnail files so the basic foot print on the disk is like the original! No space savings. I should mention EIP files can be directly edited without extracting the RAW file. To get to the RAW file you do an Unpack. Unpacked or Packed you can modify the image. Not bad!

One thing that I found out as we'll when you Unpack an EIP file the RAW image file is restored and the .cos file is restored. Good, you have the original and settings as expected. But there are other files related to the .EIP file that were created with a pre extension .eip (RAW Name) .eip.cot for example are left on the hard drive. The ,EIP file is gone but the supporting files are still on the hard drive. (Would be nice to see Capture One do a little cleanup! The files are small but what good are they if the .EIP file they support is gone.)

Backingup to the cloud or any remote location that requires the internet transfers differently than a local hard drive. Small files generally go faster than large file. When you transfer a large file it is broken up into packets. When you upload a packet is sent and confirmed I think by the size then a second packet is sent confirmed and assembled with the first part and so on until you get to the end of the file. Not sure on the packet size but I have experienced this in the past where I had zipped several large files that were compressed. When it was taking hours the person on the receiving side asked if I could just send a few files not zipped. To make a long story short the folder of 100 files was there before the zip file was finished! Now this was about three years ago but I believe this still to be true. So I am hesitant to suggest zipping Capture One Sessions just for the sake of transfers.

You can review the results of the test below. I might add this is based on Nikon RAW image data so there may be differences with Canon or others but I believe they will be about the same. Maybe someone can test this on other file formats and add a comment to the blog. Also EIP files are limited to Sessions according to the Users Guide but not sure since I use Sessions. Maybe someone can confirm if there is a workflow with Catalogs.

File Compression of Image FilesFile compression of RAW image files and EIP files. Compression of RAW with ZIP and RAR

Capture One offers two systems to manage images, Catalogs and Sessions. This document focuses on Sessions for the simple reason of the simplicity of the design. The basic difference is the storage of the adjustments per image are stored in the Catalog database and depends on the database to create a directory structure. Sessions on the other hand allows you to create the directory structure that makes sense to you and not the black box. (Sorry but I have several old catalogues form years ago that will not work. The RAW images are there but digging them out is painful.)

In my past life I worked for a large software company designing software and doing analysis of other software and how they work. I’m not a programmer but a good “hacker”! So I put on my Hacker hat on and took a closer look at Sessions.

Sessions are relative simple with little mystery about them. Basically a Session is a Folder with a controlling file called the Session (name) .COSessiondb extension. The db at the end would indicate that it is a database and is some sense it could be consider it to be but I would rather call it a controller and tracker file. So what does it track? Well we will get into that as we go. The main goal to to get Image files into the Session. These are again directories called Session Favorites in the interface. There are two ways to Session Favorite, Importing within Capture One Import took or by using the Finder or Explorer to create and populate a Folder. If you do the later you need to tell the Session what and where this folder is located by using the + next to the Session Favorites and navigating to the Folder that contains the image files. The puts the   Folder name in the CO interface and lets the COSessiondb know about it such as it’s location and so on. As soon as one adjustment is made to an image a Sub Folder is created in the Session Favorite folder called CaptureOne. Under the CaptureOne folder there are two folders called Cache and Settings120. The settings for each image are stored in the Settings120 folder with the image name .cos files. More on this later but for now just know that the settings for each image are stored in the same folder structure as the Session Favorite folder name so it creates a well organized package that can be added to moved and so on. No Mystery, No Black Box!

Note: In the above the sub folder called settings120 the 120 is the version of Capture One engine. If you migrated from say version 11 the you will see a folder called settings110. So if you want or need to go back a version on the engine you still have the old settings. Nice!

More Details!:

Time for more details about Session Library, Session Folders, Session Albums and Session Favorites.

Session Folders:

Session Folders are just that, Folders that are created when you create a Session called Capture, Selects, Output, and Trash.  The names are hardcoded in the interface but each one can be changed if you so desire to what ever you want. For if you want to rename the Trash folder to Junk you can but in the interface it will still be called Trash. Here is how you do this:

• In the CO Library interface select the Trash Folder
• Right Click and you will see New and a sub dialog with Trash Folder
• Create a new folder called Junk
• It will ask you if you want to save the existing Trash folder in the Session Favorites. You can say yes or no in either case you can deal with this later if you say yes!
• Now when you put images in the Trash in CO they will go in the Junk folder. You can put this anyplace in your directory structure you want but I suggest keeping it under the Session folder or a sub folder. 

You can do the same for the other three folder if you so desire. I have tested this but I just accept the defaults.

Now if you do this and forget where you put the folder or something you can Right Click the Trash Folder in CO, in the sub dialog you will see three options Show in Library, Show in Finder and Show Details. I use Show Details. Right Click on a detail and you will get a Hide button.

The renaming and locations are stored in the COSessiondb file from what I can tell. (Thats where my hacking experience comes in!)

Session Albums:

There are two albums supplied by default called Five Stare and All Images. There two types of Albums, Smart Albums and just Albums. Smart Albums are nothing more that a collections of Filters like Ratings, Color Tags and Keywords. They get any image that fits the criteria of the filter that exists in the folders in the Session Favorites. Albums are what ever you want to drag and drop into that Album. 

By the way Session Albums can re added and renamed easier than the Session Folder. Just follow the interface.

The criteria for the Albums are stored in the COSessiondb file,

Session Favorites:

Session Favorites are simply a Folder with Image files and a CaptureOne folder with sub folders to contain information relative to the Image files. So think of this as a CaptureOne container. 

Now that said you can do most everything from Finder to populate a folder with Image files. Remember from above that I said the COSessiondb files keeps track of Session Favorites or I can say Session folders so we need to tell this file what is going on. This is done from within Capture One Session Favorites.  Lest start with and example:

Lets say I just did a shoot of a Saw Mill and I want to download the image files from the camera or memory card to a folder called Saw Mill. You can do this will Explorer of Finder with a simple Copy. You can move the Saw Mill folder where you want on the hard drive. Now we need to tell Capture One about this folder. Open Capture One and either navigate to or create a new session. To tell the CoSession.db about this folder you need to go to the Session Favorites  tab and click on the + and navigate to the Saw Mill folder. This makes the entry with the COSessiondb file and puts the folder name in the Session Favorites list. Simple! No other way to do this that I know of. Same way if you want to remove the folder you just use the - in button.

So we have made the relationship and we are ready to work. As soon as you make one adjustment on one of the files in Saw Mill, CO creates a sub folder in the Saw Mill folder called CaptureOne. In CaptureOne folder there are two sub folders called Cache and Settings120 (the 120 is the version number of Capture One. Handy to know!) 

In the Settings120 directory there are two file types that are created; a .cos file that contains all the settings for the Image file and if you create a mask there will be a .comask file. Both have the full name of the image file.  Now you can rename these files through finder but you may have problems with Albums if you do this with Finder so it is best to remame the image file through CO. This will take care of everything for you including Albums.

In the Cache folder there are two folders called Proxies and Thumbnails. Not sure of the total functions of these files and I just don’t think it is important to totally explore these for this discussion. But since they are in a Cache finder I know these are files used to speed up the operation of CO. They can be deleted and CO will regenerate these files if they are missing but  it is best to just leave them alone and let CO do what it needs to do. Just be aware of these files.

Same way with the cos files. There is nothing you can do within the files other than to know where the settings for each image are stored. If you delete a .cos or .comask file then you will loose you settings for that image file. Best not to touch these file!

Do’s and Don’ts of Sessions!

So now that you know what a Session Favorite is and how it is organized there are some things you can do and somethings you should avoid. In General its best to let Capture One do as much as possible but you can override as if needed. Why would you need to override? Well you may want to split a Session that would require the use of Finder to move folders for example. What ever reason you can recover. In this section I will try and give some examples of what to do or not do and the easiest way to get there.

Can a Session be renamed?

Yes but but be careful! This can not be done in CO that I have found but can be done in Finder. Remember a Session is a folder with a  tracking file, the .cosessiondb file. If you rename the Session folder rename the .cosessiondb file with the same name. Best to use Copy and Paste to make sure there isn’t a typo. I have gotten away without renaming but ran into problems down the road. You will have to rename using the Finder or Explorer and make sure you are not in the Session during the name change.

Can a Session be split?

Yes but not in CO.  What you can do is in Finder just move the Session Favorite folder form one Session to the new Session as you want. Now you have to make the .cosessiondb happy so where is what you will need to do.

• • In the session folder that you have moved the folder from you will need to open that session and remove it from the Session Favorites with the -. This will tell the cosessiondb that they folder has been removed. Now depending on where it it moved to there may or may not be a warning icon next to the favorite in the interface.
  • In the new Session you will need to use the + in the Session Favorites to associate it with the cosessiondb file. Done!

Can a Session Favorite belong to two different Sessions?

Yes they can. One thing I should point out is a Session Favorite folder doesn’t know who it belongs to, only the Session cosessiondb knows who belongs to the Session. So it can belong to two or more Sessions. Simply use the Session Favorites + to grab any Favorites folder anywhere.

Now why would I want to do this? Lets say you want to grab several images from a different Session you can grab that Session Favorite folder and select the Images you want and Drag and Drop! When you are done just remove the Session Favorite with the - tool.

Can I backup or restore a single Session Favorite?

Yes. I have done this with a three year project where the full Session is bigger than I have room on my hard drive. Generally I will work directly on the USB hard drive on that Session it there are little changes but if there is major work then I just pull a partial session on the Mac and back up when done. If you have done anything with Albums make sure you update the .COSessiondb on your backup.

The other technique I use is to make a Temporary Session and just bring in one or a few Session Favorite Folders and backup just those folders.  (For reference I use a backup software called Backup Guru. The no frills version is simple and doesn’t do any compression or packing in some strange format. Keep it simple!) 

What do I do if something goes wrong?

For some reason I have gotten blank images in the Browser. I haven’t been able to pin down the cause but it is generally when I look at a Smart Album in a session I have moved or removed a Session Favorite. Generally what happens is there is a duplicate image one with an image and one blank. Select the blanks and put them in the Trash.

If for some reason a Session Favorite is blank then next to the Session Favorite there is a warning icon. If that is the case just remove the Session Favorite with the - tool and get re assign it with the + tool.

You can try changing the search settings in the Session Favorite form Absolute to Relative to Session in the Session Favorite Show Info but I have not had much luck doing this. Just Right Click the Session Favorite in question and select Show Info. The only thing you can change here is the search method form Absolute to Relative to session. Now doing a little testing on the Mac it doesn’t behave like I expect. I blame this on the fact that Mac uses a Unix operating system with a Mac front end. As I recall from years ago Unix search is different than Windows and was more robust so this may search differently on the Mac. (I currently don’t have a Windows computer to test this so just an educated guess!)

Conclusion:

To me Sessions are the more user friendly than Catalogs. Less black box and more versatile. The only thing missing is being able to search for an image outside of a Session. My question with a Catalog is what happens when you run out of disk space? Start a new Catalog? Same with Sessions!

The bottom line in this discussion is to let Capture One do as much lifting as possible, they do a great job for the most part. But if you need to do more I hope you will have a better understand of how Sessions work. My belief is if you understand how something works you can understand how and why to do things.

Disclaimer: All the testing was done on a Mac Book Pro and not on Windows so there may be some differences.  I have been using Capture One since about version 3 and started with a Windows machine. In 2015 I switched to Mac, a move I have not regretted!  

My Computer History and why the change!

I go back a few years with computers starting with the DOS operation system and was a Beta tester for Windows NT, now just Windows. My first photo editing software was Windows version of Capture One so my backup data was on USB drives with Sessions and some Catalogs. I decided to have a fresh look into the Mac in 2015 just to see if I could simplify life from the Windows marketing and other forced improvements they claim like security updates that are forced without notification! 

For years I just didn’t care for the way Mac forced their chip and operating system that forced you to totally go Mac and not look back. Mac OS is basically a Unix operating system with a Mac interface and knowing that Unix is a very stable OS was very encouraging. The chip set is the same on Mac and PC based so that was encouraging but really doesn’t matter so much other than the cost is lower.

The firs big setback was the file system on the backup USB drives is different than Windows NTFS so the challenge was to make sure I could still get to my legacy data with the Mac. (More to follow on that.)

Next was comparing the cost so I had a look at updating my hp Z Book with compartmental memory and screen resolution and found the price to be about the same. The big selling points were the size, weight and viewing quality. Both computers seem to operate about the same and the chip set were the same. The big difference was the weight was less on the Mac Bool Pro 15 so much less along with the size of the charging brick so I have less to pack. The difference in the display quality was the major factor since you just can’t debate the Retina quality. So I bought the Mac and haven’t looked back. BTW the guarantee was 2 years and not 90 days and I got a free copy of Pages, Numbers and Keynote and would have to buy the Office products. 

The big concern was moving form a spinning hard drive to an SSD. Again Mac makes backups so easy with Time Machine that I just don’t worry. I have use it once in 4 years and recovery was very simple. Either way SSD or spinner you need to backup! I use Time Machine to backup everything except Photos. For my Photos I use Backup Guru. More later!

Making the change:

Making the change took a little research and I will explain why I did what I did best I can but at the end of the day there may be a better way or better products to use in the background. The determining factory in “Why” were cost and reliability. 

File System for Photo Backup and Legacy data:

Since my existing photo backup was done on a Windows machine then the file system was NTFS. Mac used a different file storage system so I had a look at a converter. What I chose was NTFS for Mac OSx LT. As I recall it was about 30 dollars and it was a one time fee. Simple to install and noting to use. When you plugin an NTFS USB drive it goes to work, No interaction is needed so it stores everything in NTFS format or reads and converts to Mac from backup. I frequently edit photo Sessions directly from the USB drive and no noticeable lag.

Photo Backup and Legacy data:

As I mentioned earlier I use Time Machine to backup everything other than Photos. I do all my photo work in a root directory called PhotoMaster. With Time Machine you can exclude folders so I exclude PhotoMaster. 

For the photos I use Backup Guru for the simple reason it was in expensive and doesn’t encrypt the files in some unknown way. It just copies files and looks at the time date stamp. Anything newer overnights what is there. In the past with Windows different products did who knows what so I wanted a very simple system that I could hack if needed. In the past I wrote a simple backup batch file using Robo Copy on Windows since I didn’t like or trust backup software. Backup Guru is very simple just a source and destination selection and go for it. I chose the lite version and get a notice once a year there is an upgrade but haven’t bothered. As I recall I paid a onetime cost of 30 dollars. 

Enjoying the Mac experience:

I can truly say I don’t miss Windows! The Mac OS has been stable and in the past four years I have not had a problem.  The display is worth the change if nothing more. What I see is what I get from screen to printer. On Windows I purchased a good ??? monitor that was calibrated with a Color Monkey along with the printer, a step that I no longer seem to need. On Windows I had a workflow using Capture Pilot to verify and my iPad to verify the photo the image before printing. I just use the Mac!

The Mac OS allows simple Scripting that Capture One has opened for use. Now I worked for a software company for more that 23 years but not as a programmer but know enough to hack. I wrote a script to fill in data fields in the Meta Data like my name, address, web page and so on. the most useful is the Original File name. Now all of these can be filled in with Presets except the Original File name. In Presets this is not a dynamic field that I have found but with Scripting it is. In other words the field in Presets needs to be changed manually for each photo. With the script is automatically changes per Image. Nice!  Before I process a photo I fill in the Headline filed and Description in the metadata and use the Headline Token to name the photo. My Web page reads these two files and saves me time duplicating the same data twice. Since the file name is different than the RAW file name then I have a link back to the RAW file and it’s neighbors, by storing the Original file name. I use a web based software to get the metadata called Metapicz  http://metapicz.com/#landing. You can always call the Jpeg in CO.

Summary:

As you can see I have a complete that is compatible with both Mac and Windows for my file storage so if I want or need to work with Windows I can without a problem. True Windows dominates the market with a small investment of 30 dollars four years ago I am covered!

People say there are more apps for Windows than Mac but for photo editing if it isn’t for the Mac the I don’t need it! As far as Office products when I bought the Mac it had the Mac version  came with everything. Easier to use and can export and import to Office Products.

Do I miss Windows, Not One Bit or Byte!

References:

Backup Guru

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/46412/mac-backup-guru

NTFS for Mac OSX

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Metapicz

 http://metapicz.com/#landing

Finder

My Computer History and why the change!

I go back a few years with computers starting with the DOS operation system and was a Beta tester for Windows NT, now just Windows. My first photo editing software was Windows version of Capture One so my backup data was on USB drives with Sessions and some Catalogs. I decided to have a fresh look into the Mac in 2015 just to see if I could simplify life from the Windows marketing and other forced improvements they claim like security updates that are forced without notification! 

For years I just didn’t care for the way Mac forced their chip and operating system that forced you to totally go Mac and not look back. Mac OS is basically a Unix operating system with a Mac interface and knowing that Unix is a very stable OS was very encouraging. The chip set is the same on Mac and PC based so that was encouraging but really doesn’t matter so much other than the cost is lower.

The firs big setback was the file system on the backup USB drives is different than Windows NTFS so the challenge was to make sure I could still get to my legacy data with the Mac. (More to follow on that.)

Next was comparing the cost so I had a look at updating my hp Z Book with compartmental memory and screen resolution and found the price to be about the same. The big selling points were the size, weight and viewing quality. Both computers seem to operate about the same and the chip set were the same. The big difference was the weight was less on the Mac Bool Pro 15 so much less along with the size of the charging brick so I have less to pack. The difference in the display quality was the major factor since you just can’t debate the Retina quality. So I bought the Mac and haven’t looked back. BTW the guarantee was 2 years and not 90 days and I got a free copy of Pages, Numbers and Keynote and would have to buy the Office products. 

The big concern was moving form a spinning hard drive to an SSD. Again Mac makes backups so easy with Time Machine that I just don’t worry. I have use it once in 4 years and recovery was very simple. Either way SSD or spinner you need to backup! I use Time Machine to backup everything except Photos. For my Photos I use Backup Guru. More later!

Making the change:

Making the change took a little research and I will explain why I did what I did best I can but at the end of the day there may be a better way or better products to use in the background. The determining factory in “Why” were cost and reliability. 

File System for Photo Backup and Legacy data:

Since my existing photo backup was done on a Windows machine then the file system was NTFS. Mac used a different file storage system so I had a look at a converter. What I chose was NTFS for Mac OSx LT. As I recall it was about 30 dollars and it was a one time fee. Simple to install and noting to use. When you plugin an NTFS USB drive it goes to work, No interaction is needed so it stores everything in NTFS format or reads and converts to Mac from backup. I frequently edit photo Sessions directly from the USB drive and no noticeable lag.

Photo Backup and Legacy data:

As I mentioned earlier I use Time Machine to backup everything other than Photos. I do all my photo work in a root directory called PhotoMaster. With Time Machine you can exclude folders so I exclude PhotoMaster. 

For the photos I use Backup Guru for the simple reason it was in expensive and doesn’t encrypt the files in some unknown way. It just copies files and looks at the time date stamp. Anything newer overnights what is there. In the past with Windows different products did who knows what so I wanted a very simple system that I could hack if needed. In the past I wrote a simple backup batch file using Robo Copy on Windows since I didn’t like or trust backup software. Backup Guru is very simple just a source and destination selection and go for it. I chose the lite version and get a notice once a year there is an upgrade but haven’t bothered. As I recall I paid a onetime cost of 30 dollars. 

Enjoying the Mac experience:

I can truly say I don’t miss Windows! The Mac OS has been stable and in the past four years I have not had a problem.  The display is worth the change if nothing more. What I see is what I get from screen to printer. On Windows I purchased a good ??? monitor that was calibrated with a Color Monkey along with the printer, a step that I no longer seem to need. On Windows I had a workflow using Capture Pilot to verify and my iPad to verify the photo the image before printing. I just use the Mac!

The Mac OS allows simple Scripting that Capture One has opened for use. Now I worked for a software company for more that 23 years but not as a programmer but know enough to hack. I wrote a script to fill in data fields in the Meta Data like my name, address, web page and so on. the most useful is the Original File name. Now all of these can be filled in with Presets except the Original File name. In Presets this is not a dynamic field that I have found but with Scripting it is. In other words the field in Presets needs to be changed manually for each photo. With the script is automatically changes per Image. Nice!  Before I process a photo I fill in the Headline filed and Description in the metadata and use the Headline Token to name the photo. My Web page reads these two files and saves me time duplicating the same data twice. Since the file name is different than the RAW file name then I have a link back to the RAW file and it’s neighbors, by storing the Original file name. I use a web based software to get the metadata called Metapicz  http://metapicz.com/#landing. You can always call the Jpeg in CO.

Summary:

As you can see I have a complete that is compatible with both Mac and Windows for my file storage so if I want or need to work with Windows I can without a problem. True Windows dominates the market with a small investment of 30 dollars four years ago I am covered!

People say there are more apps for Windows than Mac but for photo editing if it isn’t for the Mac the I don’t need it! As far as Office products when I bought the Mac it had the Mac version  came with everything. Easier to use and can export and import to Office Products.

Do I miss Windows, Not One Bit or Byte!

References:

Backup Guru

https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/46412/mac-backup-guru

NTFS for Mac OSX

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/

Metapicz

 http://metapicz.com/#landing

Finder

Sessions on the other hand has a very simple and logical folder structure that can be easily reloaded by folder.  You create the folder name when you do an import or process files instead of the Catalog system so this has your logic and not some programers logic. 

The other big advantage I like is I can connect a USB drive and find the Session and work directly from the USB drive instead of loading everything on my computer drive. I pay a little penally on speed but generally I am looking for just a few files to adjust and process so not a problem.  Not sure how this would work with a Catalog. I still have a few years of backup disks that I need to rip apart the director to find the RAW files!

Hope this helps someone!

Bill

http://bwrealityphotography.com/p580937664/ea2e8efb4

Bill

The same principals hold true for the digital age. I settle at a few ISO settings, generally close to the native ISO, and one Raw converter, my developer. I shoot with Nikon either the D700 and a D800E. My Raw converter is Capture One 8. Why Nikon? Well I just like the feel of the controls and ease of use over the years. Reliability is big on my list as well. Canon, Sony and other are great systems and give great results. Nikon just fits my hands! Capture One to me works and feels like technical photography to me. I started with version 3 and just felt at home. I don't have a good feeling working with Photo Shop's UI and to many tools in to many places. Just doesn't fit my hands! Again use what you feel productive with and not what everyone tells is the best.

One additional tool I use other than a tripod is a CamRanger. For interior shots that need detailed composition the CamRanger allows you to do a tethered connection to the camera and use a iPad to do a live view for composition. What a great tool. This allows me to look at the composition with a large view and set focus and camera settings in detail. For example some of the work I do I need the camera elevated and flat to a wall not allowing me to use the view finder. Being tethered allows better camera placement thus better results. 

More on equipment later,

Hope this helps,

Bill