A good workflow is very important

[sinus]

IMatch offers more and more, we have a lot of possibilities, categories, collections and cool Apps.

The longer I work with IMatch, the more I am sure:
the most important thing is a good and consistent workflow.
In the long run, it's not lost time if you spend a week or more on the right workflow alone.

Workflow means for me, the whole process from the picture in the camera on the computer, labeling, cataloging, classifying and alone including delivery, and backup.

From my point of view, the goal would be to find pictures again as quickly as possible. That you can answer questions:
- what format does a file have?
- Size
- who's on, where and when
- at which event or which product
- etc

But also questions like:
- the picture has a version
- show all pictures of an event
- which pictures were delivered
- pictures were retouched
- which are private pictures, which are not
- etc

And perhaps the workflow is also part of it:
- how to pass on pictures (private and business)
- or view (Slideshow, create pdf, create copies with batches
- etc

And of course, very importantly, in principle, the entire range of data backup is also part of the workflow.
You should also consider this carefully and then always do it this way, but check it from time to time.

I've certainly forgotten a lot, but I just wanted to emphasize that you shouldn't lose track of the entire forest  because of all the very interesting IMatch trees. 

[frlindla]

Could you tell us a little about Your workflow and how you do it? Recommondations?

[sinus]

Could you tell us a little about Your workflow and how you do it? Recommondations?

Thanks for this.
Hmm, not easy, because I have -I guess- a special workflow.
I will think about this and will write later more, but unfortunately just these days I have not a lot of time (except a client cancels the order  )

But generelly you are really right, if we would know some workflows from users, this would be helpful.

[Patrick]

Hi there,
I have a workflow related question and thus I'm sharing my workflow and will give you some background info first:

I'm a pro photographer and shoot arond 20'000 pictures a year for clients. I shoot RAW and work with Capture One (Sessions). Some of the pictures are shot in the studio in a tethered environment directly into C1. Others are shot on location and then ingested in the studio.
For events I keep most pictures in C1 and export JPEGs or TIFFs for the clients. For portraits and other jobs with fewer pictures than from an event, I finish them up in Photoshop (TIFF) and then export them from C1.

So here's my workflow (and questions that go along with it):

1. Ingestion to my internal SSD Drive for work in progress (Tethering or Photomechanic/C1)
2. Selection of my pics in C1, sometimes Photomechanic with star rating (better RAW preview than IMatch)
3. Deletion of bad pics, change to IMatch
4. Renaming, title, description, setting of copyright, coordinates etc. in IMatch. Writing back the metadata
5. Syncing back the metadata in C1. If my clients need to select their favorites, I upload the pictures to prodibi directly from C1 and send them the link. If this is not necessary, I start immediately with 5.1
    5.1 developing of my "keepers". 3* are then handed over to Photoshop, 4* are developed only in C1
6. Retouching in Photoshop when needed. The resulting TIFFs then get 4*.
7. Heading back to IMatch, transfering existing metadata to TIFFs, setting keywords, writing metadata
8. Export from C1 to desired format
9. Moving the project folder to my Archive via IMatch

Everyday, my SSD (work in progress) is backed up on a directly attached RAID 5 (Drobo 5D2). This Drobo hosts also my short time archive (last 3-4 years). This drobo is daily backed up to a Drobo NAS in the studio. Every night, the NAS is backed up offsite to another Drobo NAS at my home.

So far, I'm pretty happy with the workflow, even though C1 and IMatch are not even capable of sharing star ratings (the RAW/TIFF versions) properly. I guess this is more likely C1's fault...
However, I have one issue that just came up: A client needs pictures of a place where I have shot time and again over the years. So I created a collection in IMatch and moved my favorites in this collection. If I want to re-develop these photos, is there a way to bring such a collection over to C1 or do I have to go picture by picture and create kind of a collection in C1? It would be great to for instance export a collection or export the RAW files of a collection (temporary folder), work on it, save the resulting TIFFs and get rid of the temporary folder.

I hope this helps.
Patrick

[Jingo]

If I want to re-develop these photos, is there a way to bring such a collection over to C1 or do I have to go picture by picture and create kind of a collection in C1? It would be great to for instance export a collection or export the RAW files of a collection (temporary folder), work on it, save the resulting TIFFs and get rid of the temporary folder.

I hope this helps.
Patrick

Well - you can force an IMPORT into Capture one from IMatch using selected photos... but as far as I can tell - you cannot force C1 to open to a specific directory or image externally (sadness).

Here is what I have setup but this didn't work... it simply tried to import files selected in IM directly into C1:





The replace commands are because my IM DB only contains JPG's and my top folder naming convention is different. 

Personally - I just use a C1 catalog and even though I do not do any cataloging in C1, my folder path and filenames are exactly the same between my RAW folder (on P drive) and my Develop folder (on my F drive) so when I want/need to re-edit a RAW in C1, I simply open the catalog and navigate to the same folder and find the file... voila!  But I do not re-edit that often so it is not a major deal breaker to me.

Hope this helps!

[thrinn]

If I want to re-develop these photos, is there a way to bring such a collection over to C1 or do I have to go picture by picture and create kind of a collection in C1? It would be great to for instance export a collection or export the RAW files of a collection (temporary folder), work on it, save the resulting TIFFs and get rid of the temporary folder.

One approach I have used successfully to create a photo book with an external application (not C1) of pictures stored in different places was as follows:

   
• Create a folder to be used as tempory work folder, e.g. Z:\C1 Work Folder.
• Open a Windows Command prompt with administrative privileges: Start menu > type "cmd" > right mouse button > Execute as administrator (or something similar, I am on a German Windows)
• In IMatch, select the RAW pictures you want to work on.
• Open the "Copy Data" app which you will find in the App Manager. If the App Manager is not visible, F9,Y will show it.
• Copy the following command line template into the input field at the top of the Copy Data app:
  mklink /H "Z:\C1 Work Folder\{File.NameExt}" "{File.FullName}"
• Press the "Copy Data" button. (This will copy the command above for each selected file into the clipboard).
• Now change to the Windows Command Prompt window you have opened in Step 2 and press Ctrl-V. This will create so-called "hard links" (some kind of alias) to the original files in your work folder, without physically copying or moving the files.

Now you should be able to point C1 to the target folder und start working.
BUT there are some important restrictions:

   
• For technical reasons, the target folder must reside on the same drive as the pictures you want to link to. Hard links will not work between different drives. There is a second type (soft link) without this restriction, but C1 does not recognize these, so this would not work either.
• I have no idea if and how C1 will be able to match the (links to) the pictures in the work folder to the development settings. Because the steps above will only "virtually copy" the RAW files to the work folder, no other files C1 might need.
• I do not know if you are using the Session oder the Catalog concept in C1. As the Session folder structure seems more or less fixed, I doubt that it will work with this approach. If you are using Catalogs, maybe C1 will identify the files as duplicates. If you choose to ignore the duplicates, will C1 still allow to create a collection from the files? I don't know. And if you choose to import the files nevertheless, will the development settings already existing in C1 automatically travel to the copies? I don't know either.

I am a long-time user of IMatch, but a short-time user of C1. Maybe I am a bit spoiled by the flexibility IMatch offers in every respect and am expecting too much from C1.

[Jingo]

For a program geared towards "professionals", Capture One is severely limited in offering advanced functionality.  They totally lock you into their program for finding/editing which I really do not like since I am only using the software as a RAW editor.  Ideally, I'd have a right-click "Edit in C1" for any image file where C1 would open and the edit could be further edited.  But alas, this is not possible what I have found.

If the editor itself wasn't so good - I'd simply move on to something else... but I really like the results I can achieve so I stick with it.  Another annoyance - the inability to overwrite exported files.. always makes a new version even if I want to overwrite! 

[Carlo Didier]

For a program geared towards "professionals", Capture One is severely limited in offering advanced functionality.  They totally lock you into their program for finding/editing which I really do not like since I am only using the software as a RAW editor.  Ideally, I'd have a right-click "Edit in C1" for any image file where C1 would open and the edit could be further edited.  But alas, this is not possible what I have found.

If the editor itself wasn't so good - I'd simply move on to something else... but I really like the results I can achieve so I stick with it.  Another annoyance - the inability to overwrite exported files.. always makes a new version even if I want to overwrite!

Exactly the same here! Fully agree with all your points.