Capture One Power tips: Browse multiple images with “Select Set”

NOTE: This article discusses an outdated version of Capture One. To learn more about our latest version, click here.

Capture One 9.2 introduced a number of powerful workflow related features, which can make your daily routines easier and more efficient.

My favorite of these new power tools is “Select Set”, which gives you the ability to browse through a collection of images in sets – choosing a range of images then advancing through the thumbnail list by the same number.

Selecting which images to work with

Before Capture One 9.2 was released, I would browse through all the images one by one and assign color tags – red for “reject”, green for “keep”. The problem arose though, that I would rate everything – even images virtually identical. Advancing one by one gives you no frame of reference to the last image.

In version 9.2 I can now load a set – maybe 6 or 8 images at a time, which is great for contextually comparing a range in the main viewer with big preview.  Once I have the images loaded into the viewer I can target the rating to the key images in the set.  There is though a trick to the new workflow, and that is the Edit primary switch. If I rate a selection like this, all images would be rated the same. As I would like to give different ratings to the different images in the viewer I have to make sure that I only edit the primary selected image.

I make sure that I only work on the primary selected image by deselecting the  “Toggle between Edit Primary slected and Edit all selected images”. The red circle in the above screen grab indicates where to deselect it. Rating now only affects the Primary selected images – the image in the viewer with the thick white frame.

By being able to view a number of images at the same time it becomes much easier to compare and rate the best images in a collection of images.

Setting op for browsing multiple images at a time

1. When I want to browse through a collection of images – e.g. 6 at a time I start selecting the first 6 images in the browser.
2. To load the next 6 images I hold down the Alt key + “->” arrow key
3. To cycle the primary selected image among the images displayed in the viewer, I simply use the “->” key. On a Mac I will need to use Cmd key + “->” if I’ve hidden the browser.

After my initial rating I will start working with the best images and during this process often end up making a number of variants of some of the better images. To select the best variants in the end I will again go through my collection now filtered for the green images (the keepers) then assign star ratings to rank them by best shots.

Adding or removing images from the set of images in the viewer

In the case where you might want to increase/decrease the selected set size, then there are additional shortcuts to do this quickly:

“Shift “ + “->” arrow : Loads one more image into the set of images in the viewer.

“Shift “ + “<-” arrow: Removes one image from the set of images in the viewer.

All the best,

Niels

The Image Quality Professor

The digital pioneer, Niels V. Knudsen, is Phase One’s Image Quality Professor and founder of the IQP blog. Moreover, he is responsible for breakthrough advancements in image quality both in Phase One’s medium format camera systems and in Capture One Pro.