Tech Talk

Your new wingman to Capture One Pro 7

The shift key is definitely worth getting to know better and can as any other wingman help you achieve great things.

Check out the shortcuts below and discover how the shift key can help you speed up your workflow in Capture One.

This is the first part of a small collection of shortcuts all involving the shift key from another one of those late nights in the office.

Avoiding load of the most recently used Session or Catalog

When starting Capture One Pro 7, it will automatically load the Session or Catalog you used last time before it closed. This is a nice feature because it makes it easy to continue working from where you left off.

However if you know you are starting Capture One Pro 7 with the goal of creating a new Session or Catalog, try holding down the Shift (Windows) or Alt/Option (mac) when launching Capture One and you will see a dialog box giving you the option of creating a new Session or Catalog. You can also choose to open an existing Session or Catalog.

documentSelector
Organizing RAW files on disk

I often use Sessions in Capture One Pro 7 for moving around images on my hard drive. It is better than using Explorer/Finder because it will remember to move the Capture One settings files along with the RAW files.

Usually I simply drag images from the thumbnail browser to the desired folder in the Library Tool. Depending on if you are pointing to a different drive than the one the file is on; Capture One Pro 7 will copy or move the file to the folder you drop it in (just like Windows Explorer). To force it to copy, hold down ctrl (a small “+” will appear next to the mouse cursor).

To force it to move the file, hold down shift (those shortcuts also work in Windows Explorer).

Librarytool

Use “Edit Multiple” mode when needed

Capture One Pro 7 has two modes for dealing with multiple selected Variants. Press this button on the toolbar or click “Edit->Edit All Selected Variants” to toggle between the two modes.

ny - edit multiple copyWhen “edit all selected Variants” is enabled (orange) the buttons in the toolbar (like trash, rotate or process) will apply to all selected variants. When “edit all selected variants” is disabled, only the primary Variant (the one with the wide border around it) will be affected by the buttons on the toolbar.

While “edit multiple variants” is powerful, it is also dangerous since you could end up deleting or resetting all the selected variants instead of just the primary one you were looking at. We have reduced the risk of this happening by showing a warning when a dangerous operation is about to be performed.

A simpler way of working is to disable “edit all selected variants” and when you want to process/reset/trash all of your selected images then hold down the shift key while clicking the desired toolbar button. Then it will affect all selected Variants even though the “edit all selected variants” button has been disabled. Notice when holding down shift and hovering over the toolbar buttons, we show the number of variants that will be affected.

ny---edit-multiple-shift_extrasmall
Quickly select the cursor tool you want

Using shortcut keys to select the cursor tool you need is very convenient. To make the shortcuts easier to remember, the shortcut key is shown for each cursor tool in the cursor tool selector. But how do you select the “Rotate Freehand” cursor tool when it has the same shortcut (“r”) as the “Straighten” cursor tool? Hold down shift and press the “r” key multiple times to cycle through all the cursor tools that have “r” as a shortcut key.

cursor tool shortcut

That’s it for this week. Don’t miss the sequel next week!

Best regards,

Theis

 

 

 

 

Theis Hansen
Theis Hansen

Theis is a senior software developer who has been part of the Capture One Windows team for the past six years. (Too) early in the morning you will often find Theis in the Phase One software department coding the idea his brain worked on last night while his baby twins refused to sleep without holding dad's hand.

Comments (3)

These will be quite helpful.
I especially like the ‘force copy’.
I didn’t know about that shortcut for Windows file browser…

Theis Hansen

Hi Ron

Happy to hear! Glad it was helpful.

Very best,
Theis

Great post. Im very curious is it possible to set selecting a tool to be enabled by simply pressing the key again ( as in photoshop) without having to hold shift down.. so I can cycle through tools by pressing the said key? This is an option in PS its not set by default .. but it one of the first things I change when setting up’shop”

Cheers
~jj