Phase One asked me to do a video showing my workflow. “Sure thing” I said, thinking I could do it very quickly. So we started filming. However, it was soon obvious that we had way too much information to share, to get it all squeezed into 1 video.
So instead of 1 video, we are creating 3. This is Part One of our workflow series.
Protect your data with a safe, smooth and efficient workflow
Few things are more critical then your workflow. What’s the point of having a client spend 1,000’s on a shoot if you can’t ingest, name, display, edit and process the images safely and as soon as possible.
We’ve been using the same workflow for years; it’s all pretty straightforward. However I’ve created this ‘Part One’ of my workflow to be useful to everyone, from seasoned Pros to absolute beginners.
Please feel free to post any questions or comments you might have.
Thanks for watching.
Warmest wishes
Adrian Weinbrecht
Adrian Weinbrecht
Adrian Weinbrecht is one Europe’s best established commercial advertising photographers and shoots for a diverse range of top-tier international clients like Sony, UBS, BBC, Jaguar Land Rover, Adidas.
Very nicely done! I think this presentation is the best organized, logical and complete I have seen in a long time. Thanks for these tutorials!
Hey Thanks Jack
I really appreciate the feedback.
best
Adrian
Very nice presentation – I am really looking forward to the remaining parts.
One thing hit me though: Have you ever had to do a major restore from backup? I could see the lack of dating in the backup folder names making it a bit difficult to find the correct folders to restore unless your backup drives are of the same size as your primary RAID volumes.
Hi Anders
For us the primary use of the backup drive is for when we are on location. We don’t rely on these backups for long term storage they are just for the day/week/month etc.
As mentioned in the video, the download backup drive, means that once the cards are downloaded the data then exists in 3x places, ‘The CF Cards’, ‘The Laptop’ and the ‘backup drive’
This provides a good level of redundancy during the shoot day. However at the end of the shoot we still copy the whole session folder onto multiple (3x normally) hard drives.
We then copy the whole session onto a raid drive whilst the job is active, the raid is also backed up.
Once the job is inactive/finished we then Archive the whole session folder, so everything remains contained in the one folder. We are often asked for images shot from years ago, these are easily restored from the Archived Session with all adjustments still in place.
Does that all make sense ?
Sorry to not include all of this info in the video but we had to draw the line somewhere.
Thanks for posting a question.
Adrian
Sorry – that question could have been clearer. 🙂
What I mean is:
I assume that your RAID is filled up from time to time and replaced by a new one. If your backup drives are of the same size as your RAID volume the backup will be more or less full at the same time as your RAID and any restore will be simple – get the backup drive that corresponds to the RAID and you are good to go.
However, if your backup spans several disks you will probably end up having data from separate RAID volumes on the same disk, which means that you will have to sort out the missing folders manually or look into the date stamp of each folder.
Aaand here I’m going to slap my forehead, admit I’m an idiot and post this anyway. “Sort folder by date” in the finder and you are all set. Sorry for missing the obvious. 🙂
Oh – and you managed to answer while I was writing my follow-up.
Yes, it makes sense, thanks for the clarification.
It is great to see a respected photographer giving an insight into their workflow and sharing knowledge.
Thanks Adrian for sharing.
You have already highlighted a few internals of C1 which were a little unclear to me.
Looking forward to the remaining sessions.
Thanks Jun
I really appreciate the feedback.
Best
Adrian
Not being a studio shooter, is Sessions a better input mode than Catalog? More often than not, I’m shooting in particular locations on different days or slightly different locations. How should I decide which method id best – Sessions or Catalog? Clearly, I am a newbie with CO Pro7.
Hi Joel
I’d go with sessions, I shoot mostly on location and this is what we do.
Does that help?
Best
Adrian
I wish all videos were that clear….I look forward to more. Quite helpful.
Very well explained and logical. I just wish I had seen this clip twelve months ago.
Regards mIKE
Great presentation.
In regards to backing up, do you guys have another Raid system that you use or any offsite backup locations?
Also, what monitor are you guys using in your video?
Hi Adrian
We have raid drives in the office that we use for images. The system is quite straight forward, the files stay on the raid drive whilst the shoots/jobs are active.
Once we have delivered the final files we then archive the image files by copying the whole session folder onto 3x backup drives. We use bare Sata drives for this, mounted in desktop Caddies/Cradles. These drives then go into an anti-static bubble wrap inside a VHS case.
We keep 2x drives on site and 1x drive off site. Roughly once a year we will mount all of these drives to check data access.
I hope this answers your query.
Good luck
Adrian
Hi Adrian
I nearly forgot, you asked what type of monitor are we using. For image retouching we use NEC Spectraview Reference 271’s and 241′ . These are 27inch and 24inch monitors with Hardware calibration.
Best
Adrian
Very well done and informative. I have been using Capture One now for 2years and now understand filling a lot more clearly after watching this video. With the increase in work and the call to be able to access images quickly this vid and Capture One I find that much easier to achieve. Thanks Adrian.
Hey Thanks Steve
Glad this is useful……
Adrian
Nice view behind the scenes. I gotta admit that I am scared to use just one card and leave the set holding data only on that, especially since P1 backs have no second card yet.
I have seen some cards broken, lost on a way, especially when I had to trust somebody else (assistants).
So we backup directly on the set or on the end of the shoot directly to a laptop.
Also I learned hard way to not trust other automated tools for data copying (was adobe in this case, but anyway). So I copy the photos manually (as in file manager) to make sure it is smooth and not auto/corrected whatever, and keep them on the CF card as well until they are in offsite backup too. Then first i navigate the C7 to folder on a PC to make the catalogs on shared NAS system where everybody can use them.
Would love to hear the comment on that, or am I paranoid too much?
Katharina
Hi Kitty
When shooting on location or in the studio we download throughout the day. Yes we have had cards go Kaput (not for a while though)
So throughout the day we have the data on the CF cards,laptop and Backup Drive.
When the shoot has completely finished for the day, we then backup the whole session folder (Drag and Drop through the finder) onto usually 3x portable drives. 1 of these will then be stored in a fireproof data safe or my assistant will keep the drive with them for mission critical stuff.
We have sets of memory cards for all our camera’s, the phase gear has about 30x CF cards and I think we have a similar amount for the Nikon. So we can shoot for several days before formatting any cards. We also tend to break the data up into smaller chunks on the cards so that if something goes wrong we don’t lose a whole days work on one card.
We use Super Duper for automated backup of our Raid drives. So far this has worked……….. Fingers crossed.
I don’t think you are being too paranoid. You might be able to format your cards a little earlier though, this is up to you.
A x
Thank you that is perfect so I believe. I though it was not obvious from your video so wanted to know.
I am also quite lucky that broken CF cards usually meant few data not readable, while SD cards usually are not accessible anymore (another reason i dont use them). We refresh cards every year to minimize chance of them being bad.
A lot of the comments here (including mine) has been related to backups so I thought I would share a SNAFU from last night that very much relates to this.
We lost a 10 TB RAID when a 6 months old Synology Enterprise Class SAN crashed and rebooted out of the blue, physically destroying three of the ten harddrives in it.
Never, never EVER trust your hardware to store your data for any amount of time. Ever. Backup, backup, backup. You are not being paranoid, you are protecting your business and your clients business.
I learned also hard way too. Especially RAIDs are not for backup. They are so complicated that even successful recovery is so painful.
Heads up for everybody, RAID systems are availability/performance systems, they are not meant for backup. For backup they are worse even then USB harddrives.
We have one copy in the server, one on another location, jpegs in cloud and in bank.
Excellent presentation Adrian, no matter how much I use this fantastic software there are still new things to discover . One thing you make really clear is the need to back up and back up the back up . Looking forward to the rest . Thanks Geraint
I can’t afford a Phase One camera; so I got Capture One Pro 7. I keep learning something new in 75% of the video I watch. Just wanted to say thank you.
Charles K Rankin
USMC Disable Veteran.
Hi Charles
Great to hear from you.
The wonderful thing about photography is that you never stop learning.
Best
Adrian
Thanks Adrian look forward to part two. Kindest Regards Col
Hi Adrian!
as always I’ve really enjoyed your detailed informations, you should think to make some webinars, you would have a great success!
Thank you and look forward second part,
Warm regards
Massimo
Grazie mille Massimo
Ciao Adrian,
I take this opportunity to ask you a hint: the system of the sessions is perfect for jobs that have a beginning and a definite end. However if, for example, you are working on an archive that grows over time as you suggest to proceed? The new catalog feature is perhaps more suitable (especially for users who come from LR and are habit to it…)?
In my case a realize a lot of landscape photography in my region and therefore my current structure is a catalog branched such as “State> Region> Town” and possibly if the “Town” in example has a lot of stuff I break it further like “City Centre”, “Suburb”, etc.. It follows that these folders are never finished but over the years is fed with new photographs. I could create a session for each area (one for each Town?) but it seems a system too complex and would be even less comfort to explore and view the file in a fluid way.
Do you have any suggestions? I hope it mights help others in my situation.
Thanks again for your great support !
Ciao
Massimo
Hey Massimo
I must admit I don’t use catalogues at this stage, as I’m a commissioned photographer sessions work perfectly for me. However I can see the dilemma you are speaking of in regards to building up a number of images around a region. Catalogues might work better for this purpose.
Off the top of my head I might use a session something like this, first maybe name the session
by the state eg ‘Veneto’
Then inside the Capture Folder you could Have Various Sub folders.
>Capture Folder >Towns >Bassano-Del-Grappa
>Town Centre
>Monuments
>Landscape,
etc named as different folders.
Then as you shoot more images for each region you would simply import them into the appropriate folder. By then rating them you could view your best images for each state using smart folders.
There is no reason you couldn’t simply name a number of sessions by State/Region and then have folders structured within this.
Does this make sense? A catalogue might be a better approach, but I’m honestly not sure as we don’t use catalogues.
Hope this helps?
Best
Adrian
Such a tease, always keeps us waiting for the next instalment. Excellent step by step for the session user.
Adrian, I have asked this question of many and I’d like you thoughts, C1 is really all about the RAW files and the storage of these files. There really is no mention of the files produced as a result of the files i.e.; I shoot raw, produce JPegs for Clients and reprint from those. Any PS is done on the Hi Res JPegs before printing. With an archive now growing exponentially after a PO back purchase, at what stage would you suggest to bin the unprinted/unre-touched JPegs. Or is there a ZIP archive process I’m not aware of ???
Cheers…. Rodd
Hi Rodd
Thanks for the comments and excellent question.
We don’t tend to throw anything away, we just keep it all. Once the work is finished and delivered to the client we then (after a period of time) save it to 3x different hard drives. 2 are kept on site and 1 off site. These drives are bare (internal) SATA drives mounted in desktop caddies. So they are quite cheap per gig. These bare SATA drives are then stored in anti-static bubble wrap inside VHS cases.
Also if you are retouching I would strongly suggest working with tiffs as jpegs are compressed. Final images once retouched can be saved as Jpegs, but files that are being opened and closed several times should ideally be a lossless file type, eg tiff, psd etc. Think about a jpeg a bit like folding a paper napkin, the more you fold it, the more creased it becomes. Do you know what I mean ?
Hope this helps
Best
Adrian
Thank you Adrian for great information on using session. I think session is way better than catalog since you can store every file and output in the same folder. I do have a question: When you export Raw as JPEG into the output folder it also create a cache and a setting folder. Do I really need this folder or can I just delete it. I can not understand if I have to keep them for JPEG.
Thank you
Tormod
Hi Tormod
I’d tend to keep them as they don’t take up much space, if you throw away the settings folder then you will need to redo all your adjustments when you go back to the files. So we always keep them. So you can throw this away, but I wouldn’t.
A
Thank you Adrian for a very helpful step by step guide to importing from a card.
I am still a little confused about what the best workflow would be when I plan to work with C1 on raw files that have already been copied from a card and reside in a folder in the computer/external HD.
I don’t suppose I’d use the “import” dialog box to create a new session/catalog from these files, right? Would I just navigate to them via the System Folders section of the Library Tool and create a new session folder within the folder where these images are, and then move the original files to the “capture” folder of that new session? It seems like a clunky procedure, and I am sure there is an easier way that I can’t figure out.
Hi Claire
There’s a few ways you can do this. I’m not sitting in front of C1 at the moment but I’m reasonably sure this should work : )
First off create your session, then you can import the Raw files by going through the import button on the top left side of your C1 screen. I think you can also start the import via the menus. Anyway once the import box is open just navigate through to find the folder, drive etc with your images and import.
You can also drag the raw files into where the Thumbnails previews are in C1. I think you might also be able to drag them straight into your capture folder via the library area in C1.(I think). So you could simply drag them from the drive via the Mac OS finder into the open window of C1. WARNING, be careful if C1 is using the same drive for the session folder as the Raws you are importing, because doing it this way will move the location of the files to the new folder eg. the capture folder within the session folder. So your files will now be in a new location. It doesn’t just create an alias, this will move the actual raw files.
I hope this helps.
Good luck
A
Hi Adrian and thanks again for your detailed feedback !
Yes, your suggestion makes sense for the use I’ve explained. As alternative I’ve found also useful to rely on my present hd folders structure (already organized in sub-folders for each area) and work directly “folder by folder” using the navigation file panel of one “empty session”. In this way each single folder will have created inside it a sub-folder for Capture One with settings and support files… it doesn’t look a very “clean” solution since it dirty a bit the file structure adding the sub-folders but seems works fine without need to re-import all files in brand new sessions. Is there any drawback adopting this approach? I take the occasion also to ask if sessions have a number limit in terms of images contained.
THANKS AGAIN (I’ve just seen episode two and I’m really really enthusiast!!)
Ciao!
Massimo
Thanks Massimo
I think there are good and bad points with every workflow, so in terms of what you are doing, if it works for you then great. However my only concern with your approach is how do you ensure you have everything backed up ? This includes keeping at least one copy of the raw files either off site or not connected to a computer.
Regarding the maximum number of images per session, I don’t think there is (I could be wrong) a maximum number of images in a session, however you need to make sure you don’t keep all the raw images in a single capture folder if the number exceeds 500 or so. This will also depend on the file size so we are usually ok to have a 500 or so images from a DSLR (D3s or D4) in 1x capture folder, with the medium format we tend to have up to 250 or so. Usually less in most case as we like to organise things into different folders. I’d strongly suggest breaking the raw files up into various sub-folders within the capture folder. This will make your machine run faster but it also makes you more organised. For time-lapse we often have 1000 or so images but we are usually creating one set of correction then applying this to everything, if we had 1000 different files with different subjects then this would slow things as we move around the images. A good rule of thumb is to have fewer raw images in a single folder rather then more, to maximise the efficiency of the machine.
I’ve just been thinking about your Archiving of images again, it might be an idea to save your favourite images as .eip files as these will then contain all your settings applied to the image. It’s also only 1x image to Archive with all the settings attached. You can then open this file on another machine and the work you’ve done will all be there.
Good luck
Adrian
Thank you Adrian!
my present backup rely on two external HD daily updated with “Intego Backup Manager”, the software just take care of the changes made during the day then the backups are quite fast and all the positions are perfectly updated and aligned. All the RAW files are copied, together with LR catalogue (still present while I’m transferring the workflow to CO) and finalized folders (tiff and/or jpeg).
It’s interesting about .eip files, thank you. Surely I will go deeply with the study of this opportunity.
Thanks again for your kind feedback and these tutorials truly excellent!
Massimo
When can we expect the next two videos?
Hi Joel
The second part came out last week, here’s the link:
https://blog.captureone.com/ch-ch-changes-by-adrian-weinbrecht/
Part 3 ‘The Final’ of the workflow series should be out in the next week or so.
thanks
Adrian
What a wonderful series of workflow videos, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge Adrian.
I find those videos significantly better than the ones from Phase One’s image professor, generally speaking!
I think it’s remarkable that as a top professional, you are taking so much time and attention to answer posted queries, in addition of course to the time investment in sharing your knowledge through the vids themselves.
Thanks again,
David McI
Thank you David for taking the time to post a response,
I’ve been very fortunate in my photographic career. So I’m very relaxed about sharing knowledge.
This is actually being written whilst my assistant sets up for the next shot.
Warmest wishes
Adrian
Hi Adrian, Great videos!
I’m a bit flummoxed here. I have a few sessions where all images are imported from a single card. Shooting fast and not much time to swap cards. How do I (or can I) create subfolders if the subfolder box is not ticked at time of import and then move selected files into them (I suppose that once the subfolders are created it’s just a matter of dragging the images over)?
The more I use and learn C1 the more I like it.
Thanks,
Eric
Hi Eric
Apologies for taking a bit of time to get back to you. Yes you can move the images after the import into a different (new) folder.
If we don’t have time to change cards whilst shooting I will often shoot a blank frame (usually I just put my hand over the lens) in between different subjects.
This way we have an obvious break in the images and can select easily only the images we wish to download.
So we may download the same card 3-4times taking different images each time and naming and placing them accordingly.
Good Luck
Adrian
Serious thanks for sharing your process with we amateurs. Storage and processing is as important as taking the picture. The detail of how I process is not a million miles from how you do and it pleases me greatly to know that. I never had a darkroom so I took slides and bored people to death. Passers by crossed over to the other side of the street in case I should drag them inside to view my latest slides. Now I can digitally bore the entire world. My digital camera and digital dark room set the hobby on fire for me. (I too use a NEC monitor, a MultiSync LCD 2690wuxi and it is just perfect). Once again, many thanks…