Capture One and Lightroom both offer image cataloguing tools with powerful organization and search capabilities, but they both rely on an import process. And, if you make changes outside your catalog, you’ll have to synchronize or re-link your image files. Capture One Sessions are different. They are like ‘live’ browsing. And they are not just for tethered shooting.
This is one of the complaints about image cataloguing generally, that you have to go through an import process first to ingest your images into the catalog and even then the catalog only shows what it ‘thinks’ is there, so that if you want to make sure all your images stay connected and up to date you always have to work within the catalog so that it stays up to date.
It’s like doing a deal with the devil. If you want these powerful catalog-wide search and organization tools, this is what you have to do.
But Capture One Sessions offer an alternative approach. If you are prepared to step back just a little from these powerful cataloguing features, Sessions can offer a much simpler workflow with ‘live’ image/folder display and adjustments which are stored with your images, not in a single monolithic catalog file.
Sessions aren’t just for tethered shooting
Sessions offer a very different workflow based originally around tethered shooting setups. Capture One is legendary amongst professionals for its tethered shooting capabilties, where you can shoot, import, edit and share directly from your computer. It’s ideal for this kind of shoot-edit-finish workflow.
You can create a Capture One Session just as easily as you can create a Catalog from the File menu. Instead of creating a Catalog, it creates a set of Session folders for Capture, Output and Selects. This is for tethered shooting workflows, but you don’t have to use these at all if you already have images on your computer that you want to browse and organize. You can collapse this set of Session folders in the sidebar and instead scroll down to the System Folders section, where you’ll see all the drivess/volumes and folder structures on your computer.
This is the magic part. You can open any of these to examine the contents. Capture One will scan for images, create thumbnails and previews and store these within folders it creates alongside.
It’s not just a tool for browsing, though. You can select and edit any image in your folders with all the editing tools in Capture One, and create as many Versions as you like, just as if you were working in a Catalog. Instead of storing your adjustments in a single central catalog, though, Sessions store them in the Capture One folder created for each image folder you browse.
This means your edits are not stored in a monolithic, central catalog file, but externally, right alongside the images they are applied to. There is a certain safety and security in that, you might think, but the advantages are very practical. This approach means that you can create a whole new Session, view the same folders and all your edits will be visible too – the new Session will see and read the contents of the Capture One folder automatically.
With Capture One Catalogs, your edits are stored internally and are available only within that Catalog. With Sessions, your edits are stored externally and are available independently to any new Session you create. How useful is that?
Session organizing tools and how they differ
Sessions can’t organize and search images with quite the same all-powerful ease of Catalogs. There are limitations (see below). However, you can still add, inspect and modify metadata, and you can create Session Albums and Smart Albums.
However, Sessions offer only a simple linear list of Albums and Smart Albums. You can’t nest them in a complex hierarchical structure in the same way you can with Catalogs. You also can’t create Groups and Projects. The only workaround for this would be to have multiple sessions – remember, though, they will all work from the same separately-stored metadata and edits.
Another key point is that Sessions do not keep a database of every folder you’ve visited. They store thumbnails, previews, edits and metadata within these folders, but it’s not all brought together into a single, searchable database. You can’t do a global search in the same way you can with Catalogs.
But there is a twist here too. If you create a Session Album, the Session will in fact ‘remember’ and store the image data centrally in its own Session database. It will also do this for any folders you add as Session Favorites. If you create a Smart Album or select All Images and search or filter your images, it won’t search them all, but it will search all images in Albums or Session Favorites.
You need to be clear about what’s happening with Session searches, then, but once you understand the system it’s all perfectly workable.
Sessions vs Catalogs: which should you use?
Capture One Catalogs are still the most powerful option for centralized image databases. Sessions do offer Albums, seach and filtering tools, but they don’t have the scope of Catalogs. But if you routinely use other editors to work on your images, especially if you do this outside of Capture One, Sessions are much better. They will ‘see’ your new images live, straight away, with no import or synchronization process. They are also better if you like to export finished JPEG or TIFF versions of your edits and see them straight away without re-importing.
Personally, I do like the centralized organization of Catalogs, but there are many advantages to Sessions for the way I work. I also use DxO PhotoLab and ON1 Photo RAW, which tend to work best as standalone applications rather than external editors because their own non-destructive workflow is then available – and with the live folder views of Sessions, I can see the output from these programs straight away.
So, Catalogs or Sessions? You decide! All I would suggest is that if you’ve been using Capture One Cataloges by default, then you should definitely give Sessions a try too. They’re not so good for global image cataloguing, but they have some major everyday workflow advantages, not least the live folder browsing and separately stored image metadata/edits.
