Don't Fall For The Messy Artist Myth - Capture One Session Culling Tutorial

I used to say that the artistic mess is a good thing and as long as I could find what I needed, things were under control. This worked well until it didn't. For a very long time things such as "keywords", "file management" and "structure" I have treated like boring passages in a novel. Somebody put them out there for some strange reason, and surely there were other readers who enjoyed them, but I was eager to skip them and jump quickly into action.

This kind of strategy, or I should rather say LACK of any, very often is a deal breaker when it comes to attempts to take full advantage of a software such as Capture One. You have to understand its basic structure and know how to work with it, otherwise it is highly unlikely that you will enjoy any consistent results. It is a bit like working with a camera - once you make it yours, the tool sort of vanishes and becomes an invisible ally in your creative process. You no longer THINK, you intuitively act and this is exactly the moment when magic starts to happen.

The thing is that it won't happen overnight, you need to commit and put in some work. We all know that to do anything meaningful takes time, but it is worth it.

Take It Or Leave It

Capture One is considered as a difficult software, in my opinion you can make it as easy or difficult as you like. Really. It depends on you. If you enjoy the process you will get enormous satisfaction from the progress you make and from the results that will come. We tend to assume the unknown as difficult. The only way to find out is to give it a try and decide if the thing was made for you or not. Simple, right?

I am writing all this, because I have seen many people excited about Capture One, expecting instant results and quickly hitting a wall. Like expecting to take great photographs without bothering to understand what the exposure is. Well, most of the cameras come with the AUTO mode, but fortunately Capture One does not. You either take it and make it yours or leave it.

Indecisive? No more

Capture One is complex, but not difficult. If you approach it the right way you will definitely enjoy it. To give you one example of an efficient workflow I want to share a video that covers the complete process of culling and rating. Everything you need to know about taming an artistic mess in Capture One's world. Watch the video and learn how to come up with an elegant, simple process of selecting best frames from a photo session.

First of all you can work with sets of images. You can color tag them, star rate or assign keywords. When working with series of similar images you can quickly make final selections with the "Compare Variant" feature. Combine all that with fast focus check with Focus Mask and you are left with the best shots in couple of minutes - ready to jump into the editing part.