Would love to see file/DAM performance improvements prioritized

Hi Joachim,

I wholeheartedly disagree with your point 9.

First, catalog and image may be on the screen or multiple screens at the same time, second, even if that is not in your layout and workflow when using C1, your eyes color perception changes as non-neutral colors deplete the chemicals in the cones, and brain adjusts too.

I HIGHLY value neutral graphical elements in imaging software. I'd sometimes rather want to have an even more neutral GUI as is today with orange details.

I am not against a configurable option though.

No offense, but with regards to the breakdown of your feature/change requests, like it or not, that's how product management (and this aha.io site) works, they need many individual feature requests rather than a request basket from many indiviuals. And I don't see how your list of requested items is even related to DAM performance, which is the theme of this idea.

Regards,
BeO

As it's apparently impossible in this forum to see replies to "Capture One Product Manager directly", I just copied my reply to him or her or it to this direct post (and correct some typos, too):

Little side-hint: if you guys would care to register already existing precise user wishes, we users wouldn't need to come up with always the same requests. I don't believe this thread merges only "3 ideas", there were more in respect to DAM.

More precise? No problem:

1. I'd like the ability to search (full-text search, to be clear!) for names of all elements in the user collections: album name, project name, group name. A better search would be a burst in performance contrary to today's pointless need to read each album's name as I have plenty of them.

2. Make smart albums compatible within this search options, like "all images with a rating better than 3★ + album name starts with Cøben + made between March and June 2018"

3. backlink images to their respective albums, like "image used in album/s ... " and then I like to see a list of all albums the image is sorted into.

4. Make it possible and reliable to use: select more than one album and move them into a project. One by one is outdated like the last decade!

5. Nice to see the GPS-data, but why do we need a second app to add GPS data to our RAW files?

6. It's already possible to recognize faces, nice. I'd welcome it if I don't have to start another app (Excire) to find similar faces. Apple's Aperture could do this more than 10 years ago...

7. If I like to sort albums alphabetically in a group, there's absolutely no need to open/show all content of included projects. On the contrary, I'd prefer the possibility to sort all hierarchical items or only the level I'm just focused in.

8. Months ago I made the suggestion to allow the items in the DAM part appear in different colours as it would help a lot to identify structures. See attached files.

9. I like to get a better readable catalog layout, your grey font on dark grey backgroud is a pain to read! Especially due to the lack of a decent search function and therefore need to read all items. And the excuse "to not distract from the image" you can leave in it's garage, as the DAM part is nothing to edit images in. A DAM part at first is very similar to Finder/Explorer tasks, and these apps are better readable than Capture One's GUI layout idea.

10. Allow to duplicate smart folders instead of always make the user crawl through all settings again. Yes, I know about the filter settings becoming a smart folder, but the filters don't cover all possible search categories.

11. Keywording is another weak-point of C1's DAM. And also one of my many weak-points, I'm not the most disciplined keyworder. Part of it is the poor layout quality in the keyword department which I consider to be a bug. If you need to show a frame around a keyword then do that properly instead of "wanted and not done".

12. Another part in keywording to be improved would be to "repair" typos in keywords, so that the already distributed keywords would be corrected if I correct the typo - no matter how long ago I attached this keyword to images. As the keywords are inside the catalog's database this should be possible. I fon't expect C1 to crawl through already existinmg XML sidecarts, but otehrs might see that differently.

Specific DAM Performance Issues:

• Fix Keyword Tool: Adding Keywords via Keyword Tool vs Filters Tool – Select a large number of images. Type a keyword into the Keyword tool. It takes a considerable amount of time to add the keyword. Drag the same selection of images onto a keyword in the Filters tool. It takes a fraction of the time as Keyword tool addition. The two tools are performing the same task but apparently in different ways.

• Fix Metadata Tool: Metadata Updates with Filters Enabled – With a filter(s) enabled, metadata updates on a selection of images runs extraordinarily slow. The behavior "feels like" the filters are evaluating with each update to metadata. Updates to metadata on a selection of images should be an autonomous operation THEN the filtered view should be updated.

• Fix Metadata Auto Sync: Metadata Auto Sync – This feature is a HUGE performance penalty. When enabled the app becomes unusable.

Hi everyone, I've switched the status of this one to "in the works", as we are indeed working on several things at the moment regarding performance of rendering individual images and performance of some apects of DAM.

However, I would like to suggest coming up with more precise feature requests in the future. Performance is an ongoing and non-negotiable investment for Capture One, which can be directed at at nearly infinite number of aspects of our applications.

This causes two problems with this kind of feature request:

• it doesn't help us a lot figuring out the most painful aspects of under-performance (although the comments help)

• it is very difficult to communicate with you all about a status (it will never be finished and it will never cover all aspects at the same time)

I've already split my main catalogue up into four different catalogues in order to reduce Capture One's unresponsiveness when handling larger catalogues. Now, as the catalogue I currently use is at around 28,000 images, the unresponsiveness is getting noticeably worse; just switching tool tabs often takes a few seconds.

Having to split up your archive across several catalogues with each their keyword library etc. just to be able to use the application without having to wait for it to recover after every tiny action really isn't very convenient.

Please fix it, Capture One (the company).

I can't believe this is still a thing, and a decade later we're still hearing that it's not a priority.

Without the ability to search all images in C1, it's not a DAM, period. With the fastest gear possible, large (and honestly we're not even really talking about actually large) catalogs are a huge pain point. It's wild that everyone is so touchy about the complaints, when they won't say "we're not doing this, find another solution".

This is basic DAM funcationality, and we're told that it's an edge case and thus not a priority. Now there's been layoffs and non-core features added, but everyone has more pictures to manage every day.

C1 is a plugin, not a DAM, and we're not supposed to be frustrated by the increasing prices and false choices we're pushed into.

Serve your damn customers.

C1 is a powerful RAW Editing Software, but unfortunately a very poor DAM Software.
GPS functionalities, face recognition, improved keywords, filters for searching, duplicate recognition, etc. etc.

As owner of a perpetual license for C1 16, I'm left out from any release after 16.2.6.7. When scrolling briefly through the release notes up to 16.3.8 and asking a friend who decided to subscribe, there's apparently absolutely no progress in terms of DAM improvements like full text search and filtering for DAM elements like albums/smart albums/projects and groups.

Did I miss any innovation?

I don't think so, as there's nothing to miss. So, good for me to steer clear off subscription rip-off.

I thoroughly agree that Capture One needs to improve DAM and file management urgently.  I came from LR several years ago and it's chalk and cheese.  Just one example from myself, often when I change a folder name in Capture One, it takes a very long time to complete and quite often leaves a huge mess where both the new and old folder name remain on the disk and image files are scattered between both.  Sometimes I have lost edits trying to fix that, extremely frustrating.  I have had better luck going into windows explorer, changing the folder name, then mapping back the lost folder in Capture One, but that's also extra steps and inconvenient.  This happens for me on both my laptop and PC using windows, so seems to be related to Capture One itself.  When I try the exact same operations in LR, they perform flawlessly and quickly every time as you would expect.  My files are on local hard drives and I have 128GB RAM available on the PC and catalog's in the thousands or tens of thousands of images (not hundreds of thousands). 

By the way, I received a reply from support yesterday, that contained the following passage:

Large Catalog performance needs to improve. That also means we need to investigate in which setups, and how big means big Catalogs. Right now we are not using resources on that front.

I.e.: DAM performance has no priority.

This was a reply to a request for help to find the cause of Capture One's excessive unresponsiveness on my system.

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In general, it seems also that there is something that degrades the performance over time — I mean, sometimes it seems that quitting and restarting C1 recovers this degradation.

Capture One has quite solid leaks, to the point I would discourage doing intense activities on less than 32 GB RAM (on Windows at least, this is what I can test). I even had it eat everything there was out of 64GB I have...

Apps expose themself to AppleScript via the Apple Event Model framework. I found that out while looking for any form of Python library that could interact with Capture One. There is a Python library that interacts with the AEM that seems would let you do all the same operations with Capture One that you can do in AppleScript. It doesn't seem to be actively supported and I have not tested it personally. The last documentation I can find is still referencing Python 2.x so I would probably not rely on it. Whether it would any faster is unknown. Its just a different language to interact with the AEM to get to Capture One so perhaps it will be no better.

Here, with a catalogue containing 28k+ images, when I select one of the filters, e.g. a color tag, Capture One brings up the result almost immediately and then becomes unresponsive (spinning beach ball) for a around 12 seconds. With larger catalogues the unresponsiveness lasts longer.

When I use the app and filter with the Filters tool or quick filter (top search bar) I do not see dramatic slow down in the app other than trying to apply changes to filterable data. Editing is not slowed down. That said I rarely make edits while any filters are enabled. I sense from experience and from other's responses here that filters should be used sole for filtering and edits should be done with no filters enabled.

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I use the Filters tool to find most anything I need to find. Dates, Places, Metadata, Keywords generally do all I need. I also use the free form text search which searches every field. That of course can be slow due to the number of fields and images in my catalog (catalog with over 66K images).

Here Capture One becomes unresponsive also when filtering by rating, color tag, date and keywords. You don't see this?

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Perhaps once the new smart collection is created Capture One starts searching based on that criteria? In my experience any changes to metadata or other "filterable" data that is applied while a filter is active causes Capture One to slow down by orders of magnitude.

Have you watched Capture One while this script runs? When smart albums are created are they selected? When a smart album is selected it is filtering. At that point based on my experience any changes to filterable data (even data not included in the filter) causes Capture One to slow down dramatically. Keywords are in my experience are particularly bad at causing this.

Thomas Kyhn  

Sure, SQLlite (3), my bad (I was working with mySQL on a software project when I was commenting, LOL). Still, SQLlite is a quite fast database for single-user operations; it's a de facto standard for dektop applications requiring a database and I see other apps using it that are quite responsive.

In general, it seems also that there is something that degrades the performance over time — I mean, sometimes it seems that quitting and restarting C1 recovers this degradation.

For instance: managing keywords with another application, I have to periodically sync Smart Albums. I have a piece of software that scans XMPs for keywords and prepare a “batch” Applescript that does the job. It's above 10.000 lines (half of them are updates for the progress bar). I don't have any particular speed requirements for it, as I run once per several weeks overnight; but I've noted that execution time changes dramatically from time to time, from two hours to longer than eight hours. It seems that it's faster when I launch it after restarting C1 and that it gets slower and slower as execution proceeds.

In any case I don't understand why a statement like this:

    tell _Workflow to make collection with properties {kind:smart album, name:"edit process 2022-09-08", rules:"<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><MatchOperator Kind=\"AND\"><Condition Enabled=\"YES\"><Key>IB_S_CONTENT_KEYWORDS</Key><Operator>6</Operator><Criterion>edit process 2022-09-08</Criterion></Condition></MatchOperator>"}

runs in the magnitude of seconds: it should just be a batch of inserts into the database.

I use the Filters tool to find most anything I need to find. Dates, Places, Metadata, Keywords generally do all I need. I also use the free form text search which searches every field. That of course can be slow due to the number of fields and images in my catalog (catalog with over 66K images). I've never relied on a collection name because I am so accustomed to applying all the searchable items I need in the metadata fields and keywords. We all do things differently. In Capture One I have very few user collections.

I agree that it would be nice to have Groups and Projects be combined to a single entity that works like Folders in the Folders tool. We need to be able to create a hierarchy, and be able to select any one in the hierarchy and see all images included below it.

There is NO imperative that one must follow Groups > Projects > Albums as a hierarchy (if that is what you meant in your statement).

No, I meant it the way: In groups I can collect albums and projects, in projects I can collect only albums (and no groups, I believe?) and in albums I can collect only images - which none of the other elements can. But I admit, that was not clear in my sentence before.

The other way round: Without an album no project. And although a group can consist of albums and projects, you never see all images in that group.

However, in Aperture this hierarchical way was not needed. An image could be in a project or an album or both. And in a group (or folder) I can see every image of every album and project in this folder. I don't use slideshows, book-projects and light tables often, but I think, after moving them into a folder, the containing pictures were shown already on folder level?

In my Capture One user collections I have top level projects with albums and no groups. I have top level groups with albums and no projects.

Me too, that was not the reason to post the hierarchy.

In Apple Aperture you could create groups of groups, groups of Projects, and groups of Albums inside or outside of projects. Both Capture One and Apple Aperture have complete flexibility.

Except you can't see what's in a group in C1, but in Aperture. This is not what I call flexibility because C1 slows me down as I need to look into each project/album after the level group.

In Apple Aperture I never created a search by a collection name.

Well, then you know the place of each DAM item by heart? Btw. it's not needed to "create a search" - simply type a part of an assumed album name into the search field.

I don't deny some might find that useful. I simply never found the need to do so myself.

Don't recall my last count of albums/projects/groups but I believe the total number was approaching 1.000 since 2019 - before there's another catalog. 

We in this conversation don't know how many people would find that feature useful. This thread is about DAM performance.

Be it keywords or album names: A search possibility is essential and determines also the performance of a DAM. I don't see a DAM as a pile of nicely named card-boxes hidden behind a locker, never to be found again.

If you want a feature for Capture One to search by a user collection name then submit that as a feature request. If lots of people upvote it then Capture One will know that it is a highly sought feature.

I did so a long while ago, after about three requests to support. Now I like you to tell me for what you need groups, projects and albums if it's impossible to find them in  another way than opening each top level and reading through all names? That's not even MS-DOS level!

As you said, there's no Aperture competence or knowledge within C1. And my impression is, the person who developed the current C1-DAM (which is not that bad) left the company a while ago and no one dares to continue his work.