Catalog Migrations
Capture One to Lightroom—The Details
So: Lightroom.
First off, let me say this isn't meant as a push for anyone to leave Capture One: the app we use to manage and process our images is obviously the cornerstone of our work, and what we choose is a highly personal decision. But given how daunting these transitions can be, I figured it might be useful to share a walkthrough of how I did this. Besides, the following method could just as well apply in a move from Lightroom to Capture One. The concept itself is perfectly neutral.
The catalog setup
Let's begin with the mechanics. As explained in this video, my master images are organized in yearly folders:
The current year's library gets stored on my computer's internal SSD (for speed and easy access).
Archives live on an external RAID drive.
My image catalogs follow the same structure: at the beginning of each year I start a fresh one, and relocate the previous image folder to the RAID drive. It's always best practice to move files from within a DAM application but since it's just a single main folder, even Capture One's much more limited relinking capabilities can handle this easily if it's done from Finder or File Explorer.
There's nothing wrong with using a single catalog btw. I just prefer beginning with a clean slate when a new year rolls in. But this workflow relies on the regular exporting of edited images to an Edited catalog, as well as a series of cloud-based locations (it's all in that video and post if you're interested).
With this in place, rebuilding the Edited catalog was easy peasy: I just created a new one in Lightroom Classic, and added all the archival folders (no copying, no moving). Metadata took care of the structure. Done.
Years, cameras, lenses…Automatic organization.
The yearly catalogs were a different story.
Enter Avalanche
On deciding to switch, I'd resigned myself to either losing all the folders and albums I'd built in Capture One, or biting the bullet and purchasing a perpetual V23 license. I almost did, but the $300 "upgrade" price gave me pause—especially knowing the app had just been on sale. In the end I figured I'd wait, and buy it later if anything urgent came up.
But then I stumbled on Avalanche, a catalog conversion app. I'd never heard of it. I wasn't even aware this sort of thing was possible. Basically, it reads a catalog database and converts it to another format (in my case C1 to LR). It can copy the master images to new folders and subfolders during the operation, or just link to the referenced files, leaving everything in place. This is the option I chose.
The cool thing? Avalanche doesn't need the host application. Which means it doesn't require an active subscription either. It simply reads catalog files—and those aren't locked behind a paywall.
Once the process is completed, the migration results in a carbon-copy of the original catalog structure: all folders, subfolders and albums. Smart Albums migrate as well but they lose their "smarts": they just become dumb, empty folders. No big deal.
Avalanche also claims to convert image processing, but so far my experience with this has been hit or miss. It doesn't seem to recognize any processing done using layers in Capture One, so some images come out much better than others, depending on how they were originally edited. Profile Curves (film simulations for Fujifilm raw files) don't make it either: all images default to the standard Adobe Color. [1]
When it works though, it does a surprisingly good job: recreating exposure settings, tone curve, vignetting etc. [2]
One thing to note: I've only converted V23 catalogs. This may be at play, given how recent the version is. I'll let you know if older catalogs fare better once I've gotten around to it.
Still, even with a less than perfect conversion, I'm impressed. It's the difference between every image going back to zero, or getting a fairly good starting point (or better) on many of them.
The image on the left is the C1 edited version, the one on the right is Avalanche’s raw translation to LR. On the whole, this is way more than I expected.
Moving—in three steps
Still with me? Alright, let's summarize:
Step 1: I convert a catalog with Avalanche. This generates a new Lightroom catalog folder.
Step 2: I Open the new Lightroom catalog and wait for previews to be rebuilt. The original processing only appears once this operation has completed, so this is important (and it may take awhile).
Step 3: I add the corresponding Edited folder to this new catalog (ex: for the 2022 catalog I imported my Edited 2022 folder).
Why this last step? I've done this on every migration going back to Aperture, and the idea is to see my original edits next to the new master versions. I doesn't cost anything more, makes it easy to compare results, and the edited images can easily be hidden if they're in the way.
Side by side: a view of edited versions next to the converted files. Capture One images include the EDIT suffix.
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Changing apps is never a trivial process, and it's not something to be undertaken lightly. But with this setup, I've come as close to painless as I ever have.
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This means that any B&W image relying on a raw monochrome profile will first display in colour. Easy to fix but important to note.
Lightroom's positive vignette is applied differently, and is very aggressive compared to C1; so this doesn't transfer well and requires further correction.
