Capture One iPad Workflow

I’m generally a studio photographer so I’m quite comfortable having my camera tethered to my laptop, and possibly attached to a large monitor or TV for my clients to view images as I shoot. However, every once in a while I get outdoor projects and my clients expect the same treatment of viewing images instantly on a screen, preferably with a grade and basic edits applied.

In the past, I would tether to the MacBook and use the iPad just as a viewer with the Capture Pilot app, another fantastic product from Capture One Pro. I later switched to wireless tethering via the Camranger setup but the workflow wasn’t great because RAW files took about 20 seconds each to send over wifi, so I resorted to sending only low res JPEGs without any edits and no reason to use these files later on. So I would still have to import RAW files from my SD cards, re-cull, and then edit. Yeah, very annoying workflow.

When Capture One Pro announced their app with tethering I had a job lined up in Saudi Arabia with Genesis and thought it was the perfect opportunity to test it out. Apologies for the long intro, here are my thoughts, experience, and suggested improvements.

Gear list
It’s probably best to start with a gear list so you can compare it to yours for speed.

Workflow
I’ll probably keep my old workflow for studio shoots but here’s the new flow for being outside and keeping it light.

Now, let’s dissect these steps and talk about the pros and cons and areas that Capture One Pro can improve upon.

Step 1: Tethering to iPad.
Just thinking about where tech has gotten us makes me smile.  In 2022 you can transfer RAW files from your camera to a lightweight, brilliant screen on the fly and have some of the most powerful editing tools at your fingertips. Literally your fingertips, like, no mouse. So let’s just pause here for a second and check our privilege.

Speed
Okay, now let’s dive in. The first thing I noticed was the tether (image transfer) speed. The first few shots were lighting fast, almost comparable to the laptop speed which was quite impressive. However, as I kept shooting I noticed the transfer speed started getting slower and sometimes lagged significantly. Sometimes it would stop transferring for a few seconds then bring in the last 5-10 files all together very quickly

I would attribute this behavior to the heat though. I did notice this happened both at the end of a shooting cycle (where the iPad would heat up a little) and in the middle of the day when the outside temperature naturally rises.

It’s okay for the way I generally shoot (slower and fewer exposures) but I would imagine this might be frustrating if you’re a faster shooter. Overall I’m happy with it.

Battery life
I’m able to get about 5-6 hrs of shooting on a single charge. So I do carry a solid power bank to charge the iPad during breaks and location changes.

File naming
Now here’s something that’s really frustrating me. Capture OnePro’s iPad app changes my camera’s file name to “FujiFilm 0001” And then increments from there. Why? Why would you do that to me? This creates a problem because when I back up my RAW files from the camera the file names won’t match up so I can’t search for images with their file names.

What’s even worse is that the file names are reset AGAIN upon export. So now you have 3 sets of mismatched file names. 1-star rating here. You can do better than this guys.

I’d love to have the option to choose my import and export file name just like the desktop version. I sometimes shoot portraits of 30 people a day so naming the files after each person’s name is convenient for me and my retoucher

There are a few things to note here so let’s go with bullet points.

 

3. Selecting and Culling
Very straightforward and intuitive here. You’ve got both star ratings and color tagging options. Some people might miss the pick/unpick function but I personally don’t. You can then filter by star and color rating, however, I would love to be able to see how many images are in the filter. I think that should be a pretty simple fix.

 

4. Moving from iPad to desktop
This is probably the most important feature. The workflow would break down without it. So, there are two ways to do this. I prefer option 2.

Option 1: upload/download via the cloud
For a monthly fee of $5 you can get access to Capture One’s cloud service to upload your RAW files with the edits and rating then download them to a Capture One session or catalog on your desktop. This doesn’t work for me because I usually end up with 40 – 50 Gb of images on a shoot day so uploading and then downloading that amount of data is just not practical.

There is one advantage to this method though. Once the files are uploaded then any further edits you make on either desktop or iPad will automatically sync to all devices when connected to the internet. That’s cool but there’s a better way to manage this though and I’ll talk about this in the next section.

Option 2: airdrop from iPad to desktop
Capture One have come up with a file format called “EIP” that holds the RAW file plus edits and ratings together. So the second (and better) option is to export all your photos from the iPad app as EIP and airdrop them to your computer. Then, drag/copy them to the capture folder of your CaptueOne session or catalog.

 

5. Upload to live album for client selection
Here is my love-hate relationship with Capture One. They finally provided a service that’s essential to professionals and has been available in Adobe Lightroom forever. Unfortunately, the way they’ve chosen to do it leaves tremendous room for improvement and frankly, Lightroom does it much better.

As soon as they announced live albums I canceled my subscription to Prodibi, which is a 3rd party service that allows clients to select, rate, and comment on images and syncs them with your Capture One session. Now that this service is natively available I’m slightly happier.

So, for ANOTHER $5 per month (different than the cloud service in the previous step) you can upload your images to live albums. Well, it’s free to have one album up at a time then you pay to have multiple. Kind of fair since I was paying for Prodibi anyway but a little annoying when you know Lightroom provides this at no extra cost to your subscription and does a better job with it.

Anyway, clients can rate, color tag, and leaves comments on images. They can also filter by star rating and color tag which is great because they can review their selection easily.

You can make further edits and they would sync with the live album automatically, however, adding more images to the album does not sync. So you have to re-share and re-upload the album and share a new link with the client… super annoyingYou can manage access to the live album to make it more secure. I like that option, especially when working with private high-profile clients or commercial campaigns.

Now, let’s talk about how to make this process better. Here’s what I’d like the flow to look like after shooting and editing on iPad, getting ready to move to the desktop, and uploading the selection for clicks to proof and select. And please note that this process is currently available in Lightroom

I really hope someone from Capture One reads this part and does something about it.

 

6. Sharing files with Retoucher
There are two ways I go about this depending on the complexity of the retouching brief. Let’s talk about each one.

Ps. I’ve got a shared Dropbox folder with my retoucher and everything gets shared there. This way files are always being uploaded/downloaded in the background as opposed to WeTransfer where you have to actively click to download.

By simple I mean either me or the client com verbally convey retouching instructions. Usually, this works with personal portraits and corporate headshots. In this case, I would send my Retoucher TIFF files of all the images before the client even makes their selection. My Retoucher then sees the selection on the live album with any comments and starts working on the TIFF files without having to wait for me to send them

This is where I would get specific in commercial work about what to remove from an image and what to leave in. Here I would mark up the image in Capture One (after the client makes their selection) and export it as a PSD file with the retouch brief as a separate layer on top of the image.

I love this little touch Capture One did because the Retoucher can now go back and forth between image and brief just by toggling the layer in photoshop.

7. Sharing retouched files with the client
In the spirit of creating a workflow that reduces my workload and the time taken to deliver images, I would share a page on my website that looks like the screenshot below.

Capture One on iPad changed the game for me.

There is room for improvement and some little fixes would further elevate the experience and enhance the workflow

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed and learned something. If you have any suggestions or corrections to what I’ve said please reach out on Twitter or Instagram.

Peace.