Have you ever wanted to selectively import images from a memory card or folder on your computer or external disk, but can’t tell by looking at the displayed thumbnails which images you need to select?
That’s not as absurd as it sounds. I often want to download images from a memory card that have been taken with a certain camera model or lens, and have no idea which is which from the thumbnails. In a less niche use case, for example, before importing you might want to search a folder or series of folders for a certain image or series of images by a particular month or year, or if the images have had some work on them by a specific camera owner.
Perhaps you’ve resorted to importing everything and sorting it out later, but that doesn’t work out that well if you’re working with a Capture One Session, which is typically project-specific. Well, there is a way to sort your images prior to import, which in turn allows you to copy over only what you want to import.
Capture One Pro has an incredibly useful sorting option, but it’s not immediately apparent as it’s located away from the tool bricks on the left and is indicated by a small ellipsis (triple dot icon) in the top, far-right-hand corner of the import dialog. Ellipses are used throughout Capture One (and incidentally Phase One backs) to open specific menus, which the company refers to as “contextual menus”. Clicking on the ellipsis in this case opens the Advanced Search dialog.
If you click on the + (plus) icon under Search Criteria, a row is added allowing you to create a new rule to search by. From the first drop-down menu, select the criteria for your search. If, for example, you’re looking for images captured by a certain lens simply select Camera Lens from the menu and type in the focal length… and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Simply select your search term and the images as thumbnails will be displayed in the dialog for importing (moving or copying, depending on your chosen action).
