Catalog backup and restore
I'm sure I've seen this question before, but a Search does not come up with an answer.
Due to a computer failure I've just had to reinstall On1 2020.5.
As a result it has been necessary to re-Catalog all my images.
Fortunately I keep all my image files on a separate hard drive, so they have not been affected.
Cataloging is all done and not produced any problems.
It occured to me that if I had a backup of the On1 Catalog, I could have reloaded the Catalog and saved hours of time and disk activity re-cataloging all my images.
My question is: Where is the Catalog stored and can I back it up and restore it if necessary?
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You cannot backup and restore the catalog and previews or change the base path of the catalog for now.
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Thank you for the reply.
Surely it would make sense for users to be able to backup and restore the catalog, especially for cases like my own?
If I had been able to backup my catalog to the same drive that my images are backed up to, it would have saved a lot of time and disk activity Cataloging everything again from scratch.The Catalog must exist as a discrete file somewhere, why does it need to be so difficult to access?
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Totally agree with you Brian, but, that is how ON1 is for now. Let's see if that happens in the next update.
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Thank you.
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I asked ON1 Support this question a few years back. I did not understand how the catalogs worked as I had a similar situation. The .on1 files for each image you edit are store alongside the original raw in the same folders. As you know no backup and restore catalogs like in Lightroom. So if the photos are on the same disk as the operating system you must manually back up that drive in case of failure or you are SOL. I keep my images on an external G drive for editing and back that up frequently to a spare internal drive. Then if I'm installing ON1 from scratch its time to either browse or catalog those folders.again.
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One problem for On1 is, that when they first tried to launch catalogues, there was a big and very negative response from ON1 Users.
Back then ON1 probably intended to launch an Adobe like catalogue system. But the response from the ON1 Community was overwhelmingly hostile.
In my own case, I used to love Lightroom. But the Adobe catalogue system was unstable and kept crashing. My sense of humour failed, when Adobe wiped my catalogue, yet again, and demanded that I reconstruct it for just one time to many...
So, I 100% endorse the way that ON1, (after some soul searching and a deep consultation exercise with the Community), chose to go.
And to be blunt, if ON1 were to launch an Adobe like cataloguing system, and try to force us all to use it. Then I would sadly, but immediately, start looking for an alternative photo processor.
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I think that the ON1 Users are split into three groups.
(A) Those who had a good experience with Lightroom Catalogues, and would therefore like to see a catalogue system in Photo Raw, that looks and works just like Adobe's Catalogues,
(B) Those who had very, very bad experiences with the Lightroom Catalogue, and never want to use an Adobe style catalogue ever again,
and
(C) Those who could not care either way.
Now when ON1 launched catalogues, they faced an impossible decision. Group (A) wanted catalogues, and Group (B) hated catalogues. To ON1's credit, they listened very closely to what was said by the ON1 Community, and came up with a compromise that pleased almost everyone. Photo Raw has catalogues, but you only have to use them if you want to do so.
From my point of view. I think that the fact that, Photo Raw works well, even if you do not catalogue any of the folders, is absolutely great. Because if a catalogue corrupts, Photo Raw is still a full fully functional and stable photo editing package. Whereas, as soon as the Lightroom catalogue went down, and they did all too frequently. As soon as the Lightroom catalogue corrupted, Lightroom was unable to function.
I do now use ON1’s catalogues. (Previously I couldn’t because I didn’t have SSDs). But, now that I do, I can see that the catalogues make Browse work a little quicker, and that they allow Users to search for images. But, if my catalogues were to corrupt themselves, and so far, they have not done so. Then I would not be that bothered. I would still have a working, fully functional photo editor, and the laptop could be left on overnight, disconnected from the internet, and Photo Raw would rebuild the catalogues. Which is a much easier task, than rebuilding a lightroom catalogue from scratch.
Sorry, but if ON1 decided to implement an Adobe style catalogue, in a future version of Photo Raw, then for me, it would be a deal breaker.
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I'm definitely in the category B "Anti-catalog" group, and it was one thing I was glad to see the back of when leaving Lightroom, and if On1 ever went to an Adobe style catalog it would be a deal breaker for me too.
One thing I find convenient about the current system is that someone can bring you an image file on, for example, a USB stick, and you can easily work on it.However, it seems that, for optimum performance, On1 still requires us to "Catalog" our images, if only to make searching easier.
Given that this "Cataloging" is an inherent part of On1, would it not make life a little simpler if us users knew exactly how it worked?
As I mentioned, after reinstalling On1, it took quite a while to re-catalog all my images and if I could have loaded a backed up Catalog it would have made life a lot simpler.0 -
Hi Brian
You make some very good points.
I don't know if you can access the videos, but Dylan did a 'Why you should use catalogues' video just before 360 was launched.
The video does go into how catalogue information is handled and stored in PR. But, Dylan is a Photographer, so perhaps not the same level of detail that a Coder would be able to explain.
I don't currently use 360, but to work, surely 360 must be backing up and/or copying a catalogue of some kind?
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Here's the link to the video Dylan made: https://www.on1.com/videos/publishing-albums-and-cataloged-folders-to-on1-360/
It doesn't cover how they work though, it's just about how to publish Albums & Catalogs to the 360º cloud.
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Hi Brian
Thank you for the link.
Best wishes David Price
PS. now that both of my laptops have SSDs, my copies of PR 2020.5.1. have managed to catelogue some of my folders. The folders can be seen to be checking themselves to see if they are up to date, but they are not taking much resources when they do so. :-)
It looks like the issue of repeatedly failing catalogues, may have been more to do with deficiancies in my HDDs and perhaps nothing to do with bad files.
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Thanks for the link.
I'm afraid I have no use for 360 and I will not be subscribing.
Maybe I'm missng the point, but apart from making searching slightly quicker and easier, I'm afraid I can't see what the great advantage of cataloging is.0 -
Catalogs allow you to search your entire cataloged collection of images. Without them you can only search through the contents of the current Browser view. They also make browsing faster as the image previews the Browser uses have already been generated during the catalog building process. If you navigate to a new folder the images it contains will all need to be rendered for the browser to display which slows things down while that is happening. You also loose the ability to display the contents of any sub-folders inside the currently viewed folder.
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Ah good.
That was my understanding of how On1 cataloging worked.I do find that searching is one of the weak spots in On1 but it's not an impossible problem, and I can usually find what I'm looking for. I try to be disciplined about titling and keywording all my images when I download them and that helps.
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Hi Brian
I have until very recently run PR 2020.5.1 without catalogues. With catalogues has made using Browse into a smoother experience, as rather than having to wait for Browse to process raw files and produce the jpegs 'on the fly'. Browse has just called up the images from the catalogues.
Unlike Lightroom, PR will work, even if you have not catalogued your folders. But, it has to work very hard, so it is slower, and tends to pause to catch up. Which, I suspect is why you get persons complaining that Browse is slow, or even that it crashes. (Which are very unfair comments, because pausing to catch up,.. and crashing are very different things).
These issues may or might not matter to you. PR will work differently if you do or do not catalogue, but it will still work. So it is your choice. :-)
The other advantage of cataloguing is that you can run extensive searches. I needed to find photos of BB activities in a set of folders that contained 12 years worth of images. I asked PR and it gave me a new folder containing dozens of images, including my boys as Anchor Boys, on their first camps, first mountain climbs, marching at Blist's Hill, on their Duke of Edinburgh's activities, etc. I am pretty sure that a manual search would have taken hours, and that I would probably have missed most of the images.But, the really nice thing about ON1, is that they have built a programme that is so flexible and allows you, in so many ways, to do what you need to do. Rather than saying, you must do X, or the software will refuse to work at all.
It is up to you to make your choice, :-)
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I cannot find the original discussion I had regarding searching a few months ago.
There seems to be a bug in the search facility that ignores the (,) (comma) as a keyword limiter.
I will explain:
I have a number of images keyworded "stowe"
I also have images taken in London which are keyworded "river thames" and "tower bridge"
If I "search cataloged folders" for "stowe" it also finds images which are keyworded "river thames,tower bridge" so the program obviously ignores the comma as a separator between thames and tower and treats the two words as one, taking the "s" of thames and the "towe" of tower bridge and combining them as one word (i.e.stowe.)This is slightly annoying, (and reproducible) although I do finish up finding my original search target.
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I've reported this to support Brian and they have passed it along to the engineers for fixing.
Here's the link to that topic: https://on1help.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360067841391-Advanced-searching-in-cataloged-folders-very-very-slow
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Thanks for the link, I couldn't remember the title of the topic.
I remember that you said you could reproduce the condition and would report it.
We'll just have to see what happens.
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I haven't seen any comment about albums here.
I would love to know the location of the albums to be able to safely restore them.
I recently crashed 2020.5.1 (long story). Tech support doesn't know why and recommended a settings and full reset which would wipe out my catalogs and albums. The program still loads but some of the data is possibly corrupt.
I couldn't care less about my catalogs as I don't use them, but even if I did I could rebuild them in 24-48 hours.
I care a lot about my albums.
I came from the adobe world and used collections extensively. I now use the albums to organize my work and wiping out my albums is a big hit.
I am fully backed up and could easily restore the albums if I knew where they were. There are four locations where I guess they could be but I am just guessing. The browse cache , winapps , program folder or program data .
Most photographers are well backed up these days and we should be able to restore to a point prior to a catastrophic event . Restoring critical files or folders such as collections would be easy if we just knew the locations.
This is critical if On1 is to be trusted with essential and necessary data. Data that you cant backup and restore is data which can be lost. On1 should provide those locations and make certain that we are able to restore data we have backed up without screwing something else up.
Any thoughts or help appreciated
Steve
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Steven, you cannot back up albums. One method to use would be to assign a specific keyword to each photo in a given album. In the event you have to reinstall or lose albums for some reason you can do a search by keyword and easily recreate your album from that search.
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Why would that be? There must be a data file somewhere which compiles a list of photos assigned to a particular album.
Using a keyword as your method is double the work for me making and remembering a unique keyword such as albflowers2020 and then putting it in an album, but makes the album superfluous.
If you are right, that is a major issue which should be addressed promptly. It decreases the value immensely to anyone trying to organize their work/business around an album structure as that data is at risk. The only alternative is to delete the program and restore all possible locations.
Do you have any insight as to why an album/album structure could not be backed up/restored and if On1 views that as important to do?
Bullet proofing is absolutely necessary to those who care about their work or are trying to run a business with a piece of software. Adobe knows that and it is another piece of their success.
I love On1 Photo Raw and really want it to succeed.
Steve
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Steven, we are all just users here. I have no idea why On1 works the way it does.
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I'm really not using albums much at all but reading all of this makes me nervous about depending on them if there is no method to get them back easily.
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Since I have reported, perhaps, the largest number of bugs currently, I will check all those in the 2021 release and try to provide a meaningful report of the same. Maybe the mods here can contribute and list out all known issues that need to be fixed...?
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We don't have a list like that either Nitin. We can only track what we have reported.
Charles, it isn't that hard to occasionally open an Album, Select All, then click the radio button in the Keywords list or type in the AlbumName keyword to add it to everything in the album. If the time comes to recreate one you simply search All Catalogs for AlbumName keyword, Select All, and drag to a New Album to rebuild them. No, it isn't as convenient as having a backup/restore capability whether that is through the program or the OS but this really isn't that onerous a workaround IMO.
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Brian,
Brian,
I am really not trying to be obstinate but as a computer techhie, i really don' understand why a data source cannot be backed up. The data is held somewhere, I just don't know where. Perhaps all we need to do is ask. Once we understand where the data is parsed to we should be able to restore a particular data set if it is needed after a catastrophe.
As long as we use machines, they will break. Its only a matter of time. I really like On1 Photo, but I want to be prepared if and when my machine breaks and I again need to recover data.
The file locations should not be proprietary, even if the data structure is. I don't care how they store it, I do care where.
Steve
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I fully agree, I have a degree in software engineering. I can't answer why because I don't have access to the source code or the meetings where these things were decided. This question has been asked and the answer is that they cannot be backed up. The company has told us how to backup other pieces but there are some that for whatever reason cannot.
I don't like this limitation any more than you do but until there is a true solution for backing them up the keywords work around is fine for me and it is all we have.
The company has the ON1 Photo RAW Project page for users to offer suggestions for new features. A search for 'backup' found several suggestions that I haven't gone through yet. Find those you like and vote for them. The way it works is an idea has to receive at least 200 votes with an overall rating of 3 stars or more before the company will review it for inclusion in a future release. They are slow about reviewing things but they do take them seriously.
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In my humble opinion, I think that backing up a Photo Raw Catalogue is a bit of a ‘Red Herring’.
If the Lightroom catalogue crashes, it is a major event. Because quite possibly, you will have lost almost everything. Perhaps you still have your raw files and folders, but often that is all. And, you may well have to manually re-enter every single image. Which can take hours, and hours. So, you had better hope that the back-up copy is still usable.
In comparison with the loss of a Lightroom Catalogue, the loss of a PR catalogue is just a minor irritation. Yes, you will have lost your catalogue. But you will still have your original raw files, the ON1 files, all of your exported images, and your folders. So, Photo Raw will already recognise your images, it will remember your edits, and each file will also have the labels that you embedded. If you followed Brian’s advice and keyworded your albums, they can also be easily reconstructed. The catalogue data is not lost, it is contained in the ON1 files and image files. You just need to ask PR to make a catalogue.
The fact is that you don’t actually need a catalogue to be able to browse for and to edit your images in Photo Raw. But if you do want a catalogue, then just ask Photo Raw to re-catalogue the images in your folders. As Photo Raw will run cataloguing as a background task. You are then free to get on with doing something else.
In fact, I have deliberately deleted and then recreated catalogues in Photo Raw, on several occasions. Re-creating an ON1 catalogue is a much easier task than repairing Lightroom’s. [ I used to love Lightroom, but the catalogue crashed one time too many. Re-creating a Lightroom catalogue was hard work. Doing it multiple times was absolute purgatory]. Three cheers for Photo Raw ! 😊
I have never seen the need to back up my PR catalogues. But, by backing up my folders, and all of those essential ON1 files and images. I have actually backed up the information that forms the back bone of an ON1 catalogue.
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Don't care about the catalog. Do very much care about the albums. A lot of work can go into an album aggregating photos from multiple, multiple sources and if you crash, all gone with no ability to easily recreate.
Severely reduces the utility of albums for anyone who might depend on albums for organization. The ability to back up (or know what to back up) is essential. I still can't understand why On1 states you can't back up albums. Just tell me where the data source is and I'll back it up. Or tell me where all the program directories are so that if I crash, I can restore all the program directories and data to a previous restore point.This should be a part of their user guide available to all users.
Steve
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"no ability to easily recreate." That isn't true. Keywording all the images in your current Albums takes literally seconds per album. Select All, add new Keyword. Now you have the backup you are asking for. When it comes time to "restore" it literally takes seconds times 2 to double-click an AlbumName keyword, set the search to All Catalogs, Select All, and drag to the Plus sign widget in the Albums panel. Restored.
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