Manual processing is the single biggest bottleneck in post on a busy day. You’re sitting there assigning recipes one by one, exporting batches, going back to assign another recipe, exporting again. By the time you’re done you’ve burned an hour you didn’t have. Scripting fixes that.
Why This One Matters
The idea is simple. You rate and tag your images the way you already do, then a script tells Capture One which recipes to apply based on those ratings and tags. Everything exports in one pass.
Where This Helps
- Client deliverables on set. The client wants high-res TIFFs of the 5-star selects and low-res JPEGs of everything for proofing. Script handles both at once.
- Retouching workflows. Generate high-res files for the retoucher and small proofs for client review in the same export pass.
- E-commerce and commercial shoots. Different processing settings driven by ratings or color tags, all running together.
How It Works
- Before running it, rate and tag the images you want processed.
- Run the script. It matches each rating and tag to a predefined recipe.
- Capture One processes everything automatically with the right export settings per image.
A Real Example
A typical day on a commercial shoot. Client wants:
- Purple-tagged images processed into a Plates folder.
- 5-star images processed as both JPEG and TIFF into a Selects folder.
- Everything else, regardless of tag or rating, into an All Images folder.
Doing that manually means filtering, processing, switching recipes, processing again, three separate times. Or you set the script up once with those rules and run it on the All Images folder. One click. Done.
Note: the script setup below is just an example to show how conditional processing and recipe selection can work. Adjust it to your own folder structure and recipe names before using it on a real job.
Why It Speeds Things Up
- No more manual recipe assignment. The script applies the right recipe per image automatically.
- Consistency across exports. Predefined settings every time, fewer human-error mistakes in the deliverables.
- Faster turnaround. Whether it’s high-volume e-commerce, commercial, or editorial, this is where you actually claw back time.
A “Process All Selects” script ends up being one of those tools you don’t want to work without once you’ve used it. The first time you finish exports while you’re still walking back to the cart, you’ll get it.