Getting Client Selects Into Capture One

The shoot wraps at six. The selects take a week. Nobody is slow. The picks just come back in every format except the one Capture One can read.

"Love the one where she's looking left." "My picks are 3, 7, 14, and maybe 22." A screenshot with a circle drawn on it. A Slack message about the third one from that series. Every one of those is a decision. None of them is a filename.

So you translate. You open the session, scroll to the second setup, guess which frame is "looking left," and star it. Then you do it again for the next 149 picks. It is the most expensive hour of the job, and nobody pays for it.

Capture One already does half of this

Capture One can select a whole list of images in one move. Most photographers never find it. In your session, go to Select > Select by > File name list. Paste the names, tick Ignore file extension so a JPG proof still finds its RAW, and Capture One selects every match. Rate them, tag them, drop them into a Selects album. Seconds, not an hour.

The command is fine. The input is the problem. It only works with an exact list of your original filenames, and clients never send you that.

Where the client's list breaks

• "the third one from that series"  →  no filename at all
• "3, 7, 14, 22"  →  a gallery position, not a file
• "0142"  →  last four digits, and two bodies share them
• web_proof_0142.jpg  →  the proof's name, not the RAW's
• a circled screenshot  →  good luck

Proofing galleries help, and many will export a list. But the list carries whatever name the proof had when it went up. If the gallery renamed it, resized it, or cleaned it up for the web, the list points at the proof, not your capture. You fix it by hand, which is the job you were trying to skip.

How AirSelects closes the loop

I built AirSelects to stop doing this translation. The client makes the decision. The filename carries it back.

1. Upload the proofs, or drop the capture folder. RAW files never leave your machine. When there is only a RAW, the preview the camera embedded in it goes up under the RAW's own name.
2. Send one link. Your client enters a name and email and hearts the frames they want. No account, no app.
3. Open the results. You see what was picked, and who picked it.
4. Hit Sync. The AirSelects menu bar app puts your client's picks into a Capture One album, matched to your original files.
5. Or paste the list. Copy filenames gives you the original names you uploaded, not the web versions. In Capture One, Select by > File name list, and paste.

Either way, your client's selects are in your session. No retyping. No guessing which one was "looking left." No thread to reconcile.

The handoff was always the bottleneck

The photography is the part you are good at. The week after it is where the work loses value: decisions stuck in texts, a retoucher waiting on a list, a client wondering why the files are late. Shorten that week and everything downstream moves.

One link out. Selects back in Capture One.

Get early access to AirSelects →