THE DARKROOM NOTES / 01
Your editor.
Now with a head start.
Bring focus colors, descriptions and keywords into your Capture One workflow. Chimp exports sidecars using your original folder structure. Include existing supported XMP sidecars to carry their star ratings and unrelated metadata forward.
Start with your local files
Keep existing XMP and ACR sidecars beside the photo when adding the local folder. Chimp preserves the fields those files contain, including supplied XMP star ratings. Capture One catalog and session adjustments are separate; reading XMP does not back them up. Back up your catalog and sidecars before merging new metadata into an existing edit.
Export from Chimp
- Open your completed shoot and make any classification changes.
- Choose the Capture One export profile.
- Check your focus-to-color mapping. The defaults are green for sharp, yellow for slightly soft or uncertain, and red for missed focus.
- Export sidecars to a separate local folder.
- Merge the sidecars into the matching original folders. Keep every filename stem exactly the same as the photo.
Load the metadata in Capture One
Select the affected images, then use Load Metadata from Capture One’s metadata commands. Existing catalogs may need an explicit reload. Menu placement varies between Capture One versions. Check a small selection before applying the change across a large catalog.
Capture One explains the workflow in its XMP sidecar guide. XMP behavior can differ for RAW and JPEG files and when a RAW/JPEG pair shares a filename stem.
Why a separate Capture One profile?
Our field testing found that generated flat keyword entries inside dc:subject / rdf:Bag could import poorly. The Capture One profile removes Chimp’s generated entries from that block, while preserving unrelated existing keywords. Hierarchical keywords and the complete machine-readable assessment remain available.
The standard profile keeps conventional flat keywords for workflows that use them. Both profiles write standard XMP color labels and preserve star ratings from supplied XMP sidecars. Neither assigns new ratings. Lightroom Classic uses sidecars for proprietary camera RAW files, while JPEG, TIFF and DNG use different metadata handling. See Adobe’s metadata guide and test your file type before merging. Chimp has no direct Lightroom cloud import.
What stays yours
| Metadata | What Chimp does |
|---|---|
| Star ratings | Preserves supplied values |
| Color label | Writes your chosen focus color |
| Editing instructions | Preserves unrelated supplied XMP fields |
| Existing keywords | Keeps unrelated keywords |
| Photo pixels | Never rewrites the original |
If something looks wrong
Check that the XMP filename matches the photo, the folder path is correct, and Capture One has loaded the new metadata. If two different photos share one filename stem in a folder, export the metadata JSONL as the unambiguous per-file record. Contact us with the file type and Capture One version if you need a hand.