Tips for sorting large nubers of images?

B

BertieTBE

Messages
85
Edit My Images
No
Most of you have no doubt been there at some point. You've been out for the day having fun and got a bit trigger happy. There are great nice shots, some reasonably ok shots, and some total duds.

What's your weapon of choice for quick and painless sorting?

Do you edit as you go, or sweep through, and then come back to the best...?

Thank you very much in advance.
 
Hi, I use light-room and follow Jared Platt's advice. Upload photos, look through them and discard what you think is not good, don't save them to look again because if you didn't like them the first time why would you like them a second time round and you cannot make a poor photo an excellent photo in PP.
There is of course a lot more in the work-flow and Jared Platt's or some of his can be found on you-tube and there is a DVD course he made at CreativeLive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba4GmCLsHOE
Russ
 
Lightroom, 3 star ok, 4 are good and get printed, 5 are best. X to reject anything I don't like. Done quickly as a first pass with no editing. 2nd pass gets edited and then sometimes the star will change. Hope that helps in some way, CJ
 
Don't recommend "edit as you go" as the image on the camera viewer is misleading.
I copy load everything to my "import" folder and then take forward my chosen shots to my conversion and processing folders.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The op didn't mention editing in camera. Who does that....:puke:

I import into Lightroom. Go through the images and delete duds and pick the images I wish to edit. After the first sweep, I will go through them again quickly to fine tune my selections.

I will then filter the images by selecting the flagged filter. Select all the filtered images and make a collection.

The images are now ready to be edited. Simple.
 
I sub mine into folders of different scenes/subjects in Lightroom.

That way I can filter through them a folder at a time without feeling overwhelmed.
 
BrynBoru said:
surfg1mp said:
The op didn't mention editing in camera. Who does that....:puke:


Unfortunately, even the best photographers can make mistakes while editing on the go.
He caught the magic moment on a digital camera and deleted many unwanted shots.

"My finger was poised to delete this one too, and then I noticed something special," he told the BBC News website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech... finished always reformat the card in camera.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
cjevans said:
Lightroom, 3 star ok, 4 are good and get printed, 5 are best. X to reject anything I don't like. Done quickly as a first pass with no editing. 2nd pass gets edited and then sometimes the star will change. Hope that helps in some way, CJ
Click to expand...

I work similarly, although I do a first pass to get rid of the real cruddy stuff then do a 4-star pass for useables, then 5-star for final useables. I keep the rest as 'just in case' shots....
 
Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions.

I think I may be getting carried away with adding attributes / ratings (sometimes I do a combination of color, star rating, pick/reject). I think that ends up complicating things second time round, which makes it a slow process.

I like the idea of reject for dud shots, 4 starts for ok and 5 for the best shots. Will give that a go.

Agree about editing on camera. Bad idea.
 
Last edited:
theurbanclown said:
It seems crazy that most people are suggesting to go through and delete images. Personally I find it much quicker to go through and pick the best images, rather than delete the rubbish to be left with the best ones.
Click to expand...

So youve picked the best.. what do you do with the rest? Have them clutter cards and hdds? Nope you delete them.. its the same thing
 
theurbanclown said:
No it isn't.

If you take 2,000 shots, it's much quicker to got through and select the best 300 than to go through and delete 1,700.
Click to expand...

So I think what your saying is pull out the good stuff and whatever is left you can dump, rather than deleting as you go through. I really need to get into the habit of being selective about what gets left on my hdd as there are loads of poor images that have no place being retained.
 
Don't delete in camera. Sometimes, it's better to keep a bad image, review it and learn from it.

I go through my images, in LR, deleting any I don't like. Any I second guess, I keep, to be reviewed on a 2nd cull.

I then walk away, come back to edit, when I then make the final decision if they're worth keeping or not.

Lastly, those I do delete, get moved to the recycle bin. But I don't empty it, for a couple of days, just in case........... although it doesn't happen, too often, that I'll go back to the recycle bin.
 
theurbanclown said:
No it isn't.

If you take 2,000 shots, it's much quicker to got through and select the best 300 than to go through and delete 1,700.
Click to expand...

Haha if you have 2000 shots to go through in one folder you need to shoot less and think more . Thats machine gunning at the extreme.
 
Much quicker to delete the rubbish prior to uploading to LR so I use Windows own image viewer.
 
barratt1988 said:
So you shoot 2.38fps constantly for 14 hours and you dont think thats machine gunning?
Click to expand...

Nope but that rate would be 143,500 frames and then some I suspect you mean fpm rather than fps...weddings are often fast paced I know the few I've shot I shoot 4/5 of the same to get that one where everyone is doing what I want :D
 
MWHCVT said:
Nope but that rate would be 143,500 frames and then some I suspect you mean fpm rather than fps...weddings are often fast paced I know the few I've shot I shoot 4/5 of the same to get that one where everyone is doing what I want :D
Click to expand...

Im ever so sorry it is fpm.. still makes you a machine gunner tho doesnt it haha
 
I import into lightroom, then go through a 1 star anything I like, then crop and apply a simple preset to all my 1 stars, I will then go through again and give the best a 2 star rating and tweak further if required. I then select all unrated images a X to reject them, then delete them from my HDD..
 
barratt1988 said:
Im ever so sorry it is fpm.. still makes you a machine gunner tho doesnt it haha
Click to expand...

Not really :( well at least not in my opinion take a bride and groom shot from the same pose you could have 3/4 photos of say head shot, half body, full body, wide shot land cape etc and maybe a couple of other compositions that could easily be 20-25 shot in a minute then repose new location It would mount up quickly :D
 
barratt1988 said:
I have a 26in and a 17inch calibrated monitor im my study... why sub that to edit on a 3inch camera screen hahaha
Click to expand...

Then again, if I only have half a car when I have a wee look through the shots on my lunch break, I don't need the world's output of monitors to know it's getting binned right away!

I normally take around 1500 shots in a day's motorsports shooting and I am not slow at ditching the bad ones in camera.
 
Last edited:
theurbanclown said:
I think you are a little out of your depth here. And usually when that's the case, it's best just to keep quiet.

2,000 shots for a wedding is pretty average, I'd say. Sometimes it can be more.
Click to expand...

Sorry I didnt realise we called in the wedding police?
 
For 2000 images, where only 10% are likely to be worth a second glance, I'll use FastStone to delete stuff straight from the card. Only the survivors of that initial cull will be imported into LR and put through the 'P', 'U' or 'X' process.
 
hollis_f said:
For 2000 images, where only 10% are likely to be worth a second glance, I'll use FastStone to delete stuff straight from the card. Only the survivors of that initial cull will be imported into LR and put through the 'P', 'U' or 'X' process.
Click to expand...

i recently found out you can use "`" (the button immediately above Tab) to toggle an image between Picked or Unflagged, so for any permanent WASD fans out there you can cull away without moving your left hand back and forth on the keyboard ;)
 
On my most recent back of images form my Cruise to Norway, I imported to Lightroom and looked through each one pressing X to reject the duds and P to pick those I definitely thought I wanted to look at again.

Then I deleted the rejects, then went through a second time doing the same thing. Maybe taking more time to look through those instances where I have the same shot 3 or 4 times and picking the best one and probably rejecting at least 1 if not more.

Then I'm left with the stuff I know I like, and some others I'm not sure about that might look nice with an edit or a crop that isn't immediately apparent. All the duds are gone nice and early before I get attached to them and just keep them forever.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top