Star ratings, how do you use yours.

seaodyssey

seaodyssey

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4,637
Name
Pete
Edit My Images
Yes
I did not bother using star ratings in Lightroom. I have started using ON1 PR2020 and you can not search for photos with out keywords, so trying to get around this limitation I'm planning to start using Star Ratings.
e.g
0 Stars - no Keywords or other ratings, photos to sort out
1 Star - Bad photos, blank, out of Focus, exposure no good, these can be deleted
2 Star -
3 Star - Keep for Sentimental Reasons
4 Star -
5 Star - My Best Photos

What do you use your stars for?
Pete
 
I've used stars (and colours) in Lightroom for years, the way I star images is as follows:
1* - I need to take into Photoshop for cloning/merging etc.
2* - I need to sort it out.
3* - keep for sentimental reasons.
4* - best in that category.
5* - my very best work.

I use the smart collections to pull together ones I need to work on further (1* or 2*) and old files with no stars, so that I can look at removing them from my catalogue.
 
I use a lightweight method with very few stars. It would be nice to have a complex system. But this is mainly OK.

1) ★ Minimal interest. Any picture in the collection that catches my eye for any reason.
2) ★★ Special result. Main one to be proud of.
3) ★★★ Rare top one. Only a handful will get this special, stand out rating.
 
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I don't use star rating or any form of grading at all. My sorting is by folder structure and, in LR, collections if necessary.

My reason for eschewing star ratings is mainly that my regard for individual images can change over time, but also that I'd have to remember what each star rating meant, and honestly my poor brain's got enough to remember as it is. Simplify, simplify!
 
Most of my photos have no stars. When I add them they mean this:

1 = sentimental photos/snapshots
2 = look at later and decided if delete or keep
3 = average edited photo
4 = pretty decent
5 = very good/portfolio image

I also use flags for photos I want to come back and edit but haven't yet.
 
I use them to filter photos for processing after import.
First pass 1*
Second Pass 2*, etc. until I have a set I am happy with and doesn't give me too many to process :)

I'll sometimes also use colour flags to distinguish uses - one colour for images to share with family & friends on FB, another for photos to share on Flickr, etc.

I can then filter accordingly, process and export.
 
I only use stars for selecting what gets processed. I do several 'passes' as Jonathan in the post above, so in the first look everything remotely interesting gets 1 star. I then review those and the best get 2 stars, I filter and review again and the best of those get 3 stars until I've got my final selection to process. Very rarely get to 4 stars
 
I use the ratings
5* My best rating and might hope would get an award in a competition (I do not have enough of these)
4* Competition entry standard (this only signifies that I will process it)
3* probably not competition entry standard so will not normally process but still keep.
All others which might have been rated 2* or 1* are not kept but deleted. Sometimes I promote or demote an image. I also use the colour coding as well. So when searching I can use the rating, colour, key word and any EXIF data in the search.

Dave
 
I don't use star rating for my photos. What is the point?

You rate a bad photo with one star rating, and delete it, but the star rating goes with it. May as well have saved yourself time by not rate it with one star, just get straight to deleting it anyway.

You waste a handful of seconds trying to decide if this photo is worth 3 or 4 star ratings, come on, 3 or 4 or 3 or 4 or 3, what a struggle trying to make up your mind. Aw hell, let's go for 4 anyway!

You rate your best photos a rating of 5 stars, but why bother? Surely you could just create an album (in Lightroom, it's called Collection) and put any of your best or favourite photos in it, instead of looking all over your Catalogue for any 5 Star ratings.

IF I had to use the star ratings, then it is highly likely that I would not use it as a rating, but as a code. 5 stars does not mean best, it could be a code for taken using a Nikon camera, 3 stars does not mean okay, it could be used as a code for photos taken using a Minolta X-700 35mm film camera.

Or considering that I would import my photographs into Photoshop or InDesign to do some artwork or graphic design, I may give them 1 to 5 stars to remind me in what order to import the photos. Pick 5 photos I need, give them stars based on the order of import, for example 1 star means import this first, as I want it to be as background, 2 star means import this next, and so on, 5 star means the 5th photo to be imported.

Either I don't bother with using it as a rating, after all any crap photos would get deleted anyway, so there are no photos worth rated 1 star, or I use them to mean something else other than a rating system.

Beside, as @j crossley would point out, and I agree, just flag any bad photos as X and delete them.

By the way, I have some movies from iTunes which I paid for and downloaded into my iTunes Library. Do any of them have star ratings? No. Why? Because if I like that movie so much, I would download it, and if I don't like that movie, then I would not bother downloading it. Why would I want to download any movies and give it a 1 star rating if I don't like it? If I don't like it, then don't download in the first place. If I were to use star ratings for my movies in my iTunes Library, they all would have 5 stars anyway.
 
Major Eazy said:
I don't use star rating for my photos. What is the point?

You rate a bad photo with one star rating, and delete it, but the star rating goes with it. May as well have saved yourself time by not rate it with one star, just get straight to deleting it anyway.

You waste a handful of seconds trying to decide if this photo is worth 3 or 4 star ratings, come on, 3 or 4 or 3 or 4 or 3, what a struggle trying to make up your mind. Aw hell, let's go for 4 anyway!

You rate your best photos a rating of 5 stars, but why bother? Surely you could just create an album (in Lightroom, it's called Collection) and put any of your best or favourite photos in it, instead of looking all over your Catalogue for any 5 Star ratings.

IF I had to use the star ratings, then it is highly likely that I would not use it as a rating, but as a code. 5 stars does not mean best, it could be a code for taken using a Nikon camera, 3 stars does not mean okay, it could be used as a code for photos taken using a Minolta X-700 35mm film camera.

Or considering that I would import my photographs into Photoshop or InDesign to do some artwork or graphic design, I may give them 1 to 5 stars to remind me in what order to import the photos. Pick 5 photos I need, give them stars based on the order of import, for example 1 star means import this first, as I want it to be as background, 2 star means import this next, and so on, 5 star means the 5th photo to be imported.

Either I don't bother with using it as a rating, after all any crap photos would get deleted anyway, so there are no photos worth rated 1 star, or I use them to mean something else other than a rating system.

Beside, as @j crossley would point out, and I agree, just flag any bad photos as X and delete them.

By the way, I have some movies from iTunes which I paid for and downloaded into my iTunes Library. Do any of them have star ratings? No. Why? Because if I like that movie so much, I would download it, and if I don't like that movie, then I would not bother downloading it. Why would I want to download any movies and give it a 1 star rating if I don't like it? If I don't like it, then don't download in the first place. If I were to use star ratings for my movies in my iTunes Library, they all would have 5 stars anyway.
Click to expand...

I can see what you are saying, and it would take a long time to go through them all. As you say just delete them if they are that bad.
I was trying to use it as a work around to ON1 PhotoRaw 2020 not being able to highlight photos with out keywords, If all the photos I had looked at was star rated I would know they had been keyworded. No Stars would mean no keywords as well.

Thanks Pete
 
Generally:
1 means keep and process
2 means worth presenting
3 means above average/print.
4&5 unused.
 
seaodyssey said:
I can see what you are saying, and it would take a long time to go through them all. As you say just delete them if they are that bad.
I was trying to use it as a work around to ON1 PhotoRaw 2020 not being able to highlight photos with out keywords, If all the photos I had looked at was star rated I would know they had been keyworded. No Stars would mean no keywords as well.

Thanks Pete
Click to expand...

You want to use a star rating as a way of letting you know that those photos with star rating have keywords, so no star ratings means no keywords?

mmmmmmmmmm............

Can I suggest something, it's really up to you, but here's an idea, well a couple of different ideas.....

The number of stars imply the number of keywords, thus one star means that photo only have one single keyword, 2 stars means it got 2 different keywords, 5 star means 5 or more keywords. Just to help you know if a photo got enough keywords or not.

If you don't like your photos having one keyword, and you spotted a photo with one star, you just look at it, got an idea, added two more extra keywords then upgrade its star rating to 3 to let you know it now got 3 keywords.

The second idea....

Stages. As in at what stage it is in, to remind you of the work being in progress, such as assigning keywords.

For example

0 Star = Stage 0. Photo is new.
1 Stars = Stage I. Photo is being assigned keywords, even if only one keyword had been assigned, but it could be still waiting for any more additional keywords.
2 Stars = Stage II. Photo had been assigned keywords and don't need any more keywords, even if it's just one keyword or have a few keywords.
3 Stars = Stage III. Photo's keywords needed to be double-checked, maybe you want to be sure of it.
4 Stars = Stage IV. Photo is completed, keywords confirmed as correct,, but back ups does not have the keywords.
5 Stars = Stage V. Photo is completed, keywords confirmed as correct, and the back up copies does includes the keywords.

What do you think?
 
Major Eazy said:
You want to use a star rating as a way of letting you know that those photos with star rating have keywords, so no star ratings means no keywords?

mmmmmmmmmm............

Can I suggest something, it's really up to you, but here's an idea, well a couple of different ideas.....

The number of stars imply the number of keywords, thus one star means that photo only have one single keyword, 2 stars means it got 2 different keywords, 5 star means 5 or more keywords. Just to help you know if a photo got enough keywords or not.

If you don't like your photos having one keyword, and you spotted a photo with one star, you just look at it, got an idea, added two more extra keywords then upgrade its star rating to 3 to let you know it now got 3 keywords.

The second idea....

Stages. As in at what stage it is in, to remind you of the work being in progress, such as assigning keywords.

For example

0 Star = Stage 0. Photo is new.
1 Stars = Stage I. Photo is being assigned keywords, even if only one keyword had been assigned, but it could be still waiting for any more additional keywords.
2 Stars = Stage II. Photo had been assigned keywords and don't need any more keywords, even if it's just one keyword or have a few keywords.
3 Stars = Stage III. Photo's keywords needed to be double-checked, maybe you want to be sure of it.
4 Stars = Stage IV. Photo is completed, keywords confirmed as correct,, but back ups does not have the keywords.
5 Stars = Stage V. Photo is completed, keywords confirmed as correct, and the back up copies does includes the keywords.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

I was only going to set the stars once, on import, along with all the keywords, possibly not going to bother, maybe at the start of 2020 as I have folders for decades, within the decades I have year and then YYYYMMDD for the photos, keywords are used to descibe the photos and what is in them, etc.
1996-1999
2000-2009
2010-2019
2020-2029

Think it will be 0 Stars, not keyworded or anything else.
1 Star, Keyworded, possibly not worth doing anything else with it.
2 Star, Keyworded, sentimenatl Value, Family photos, of Kids when young etc.
3 Star, Keyworded, what I think is a good photo and worth spending time on processing
4 Star, Keyworded, have spent time on processing.
5 Star, TBA.

Thanks for your reply
Pete
 
Well I'm a relative novice at this, in Lightroom, but my approach is to:
- first pass, flag for deletion the ones just not any good (focus, blur, just plain cr@p)
- second pass, star rating as follows:
- 1*: basically adequate image but probably going nowhere
- 2*: not bad image but not worth spending PP time on unless I need to
- 3*: shareable image so worthy of PP
- 4*: pretty good, worth PP, maybe worthy of putting onto stock sites and a website of my own when I get round to it (I have a small number of these)
- 5*: very good (for me anyway), my best (don't have any 5* yet)

I keyword everything with 2 or more stars. I export some 3*, and all 4/5* to a separate "Final Images" folder from which I can upload full size files to Flickr etc
I don't yet use coloured flags but can see the value of them for highlighting the uses for images. However I think my standalone LR6 will become gradually less usable in the next few years (due to my Macs being un-upgradeable if I stick to it) so I am treating this as a learning process; I will definitely not go to the SaaS Adobe subscription, so probably move to another DAM product at some point when I have enough images worth looking after.
 
Quite an interesting thread! I leave most of my images unrated. 1 star for promising, 2 stars for the better ones of those. 3 stars I would reckon has reasonable potential (by my probably rather low standards). 4 stars I'm happy enough to cycle it through as a screen saver. 5 stars for my very best shots (very few of those). In the early days after an image is developed, many will fluctuate up and down between 1, 2 or 3 stars. Occasionally I will knock a 4 star image down, when I think it's sentiment rather than quality that put it there!

Star ratings in Aperture were no trouble, and were very useful to me. I'll select a group of projects and search among the 1+, 2+, 3+ star images (etc) looking for images of reasonable quality that might suit a particular situation. Now migrating to Capture One Pro, I'm not sure whether the rating workflow will be so smooth, or the pay-back so strong.

Looking back at the thread, I suspect there's a lot of folk here who are much more certain of their judgment than I am, and come to swifter and more final decisions on images. I definitely wouldn't want to use a DAM now that didn't support star ratings, hence why I never really got into Apple Photos.
 
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