Whats your delete stategey?!?!

captures.in.time

captures.in.time

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Edit My Images
Yes
I spent my Sunday up in St Andrews.

I took about 150 pictures of which im currently processing... but I always end up deleting quite a few... I tend to be quite ruthless. My main thoughts initially are delete because of poor exposure then delete because of poor composition.

But I must admit my photography is improving... Im comming home with allot more acceptable and good images that I like... sometimes I dont love them but technically I dont tend to make to many errors. I dont think I take any more or less images than I used too... Its just my images are more acceptable...

So my question is if you are at my stage of photography... and yes I know you will sometimes shoot experimentally and it doesnt work... but on a general shoot when all your images are good... how do you decide what to keep and what not to... My problem tends to be I'll like all of them and may end up with 50 to process... but I dont really need all these images... no one appart from myself will really look at them all... or want to look at them all... they might want to look at 10 or something... but I've taken 50 good images in that day... so what do or would you do in that situation... Keep them all... just tend to get more ruthless and up your standards... or erm... I dont know....

It was just a random thought I had as I was processing... because as my acceptable image tally increases from shoots so does my processing time... and to be honest im not too into processing.

And lastly... how many of you find the better you get you actually just take less pictures?
 
I delete in camera, if it is obviously that bad...but never delete once it's on the hard drive, as if it isn't right, it won't be far off...so you never know when it might come in useful! :)
 
I import all mine to Lightroom - delete anything that is soft, out of focus, generally completely awfull (if they haven't be deleted in camera during a chimp). I think go through and make a 'quick collection' of that shots that have promise for posting on here/flickr/blog - processes those and save them as a collection/set - I leave the 'average' shots in my Lightroom library for any possibly future use, be it stock or whatever.

I don't delete that many at all really. I am currently sorting out last years photos (I got very lazy with my organisation). I took 60,000 in one year! so am going through doing the process above, hoping to end up with maybe 40,000 - of which maybe 1% will ever be shown to anyone.
 
I don't delete anything that I shoot.

If it is not good enough for me to have, keep and use; then it is good enough for me to flick back to and see what I did wrong.

With the price of memory (CF and hard drive) it would be pointless to delete. Mind you, it would save a bit of space if I did delete :p .. but memory is relatively cheap in comparison to the cost of the gear as a whole!
 
I delete about 98%. I am my own worst critic. No point hanging onto stuff that will never be printed or shown to anyone, I usually know its a bad shot even as I take it and it doesn't even get downloaded.
 
i keep them all on my hard drive, then once i'm happy i have no need i delete the ones i have not used/do not think are good.

but saying that i've still got about 1000 band images from early 08 that i have had no use for for about 6 months :lol:
 
I found when I first moved to DSLR's from a compact (shot film for years)
That I shot a hell of a lot of pics without thinking (no film price with Digital)
and deleted about 80%

But over the year and a few months ,I think I have learnt more in that year than 15 years in film ,chimping is a luxury and fantastic learning tool.

I reckon I shoot less now and only delete unsharp, blown highlights,and badly composed pics.
My hit rate is around 80%.
I'm not saying they are stunner's or owt, but now I have a separate hardrive I tend to keep more shots.

I have gone back to film as well,and the hit rate has gone up from 20% to around 70% thanks to the DSLR learning process.


PS
Don't buy a camera off Tom .....60,000 a year.:eek:
 
Now, if a shot doesn't grab me it gets deleted, I'll never move forward if I keep hold of mediocrity.
 
Kev M said:
Now, if a shot doesn't grab me it gets deleted, I'll never move forward if I keep hold of mediocrity.
Click to expand...


Well said that man, I read in an article that if this pro could not put a caption or title to a shot he would not shoot it.
I tend to shoot then see if a caption comes.
 
I keep everything - just because I can be a right clutz and am bound to press the delete key one time too many and delete the shot of the day ;-) Part of my workflow is to make an all and a keepers collection in LR and I figure having stuff in the all collection can't actually hurt anything.

Cheers

Hugh
 
It's very rare I delete anything in-camera now. No particular reason (besides saving battery), I just find it more enjoyable to wait til I get home, and sit down with a cup of tea and have a proper look through. I used to delete stuff straightaway from the camera, but very often I realised straight after that I might be getting rid of interesting / salvagable shots.

I'll go through a set of photos a number of times. I'll delete a lot as soon as I view them if they're obviously no good, then I'll go through again and decide if certain ones can be saved through PP.

It can take me days to go through a set of photos though. I'm still working my way through Sunday's efforts :)
 
when im rushed i delete a lot as i am not thinking about the shot but just getting it. When i can take my time i dont delete any at all as all are pre thought and have a reason. They may not all be used as final products but not deleted.

As i get better my delete/waste rate goes down and the usable images increase. Its good to know but i am critical of my own work which means i keep less than i could.
 
I delete in camera any where exposure is too far off to claw back. I download everything else and tend to keep all the RAW files (I have a 1Tb external drive to fill!:naughty: ) As I go through them in DPP, I convert the promising ones to jpeg and may do some minor adjustments here, then I will open these in CS3 to process properly.

At the moment, I am finding I could process more, but my skills are not quite good enough yet, and I don't have the time to learn at the moment..... whether I go back to these shots, I don't know!:thinking:
 
after reading this i think i'm going to go through my photos tomorrow and do a hell of a lot of deleting :lol:
 
christmas is an excellent time to cull those photo's too. I do an end of year review of my "keepers" and often find another 10-20% to delete.

In day to day use, I tend to delete anything that misses the mark, be it focus, composition, exposure, etc. I'll often do this as a two pass process. The first is the quickest looking for the obvious discards. The second is a more critical eye of the "keepers", looking for reasons not to keep them. At all times before deleting any image I do a cursory examination to see if there is any potential in the shot, looking for the "shot in the shot" (something a good friend taught me to do).

Overall, my keepers percentile is around 60-75%, but that figure really means little because it will vary with what you're trying to photograph. I've just learnt to shoot more with less over time.
 
green said:
I delete about 98%. I am my own worst critic. No point hanging onto stuff that will never be printed or shown to anyone, I usually know its a bad shot even as I take it and it doesn't even get downloaded.
Click to expand...

I agree with that... just dont see the point in hanging onto screeds of photos...

Jimmy_Lemon said:
I import all mine to Lightroom - delete anything that is soft, out of focus, generally completely awfull (if they haven't be deleted in camera during a chimp). I think go through and make a 'quick collection' of that shots that have promise for posting on here/flickr/blog - processes those and save them as a collection/set - I leave the 'average' shots in my Lightroom library for any possibly future use, be it stock or whatever.

I don't delete that many at all really. I am currently sorting out last years photos (I got very lazy with my organisation). I took 60,000 in one year! so am going through doing the process above, hoping to end up with maybe 40,000 - of which maybe 1% will ever be shown to anyone.
Click to expand...

60000 photos.... you will only show 1% OMG... I cant believe the time it must take you too process it all.... that's what I lack is time... not so much time to get out every few weeks and shoot as my fiancee is a TOG too... but she isnt into it enough to process at all... just shoots JPEGS and keeps them as is... so she does not understand why I take so long to process... and there always seems to be 100 other things she has planned for the evenings too! Your lucky to get so much time!

SpidersEye said:
It's very rare I delete anything in-camera now. No particular reason (besides saving battery), I just find it more enjoyable to wait til I get home, and sit down with a cup of tea and have a proper look through. I used to delete stuff straightaway from the camera, but very often I realised straight after that I might be getting rid of interesting / salvagable shots.

I'll go through a set of photos a number of times. I'll delete a lot as soon as I view them if they're obviously no good, then I'll go through again and decide if certain ones can be saved through PP.

It can take me days to go through a set of photos though. I'm still working my way through Sunday's efforts :)
Click to expand...

I know how you feel... so am I... about 20% through... but I have such a backlog of my film stuff... but i want to get my slides scanned and processed as I took alot of good images... and only about halfway through that... and really want to scan the old family albums for prosperity too... but god knows where the time will come... I'd love to take a week off purely to work on it... but knowing me i'll get bored and go out and take more pics instead with the time... and the backlog increases!

hepburn said:
christmas is an excellent time to cull those photo's too. I do an end of year review of my "keepers" and often find another 10-20% to delete.

In day to day use, I tend to delete anything that misses the mark, be it focus, composition, exposure, etc. I'll often do this as a two pass process. The first is the quickest looking for the obvious discards. The second is a more critical eye of the "keepers", looking for reasons not to keep them. At all times before deleting any image I do a cursory examination to see if there is any potential in the shot, looking for the "shot in the shot" (something a good friend taught me to do).

Overall, my keepers percentile is around 60-75%, but that figure really means little because it will vary with what you're trying to photograph. I've just learnt to shoot more with less over time.
Click to expand...

I guess I only try to keep pics I'd show people rather than ones I took that I dont want... It seems a hassle keeping all these files to me... but im a bit of a technophobe to be honest!

Still a film photographewr who works with digital... but yeh I still think in film... if there is really a difference?!?!
 
I delete nothing in camera, but otherwise am ruthless about what I keep.
 
Step 1: CTRL + A

Step 2: DELETE


:D

I go through my folder with preview on large and look at them, looking for signs of anything wrong, and if it is wrong then can I pull it back in CS3 raw editor...I usually end up ditching a lot though, but usually because I take a lot of the same shot from different angles with different settings.
 
i delete stuff that is OOF or Soft when looking through the Jpegs, think every RAW i have taken and copied to HDD is still there
 
For a wedding, I keep the lot. I back up all the RAW files to an external HD and a DVD before I delete anything or format the cards. I did one last weekend and had over 900 shots. (those of you struggling with 50, you need to look at your workflow! lol)

I'll scan through the 900 and anything I think will make a good album pic gets tagged. Pull all the tagged ones together and process them to whatever output is required for the album. (some manufacturers want JPEG, some like 24MB Jpeg, some like TIFF, some like specific colour profiles, so it depends on which album I'm making)

The generic background shots, flowers, table decorations etc, I should have shot them right in camera first time so they get batch processed. The money shots that I spend the time on get some individual attention.

Then I have to design the album...................

Once it's all done, it gets backed up again to the external drive and DVD and kept for two years. Only then do I delete the files from my working PC.
 
hepburn said:
I can only highly recommend you check out Adobe Lightroom. It has made image management a breeze for me.
Click to expand...

I actually think the canon one I use to proccess my photos is fine for me... I guess I only like to keep photos i'd keep and look at in the future... Im def a keen amature and not looking to make money from photography whatsoever... so the keeping just incase I might need it doesn't really wash with me ever... as I dont really need images... I just want them... there is a subtle difference!

I think I do need to work out how to batch process with the canon version... and then once converted into photoshop elements all I really do is crop them... however I do wish you could crop in the canon programme but i've not found that function yet... then I'd probably only need the one programme for all instead of two... However just thinking about it.... not sure you can even print from the canaon one so maybe just best sticking to the two which I know! I shoot in RAW btw.

Im really just not a huge computer person...
 
During downtime I'll look flick through and delete any poor shots in the camera; if time allows I'll offload to my laptop and delete them there instead but it's usually the former.

Only really obviously bad shots (missed composures, poor pans) get deleted in the camera at the track.
 
I tend to try to be quite ruthless in what I delete. And I also use Lightroom. Shots that are not great, but that I can't bring myself to delete, are rated as zero stars in LR. Then I pretty much permanently have a filter in place which shows only images with more than 1 star. Doing it that way, the images are not deleted, but are usually invisible.
 
Every shot I take goes onto the NAS and external HD at the same time as importing to Lightroom.

Then I go through setting picks/rejects, I review all the rejects before removing them from Lightroom still have them on the NAS/external drives though). I then process the picks, assigning a colour to the ones I've used/sold, these won't be deleted. If any of the other picks aren't used, but I feel they are worth keeping, get assigned a star rating.

I have set up a smart collection that finds all uncoloured & unrated images over 1 year old, then I can quickly review them and delete if needed.
 
I delete in camera if they are not sharp, over or under exposed (using histogram) or bad composition. I only have limited HDD space on my laptop (10GB free for photos) although I have plenty of different backup ways..

I recently cleared out a load of my photos from when I started photography, bar a few..

My hit rate used to be about 5% and is now probably about 80% as I take less photos and normally try to use a tripod to compose.

George
 
I delete nothing in camera. Like someone said above, some shots may be salvageable. Even if they are then resized extremely small (say for a small banner advertisement on a webpage that doesn't need to be blown up to A2 size).

But the general process goes something like this:

Download all pictures to hard-drive
Import into Lightroom
Set everything to 3 stars
Quickly look through the pictures that are truly worthless and assign one stars
Delete all "one stars" (batch deletion is quicker than single deletion)
Go through the pictures again and any that I feel that I'd like to take a look at further get 4 stars
And ones that I know I'll be processing get 5 stars.

I could probably give ratings to all the pictures at one time, but I find I get as tired this way. Being able to take a little break after deletion but before a second review refreshes my mind.

If there are too many 5 stars then I start to think how I can batch them according to themes/composition and then decide which picture represents the given theme the best and give the final touches on that one.

I try to keep a rule of having one shot per theme/composition/etc with my 'good' pictures. I've realized that 1 or 2 or 20 photos of the same thing from the same angle is a useless waste of space and especially time when you're looking at them later on.
 
If something is glaringly obviously wrong with a shot (bad focus, motion blur, someone walks across the shot etc) I'll delete it there and then. Once I'm home, everything gets copied onto a hard drive and a CD or DVD. From that original HDD, I'll take another copy to work from - the originals are kept safely away from fiddling! That folder will then get gone through at full screen size to see what may be worth keeping - the rubbish gets whittled down at that stage. Once I'm that far, I'll make yet another copy of that original file and save it as a "best of the folder" folder. Only then will I start working on the few that remain - if possible, just slight tweaks to crop, contrast, brightness, saturation and as much USM as necessary. Once I've done the basic tweaks (crop/con/bri/sat), I'll save the tweaked files then I'll use those as "masters" for resizing before final sharpening.
 
I delete nothing in camera, then once they're on the PC I quickly weed out the rejects.
Then I look for the ones with dodgy composition and check too see if I can find a 'picture within the picture' and crop to suit, failing that they're binned.
Then I process the rest and have another pass, throwing out the ones that don't look right.
The rest I keep.

To be honest my hit rate is very low as I'm a n00b but if I can get a couple of keepers per 'outing' I'm happy.... for now.
 
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