Fast way to cull images?

[R3D-D0T]

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Hi,

I'm sick of how slow lightroom is when it comes to importing and culling files. There has got to be a faster way to edit through files...

[250swb]

Delete nothing, but develop your own critical powers so you only give attention to the images that deserve it. It is indecision that takes time, assume with a good hit rate there are only nine images per hundred worth bothering with and you will soon start to pick them out very quickly.

[LocalHero1953]

I hear people swear by Photo Mechanic for this purpose. (I've never tried it)

[jaapv]

Rating by stars is better than culling IMO. Never delete unless it is a complete technical failure.

[LocalHero1953]

Rating by stars is better than culling IMO. Never delete unless it is a complete technical failure.

What are your star ratings criteria, Jaap? I need to be more systematic than I am, to make it easier to go back to my better shots, and I'm happy to learn from others' experience.

[Exodies]

I find tagging more useful than star rating or deleting but it is very easy to create chaos. If only there was a keyword organizer which knew how my brain worked and kept up with its frequent changes. With stars are you rewarding best technical or best illustration of the scene?

I suspect that whatever you do to organize your pictures you will eventually have a heap of random groupings. Vigorous deletion is the only solution. Try to keep your total number of pictures below 100.

(See how my mind wandered over those two brief paragraphs? I'm glad I don't have to keep up with it. The poor readers!)

[Frase]

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Photomechanic is what you need no faster way to edit. You can download a trial from camerabits.

[Frase]

The way I do it for work (press) and leisure is-

1.Ingest everything off the card with photomechanic.

2.look through everything and select anything that you like, may like in the future or has any interest, photomechanic then makes a sub folder in your original ingest folder which can be named anything I call it edits.

3.browse the new folder and any pics that are to be worked on are opened up in photoshop, photomechanic also does this for you.

4.picture crop/level/sharpened etc then finally saved in either work archive if it's work or home archive with a new file name (I always start with the year my initials and subject ie 16fbpic2016holiday_01 etc).

5.back into photomechanic for a caption (a generic caption can also be added when ingesting ie 2016 holiday).

 

Using this system it's easy to look at an archive pic then if you decide you want to look at the other pictures first you can look in the edit folder or you can go further back and look in the original ingest folder as everything is dated and in order. If you write a proper caption photomechanic can also do a search.

[Frase]

I also meant to say I don't use lots of sub folders etc In my archive (final images) just put everything in one folder and it will all be in order and things will be much easier to find.

[Mark Pope]

a 9-10% hit rate sounds about right.  Maybe less if shooting in continuous mode.

 

I used to use the 'pick' flag in Lightroom, then use the 'Refine Photos' function in the Library menu on the images.  The 'Refine Photos' function sets un-flagged photos to 'rejected' then removes the picked flag from the flagged ones.  You can then filter on un-flagged photos to see what's left and repeat if needs be.

I am currently using another method, whereby I set images to 1 star if they are of interest and ignore those that don't.  Then filter by the star rating then go through the sub-set and set those which I still like to 2 stars and so on.  It's quick and easy.

 

The other thing I do now is to put pictures into a collection before starting the selection process.

 

As far as deleting images is concerned, the only ones I will delete are those that are clearly blurred or so badly exposed as to be useless.

[LocalHero1953]

The way I do it for work (press) and leisure is-

1.Ingest everything off the card with photomechanic.

2.look through everything and select anything that you like, may like in the future or has any interest, photomechanic then makes a sub folder in your original ingest folder which can be named anything I call it edits.

3.browse the new folder and any pics that are to be worked on are opened up in photoshop, photomechanic also does this for you.

4.picture crop/level/sharpened etc then finally saved in either work archive if it's work or home archive with a new file name (I always start with the year my initials and subject ie 16fbpic2016holiday_01 etc).

5.back into photomechanic for a caption (a generic caption can also be added when ingesting ie 2016 holiday).

 

Using this system it's easy to look at an archive pic then if you decide you want to look at the other pictures first you can look in the edit folder or you can go further back and look in the original ingest folder as everything is dated and in order. If you write a proper caption photomechanic can also do a search.

How does Photomechanic work with Lightroom, or does it only work with Photoshop?

And when Photomechanic straightens and crops a raw image, what format does it save it in? Or is it like Lightroom, saving as the raw plus a set of edits?

[Frase]

How does Photomechanic work with Lightroom, or does it only work with Photoshop?

And when Photomechanic straightens and crops a raw image, what format does it save it in? Or is it like Lightroom, saving as the raw plus a set of edits?

Photomechanic is really used for selecting captioning and organising, it can be used for cropping but it's only a soft edit, it is destructive unlike Lightroom but that doesn't matter as you still have an unedited picture in the edit folder any way. I know some people use it with Lightroom by just using Lightroom to import only the edits rather than all of the pics. Photomechanic really shines when's used with photoshop shop. I tried for a year to only use Lightroom and found it was just too slow so went back to using photomechanic and photoshop. Try the photomechanic demo and you will be amazed at how fast it is to make your selects.

[Jeff S]

I make 'work prints' of the pics I deem worthy, and then display them temporarily for further reflection.  Of these, only a small fraction will warrant a 'fine print' for my own matting and framing.  

 

Funny how committing to a picture, and spending time and expense on editing and materials, will force discipline....in shooting as well as editing.

 

I also don't delete unless I completely ruin an exposure.  Occasionally I will revisit my catalog to consider alternative actions or to cull a collection.

 

Maybe LR is doing you a favor (for now) by slowing things down.

 

Jeff

[Dan Bachmann]

I use BreezeBrowser Pro. To make it even more snappy, I convert all my DNGs to a newer DNG version with a full preview using Adobe Camera Raw (free tool) as I copy them off the SD card into the computer. From that point, I've not found anything faster for ranking, filtering, etc than BreezeBrowser Pro and I love the way I can move my files as I wish since it does not use an internal catalogue/database.

 

If I'm still not sure about the images, BreezeBrowser can knock out some preview images that are sharpened, applied auto-levels and/or converted to black & white. Usually, it is those previews which I use for my final image I'd post on-line. Sometimes they are even fine to print from that.

 

This is a very personal workflow, but it is what works best for me.