Hi, I've been doing some sports photos just as a hobby for friends for a few years now, and I am wondering how others deal with an issue I've been thinking about. So last night I shot photos of our high school football game, and I shoot for specific players. After I edit, I create a shared online folder that I share with each player's family. What I am finding time consuming is sorting all the photos by player, so I can export photos for each player individually. Right now, I am going through an keywording each photo by the players number. Then, I can sort for a specific keyword and export those photos in a series. (So, I can expor them all with the name Sept 10 Smith (1 of 10). I'm using Lightroom for all of this. What I am wondering, is how you guys sort a bunch of photos by the individual player? Is there an easier way I am missing?
Thanks, I'm just doing maybe a max of 6 or 8 in a game. My current setup works, it's just not very efficient. I'm thinking there is a better way, I'm just not seeing it right now.
OK, I don’t think there’s a super simple way to do this, but this may be a little more simple… And of course at some point AI will do all of this so this may be a temporary fix!
Many, and I would say virtually all, professional sports photographers use a culling software program called
photomechanic by company called camera bits. It is the editing standard for professionals and allows you to cull photos far more rapidly than Lightroom. There is a cost, and it may not be a worthwhile investment for you if this is a hobby, but it is an indispensable tool if you are going to be doing this over the long haul.
What I would do, and I’m interested to hear how other photomechanic users might improve on this concept, is pull your photos into photomechanic and when you see one of the players, let’s call him. John Smith, you can assign one star to that player simply by hitting the number one on your keyboard for player two Mark Jones, you just hit the number 2 … and so on …, then, you can ask a photo mechanic to just sort for the pictures of the player marked with one star and then pull that batch into Lightroom for editing. And so on through your list of players…
I don’t think there’s a super easy solution to what you’re asking, but I think this is far faster than key wording as it involves one key stroke and photomechanic is just so much faster than Lightroom. I think the question is if it’s worth the money to buy the software. But frankly, I’ve never met anybody who purchased photo mechanic who hasn’t fallen in love with it!
Others chime in here, please, and improve on my rudimentary, but somewhat effective process!
Thanks for your input, that is certainly worth a try. I've been on the fence about giving Photomechanic a try, this might just push me over the edge into trying it. Thanks!
While certainly not nearly as fully featured as PhotoMechanic, Adobe Bridge can do the star/color ratings, and is free (I believe you need a free Adobe account though). To do this, you can open the folder of images, hit space for the large preview, and then hit the shortcut for stars (1-5) or colors (6-9), and left or right to go to prev/next photo. I loaded it up just now to double check, and the only thing I noticed is that the shortcut shows the need for control or command to do the ratings, but on my machine I do not (and I don't know why).
I used Bridge in a professional environment outside of sports, when I was handling light DAM duties for a developer role, and had to manage several thousand images I took for a curriculum that was being built. So while it's not the slickest option, for something like this, I feel it will do well and cost nothing.
Bridge also integrates with Photoshop (naturally), but if the need arose or Bridge is outgrown, Photo Mechanic is the obvious paid upgrade path for professional use.