I use 3, 4, and 5. Everything else is deleted. 5 would be for printing, web, slide show, etc. 4 might use later but too good to delete. 3 save for awhile longer will probably delete before archive.
I'm similar to Gil, 3 is an acceptable image, 4 is pretty great. My deviation is that I reserve 5 for images that have been finished, either in LR and/or PS and are pretty great or better. I might assign 2 stars to an image that I may want to keep for documentary purposes in the future. 1 stars get deleted.
Important thing I've found, is to be consistent. Since I have been using LR for a couple years now, I have a good library and the various filters/keywords/ratings etc. make it easy to find photos of interest.
I use them just as Gil and Rob do, 5 is a keeper, 4 is almost and may get used, 3 is a probably not. I don't use them so much for finding pictures later as I do for culling and ranking pictures for processing after the shoot.
I post-process all 5's, most 4's and almost no 3's. Then from the successfully P/P images, I make my final selection using Quick Collection, saving and naming it.
I use the feature only for temporary editing. All 0-Stars except for the one's I want to sort to the top for processing. After processing if I remember, I change it back to 0-Stars again.
I delete OOF or other useless shots so I can't find any actual uses for rating images. It's either good enough to keep or it meets it's digital death and is sent into the null as if it never existed.
I don't rate the majority of my images. In fact, I tend to let the clients or collaborators use the star ratings to mark potential selects for themselves. For my selects I exclusively use the flagging system - I flag selects that I want to come back to and process, flag rejects for anything I don't want to see again and don't want anything else to see. Then for making proof galleries I simply filter out rejects.
In my case, things are pretty binary: images are worth looking at or not, are flagged for further editing and retouching or are not. Finer rating than that isn't really helpful, except for aiding a client in making their final selects.
Peter Krogh (author of Digital Asset Management for Photographers) would be having a fit. His book offers some very good insight into the rating system (as well as a ton of other topics, obviously). Can't recommend it enough. The only downside is that there are so many more tools out (namely Lightroom) since the book was published. Word on the street is that an update is coming soon.
I just use flags, that's all. In fact, I just use the white flag. Eventually I just trash everything that doesn't have the white flag on it. Oh, and I sometimes use colors to differentiate between stuff. Like when I shoot students for a graduation albums I also shoot teachers and assign them different colors. Stars? Nah, too much trouble for my taste.
Beowulfenator wrote:
Oh, and I sometimes use colors to differentiate between stuff.
I use colors as well. In addition to keywording the people involved in a shoot (hair, makeup, models, stylists, etc.) I'll sometimes color-code the shots containing different models or wardrobe changes, just to make going back through them for proofing and selects faster.
I used to rate my images in BreezeBrowser before I started using Lightroom.
My process there was to view all images in a full screen slide show for 2-3 seconds. I would "tag" (flag) those images that I wanted to see again, usually about 50%.
Then I would go through the tagged images and rank them. Call it 5 stars, 4 stars, etc.
Finally, I would review my 5 star images, 4 star, and 3 star and ensure that the rankings were accurate. I might bump one up, bump one down, etc.
Then I would usually only process, proof, and show the 5 and 4 start images and ignore the rest. I never delete anything. Storage is cheap, mistakes can be very costly.
It is a little more tedious to do the same thing in Lightroom, but the same basic principles apply.
I also use coloprs, usually to flag customer selects, or a delivered set of images, especially where there is more than one "customer" (a model and a client, etc.)
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The place where I really diverge with the Lightroom architecture is the use of catalogs. The Lightroom premise is that most users will have 1 large catalog.
In most cases I create a set of images for a specific purpose, a job. I don't want all of my "jobs" in the same catalog, the way Lightroom is really designed. Then you have to remember all of your tags, rankings, quick collections, etc. to try to get recreate a complex workflow - which changes - to get back to the same image subset that you had 6 months earlier as the final output or select on a job.
I am still creating a new catalog for each job/client right now. But if you create a new catalog for each job, you have to go back and set all of your defaults, etc.
I understand database architectures, but a Lightroom catalog is not really a normalized database. It does not have all of the necessary tags as mandatory defaults to ensure clean and easy selects of specific images on core criteria (keys.)
Operating from a single catalog just does not make sense to me. The only thing that the items in the "catalog" would have in common is that they are images that I shot. I need more high level granularity than that. (FWIW, I have created proprietary DAM's for large scale image management systems since 1992.)
It's very interesting to see how everyone is using the star system. For the longest time I have done what some of you are currently doing, just using the flags, which has worked, but I discovered that it would be nice from time to time to have a more specific ranking system. I went through and started using the stars, and kind of like it, but ran into questions about how to use them. Obviously, using them consistently is extremely important, so I am still working on this.
Currently I just leave absolute crap images with 0 stars, anything that is out of focus, cropped funny, etc. Then 1's are meh, but no sense in deleting them. 2 is something I might come back too in the future, 3 is a good shot, but not a great shot, 4 is a great shot, and 5 is a shot that is prepped and ready to print for the client. I think this is a good system, but I still feel like something is missing.
Yes, but how You can delete a picture today "normal' and in a few years may be invaluable....think about pictures "normal" of the twintowers or the pic of Monica Lewinski and Pres Clinton
I review and rank all my images in Photo mechanic first. The beauty of PM is that I can begin review and ranking while images are being ingested as it is much faster than LR (for me). Five starts for those I want to submit, four stars for images I want to take a second look at, 3 starts for keep but don't submit. Everything else is deleted as I go. I also apply all IPTC data in PM during ingest (including keywords). Nice thing about PM is that I can ingest, and rank images in the time it would take LR just to ingest.
After my quick review, I open up the shoot in LR and since the star ratings from PM carry over to LR, I can quickly filter 5 star images, make final adjustments, and export.
I used to use LR exclusively but since I've added Photo Mechanic my workflow has improved dramatically.
alvit wrote:
Yes, but how You can delete a picture today "normal' and in a few years may be invaluable....think about pictures "normal" of the twintowers or the pic of Monica Lewinski and Pres Clinton
Is a blurry pic of Monica Lewinsky worth anything? I delete the blur/oof etc, unless it is a unique capture. Then I may keep it as a one star. Normally, I have plenty of good keepers to choose from so deleting the losers isn't giving anything up. PJ workflow may differ, just as I have slight variations on my workflow depending on the type of shoot.
alvit wrote:
Yes, but how You can delete a picture today "normal' and in a few years may be invaluable....think about pictures "normal" of the twintowers or the pic of Monica Lewinski and Pres Clinton
Yes, you can be a photo packrat, but for those of us that shoot thousands of shots a year we need to get rid of those that are not worth keeping.
I guess there might be a blurry shot that turns out to be worth millions, but it is so unlikely that you can't keep them all and hope to have enough storage space.
Import
Create a Collection Set for the event (Football Team v Team)
Create a collection for the type (e.g. Football)
Create a collection for the type (e.g. Cheer)
Add associated images to pertinent collection
Keyword images based on name, action, event, team, action, etc.
(Additive editing)
Flag keepers (focus, face, ball, action, emotion)
(Filter for flagged images)
1 star for images that can be sold (and will be lightly edited, uploaded to sales site)
Export full size .jpg
(Filter for flags and 1 star)
4 stars for web gallery worthy images (usually the top 10)
(Filter for 4 stars)
(Create Web Cheer and Web Football collections add 4 star images)
5 star for images to print from web gallery worthy images (usually a single image)
(Create Print collection, add appropriates images)
Green label for 4 star images that go to the blog (usually only one)
(Create Blog collection, add appropriate images)
Red label for images that might be good for a follow up
Yellow label for images of the other team (these get added into their own collection then the yellow label is cleared from the images)
ISSUES:
Some images can get get multiple color labels...so I have to prioritize and sometimes adjust my workflow.
I have to go through my images 4-6 times.
I usually stylize in LR2 or Photoshop for images that are printed and put in the galleries.
Gil_W wrote:
I use 3, 4, and 5. Everything else is deleted. 5 would be for printing, web, slide show, etc. 4 might use later but too good to delete. 3 save for awhile longer will probably delete before archive.
