1- in focus
2 - worth looking hard at
3 - this is the initial cut of publishable material. I usually have whole sequences of shots with 2 stars, only one of which gets 3 stars.
4 - goes into online galleries for sale
5 - portfolio
Steve I didn't realize that Photo Mechanic's stars were recognized by Lightroom... that is great to know! Does anyone know if CS2 Bridge also recognizes the stars from PM?
My rating system is similar to those above, with minor differences (in part because I often shoot on deadline):
0 - I haven't looked at the image yet
1 - unusable, delete
2 - For cutline (caption) information only - photos of a scoreboard, a player's jersey after a big play, a referee's call, etc. These can usually be deleted after the cutlines are written.
3 - keepers, but not for submission on this particular assignment
4 - keepers, for submission/printing on this particular assignment
5 - the rare portfolio or contest image
My use of flags varies by assignment. In a high school football game, for instance, I might flag all images of the quarterback with red, and another star player in yellow. I can then go through all the 3 and 4 star images of a particular player, and find the best one or two that best tell the story of the game for submission.
Since it's been mentioned, I'll also confirm that using Photomechanic for rating saves me hours over doing it in Lightroom. It seems that Lightroom takes eight or ten seconds before each RAW file becomes sharp enough to evaluate. In PM it is nearly instant. Multiply ten seconds times 500 shots and you save about an hour and twenty minutes. After doing the culling and rating in PM, I then import everything into LR.
PM is also incredibly easy to create and name subfolders and move and copy photos on the fly, without having to change screens. It is also super quick at going to 100% view to check critical focus. It is an incredible time saver. If in doubt, they've got a thirty day trial. Great people also. They almost refuse to actually sell you the program before you try it. May be the best $150 I ever spent.
hfillmore wrote:
Since it's been mentioned, I'll also confirm that using Photomechanic for rating saves me hours over doing it in Lightroom. It seems that Lightroom takes eight or ten seconds before each RAW file becomes sharp enough to evaluate. In PM it is nearly instant. Multiply ten seconds times 500 shots and you save about an hour and twenty minutes. After doing the culling and rating in PM, I then import everything into LR.
really depends on the computer, doesn't it... my mac pro renders instantly in Lightroom. Sure, it cost a HELL of a lot more than $150, but I had lots of other good reasons to spend that money. Just a heads up that your experience may not apply to all readers.
The time it takes for a RAW file to come on screen at full sharpness does depend on many variables....... not the least of which is the hardware, I'm sure.
But for whatever reason, IF you are dealing with 500 RAW files, and IF the computer you're using takes 10 seconds to load a sharp RAW file at 100%, THEN Photomechanic will save you an hour and twenty minutes in waiting time alone when culling and ranking 500 RAW files.
PM brings 10 meg RAW files into sharpness almost instantly. Zooming the image in to 100%, 200% or whatever, is also nearly instant. Even on a three year old Thinkpad. A tremendous asset for anyone on the road, sorting and culling large numbers of files, who is not toting around a state of art power house.
0 stars - OOF/bad comp/bad lighting
1 star - just barely ok
2 stars - ok
3 stars - good
4 stars - proofs for client
5 stars - photogs favs
Red - photos for blog/fm/ect. (psd files only)
Yellow - photos for Flickr (psd files only)
Blue - Portfolio selections
I usually import into LR, rate all photos between 1 and 4 stars, then I will basic edit all 4 starred images in LR. Then I will go through and pick out my fav photos and rate them 5. those get narrowed down to photos going on my blog with the label red. Red photos get PS treatment (after which all NEF's have color label removed so only psd's are colored, this helps ensure my jpg exports from lightroom are from the PS edit). the yellow and blue labels will follow.
I could probably get away with using only stars, but i find the extra steps helpful (going from 700 proofs to 20 blog photos is a pretty massive jump).
