I’m really bad at not sorting digital photos. I’ve got thousands of photos from lots of trips, rides, days out that I’ve never got round to sorting through. I start, go through and delete the obviously bad ones, but it’s tricky to delete photos that are “quite good”.

Then I get overwhelmed that I’ve gone through a few hundred photos and managed to whittle it down to 60%. And by then I’m bored looking at that set.

It was easier with prints. Yes pile and No pile, spread out the similar ones of the same scene to compare and pick the best. Pick up the yes pile and split again into yes and no til you end up with a sensible number of good pics that tell the story without being too much to get through.

Anyone in the same boat found a good system for getting loads down to a manageable number? Maybe just a 5 star rating to tag as you go through? Or 2 star..

I’ve tried going the other way, just picking the best, but last time I did that, I picked 11 out of 800 and there are a lot of good ones left in the set.

Part of the problem is attention span and application, I know!

I reckon that being able to do this is an essential part of doing photography. There are lots of people that can take a good photo, but no-one sees most of them because they stick 100 shots straight on Facebook, or rather 20 shots taken 5 minutely different ways and no-one wants to look through that.

But you know this, because you’ve asked this question, so…

Try to delete the really crap ones on-camera, at the time (if you have the chance).

Software with a star rating system can work. I’ve tried that system in the past, but lapsed.

Most of all though: you’ve got to be tough. Looking at two good photos you’ve taken next to each other? They might both be good but if they show the same thing in pretty much the same way then get rid of one. If you can’t choose between them, they’re the same shot.

As a slight exception to that, sometimes I have two shots of the same thing that are a bit different and I really don’t one to bin either of them. I usually pick a definitive “set” (often which will go on Facebook) and mark them using the star of flag function in whatever software I’m doing. Then I keep both, but one is the digital equivalent of languishing in a drawer, never to see the light of day.

And, obviously, try and sort regularly – that’ll make it easier and less boring. There’s no easy way to do that. Just do it.

Ah, I’m perfectly happy, and pretty good at saying that one’s better than that one. If it’s a smaller number, I’ll get it down pretty quick 50 down to 10/15, no problem at all.

The problem is being able to hold an idea of the overall quality of a set in my head to judge whether the photo I’m looking at is in the top 50 of 600.

star of flag function in whatever software

Software with a star rating system

That was really the question. What are you using?

I’m just using windows explorer and MS image viewer to whittle down, then Photoshop for the chosen few.

I’ve asked myself this a few times and this is what I do:

– I use Apple’s iPhoto and iCloud Photo Library. This means I can be sorting photos on any of my devices and they will all update to one central library. This has made a big difference since I can be sorting through photos on my phone, MacBook or iMac any time I have the inclination. Previously sorting photos was something I sat down at the “big computer” to do and it often felt like a chore. It just makes the whole task less daunting.

– If I have an immediate reaction to a photo and think “that’s a good one” I mark it as a favourite. Not stars or keywords, just simply “favourite”.

– Others that are good but perhaps not impactful I *may* use star ratings for, but I find that I mark everything with 3 out of 5 stars 😆

– I definitely (try to) delete similar shots. It’s so easy with burst photography to have a dozen shots of more or less the same thing. I don’t make taking a few minutes to pick the best one

– I use keywords for things like “biking” or “family” so I can easily find specific photos in future

– I ask “will anyone find this photo interesting to look at?” if I’m in doubt. If the answer is no, it gets binned (mostly)

– I don’t fret about leaving a few behind for another sorting session another day 🙂

My photos get displayed on my TV as a screen saver so if a crap one pops up I go and delete it.

FastPictureViewer

is targeted just for this type of thing – speeding up workflow for professional photographers (I have nothing to do with it apart from being a customer).

It is not free but the codec pack is useful to let you view RAW pictures in windows explorer.

You can see histogram type information on the picture and quickly zoom detail to check focus, etc, and set up a target folder to which the ‘good’ shots are copied. You could then filter that folder again if you wish.

If you don’t want to buy it you could use it’s name to google for alternatives.

cheers chaps, I’m not in the iuniverse, not sure how much it would cost to keep everything on cloud storage.

I’ll check out FPV, cheers TG!

I pay £2.99 a month for 200Gb, which is more than adequate for my photo library and is a small price to pay for another level of backup (although Apple will insist it is not a backup service). The editing/sorting is not done “in the cloud” so I can do it when not online, syncing the changes (automatically) when I’m back online. It’s not without its downside and frustrations, but it suits me.

Anyway, it’s irrelevant since you’re not, as you say, on Apple stuff.

That was really the question. What are you using?

It’s complicated at the moment! I’m in a bit of a quandary, see this thread and this one.

I’m leaning towards Darktable on Linux, but I don’t think that has a flag/star function. Might just have to improvise with a ‘flag’ tag (it has 1-5 star ratings though).

Most software has something like that. Aperure did, Lightroom does, Shotwell (Linux) does. I think Picasa does.

Picasa is good and free. Lightroom is very good and costs about £80 IIRC.

On a trial version of Fastpictureviewer, and I like it. started of using the star rating system, but that doesn’t help you sort anything,

Keep/copy is exactly what I wanted. Set up another folder to copy the good ones into, then another one to copy the better ones into, delete the first “good” and carry on until you’ve got a sensible number that you can hold in your head and evaluate as a whole. Smashed through a couple of sets last night.

Good. Pretty generous free trial period on it too – up to the 23rd December.

I’ve used Aperture (Mac user) for years and have recently swapped to Lightroom CC (£8.99pcm).
As soon as I import I rate each image:
0 – reject (to be deleted).
1 – Just store (nice memories, but no need to do any work).
3 – To be processed.

I then delete the 0 rated items.
The 3’s are then processed (I use presets initially, then individual tweeks if needed).
Mark any that I would actually print out as 5’s.

I have over 500GB of images, so need to keep on top of them.

Need to get better at metadata so I can search images quicker.

ttp, I started with a similar rating system –
1 – possible panorama stitch
2 – delete
3 – keep
4 – poss print
5 – change career. (no 5s so far!)

but you can’t see your fastpictureviewer ratings in explorer, so you can’t sort by rating and treat differently. Which is why I just went for the keepers/not keepers method.

Unless I’m missing something Turner Guy? Do you use the ratings?

I use Lightroom having previously used Photoshop to process and folders to sort.
As with other I use the star rating to pick which ones to keep, throw, or process. I should use metadata better but rarely do anything other than the location or event.
I really dislike sorting through digital photos though, so much harder than prints, but then I guess I take 10x as many digital as I did from film.

cheers_drive, me too! It’s why I started this thread. I never had enough enthusiasm/application/self-discipline/attention span to last me through a job.

Give the free trial of Fastpictureviewer a go. It speeds the job up enough to feel like you’re making real progress, which is most of the battle, I reckon.

I use Picassa for photo management and just Star the ones I like, then I delete all the rest.

Then way I try to tame my photographs.

Download to computer from the camera into Picasa.

File structure I use is say for today date_quick name_name of photographer. Eg 151104_gnar woods_redthunder

This keeps all my directories in order.

Keep original on camera until I have sorted in Picasa.

Burn selected onto DVD.

Add BURNT to directory name after.

Possibly the best one to Flickr.

Unless I’m missing something Turner Guy? Do you use the ratings?

no, just keep/copy.

But I do also collect up all similar subject pictures first and put them in a separate folder ready for pruning – my similar shots might not be taken chronologically close so won’t appear near each other when sorting with FPV/Explorer otherwise.

I was also using it for the codecs, for displaying RAW in explorer.

t speeds the job up enough to feel like you’re making real progress, which is most of the battle, I reckon.

I think the author is a member of the dpreview forum, so has based it on a real photographers workflow…

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/prophoto/

There’s a forum for it here with some tutorials :

http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5&sid=3ad99058b63cad31bfea4cc84a6884f4

Windows Photo Gallery is free, and pretty good. Can give star ratings for all of your photos. Also worth using some sort of descriptive tags, it makes it a lot easier to find photos later.

I still have all the photos we’ve taken of guests on MTB trips over the past 8 years. 10,000+ I reckon.

Makes trying to find a good one to put on the website almost impossible. I really need to at least try to pick out the best ones from the past season or 2.

I use fast raw viewer which is similar to fast picture viewer.
i reject the rubbish ones and i colour code a photo if it needs editing and give it a rating if its worth printing or uploading.
its not that tedious really, i dont rank them all, just like i dont upload or print them all.
If its not ranked colured or rejected its a keeper but just left on storage as a record of the event for looking at in 50 years time..
works for me.

Lightroom. Lightroom. Lightroom.

My workflow is something like import photos, open in fullscreen, and zoom through them hitting P (pick) for the really good ones and x (reject) for the terrible ones. Then you can tell LR to hide the rejects and iterate again, checking that you have the good ones picked.

I guess the key is the ability to scroll around thumbnails at speed and tag/filter easily. I seriously encourage anyone who is in photography to try Lightroom, I think they do a subscription thingy for a fiver a month that include Lightroom and Photoshop too now.

Is there any plug ins for lightroom like Picasa’s image tweaks.

The ones like lomo’ish, orton’ish, night vision etc.

Trying LR 5 right.

Also, I quite like this program:
https://pixlr.com/

Can anyone recommend a FastPictureViewer alternative for Mac? Just want something I can use to quickly filter out the bad pics before converting to dng and importing to LR (LR can’t read my camera’s raw files). Tagging in Finder takes too long!

Ta,
Duane

http://www.fastrawviewer.com/ works on mac

maybe lightroom cc supports your camera? dont think i could deal with the extra conversion step.

Get your kids to do it.

I try to sick to a KISS approach.

1 Import images from camera to a dated/named folder.
2 Flick through images in a bog standard image viewer.
3 Delete images I’m not happy with as I go along.
4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 with a bit more care this time.
5 Repeat steps 2 and 3 with a properly critical eye.
6 Upload what’s left to Flickr and archive to external hard drive.
7 (Over) process using Flickr’s native editor.

Caveat. I’m a dyed in the will Linux user. Have tried Darktable a few times but it seems a tad awkward on the processing side.

will = wool

sick = stick

…