How do you cull your photo's?

[Valvebounce]

Hi Folks.
I went to the Bournemouth Air Festival last weekend, so many excellent planes, though the sad thing was that the Canadian Lancaster was not able to fly due to an engine failure, really wanted to see two Lancs together. :'(
The problem is I now have 3 thousand pictures over the two days, I was wondering if any of you have any tips on how to cull the shots?
Saturday was rather dull and overcast, I was going to ditch most of the pictures taken Saturday but I already found a couple that look like I was flying above the display plane looking down on it flying above the clouds!
I'm already going through and ditching any that are OOF or have bits cropped off accidentally, but how do you distinguish between 2 similar shots, so far I have used whether the prop blades are obscured or other similar things, any tips? Flicking back and forth between the raws in windows viewer is taking ages, and this is the first time I shot raw only!
I don't want to try to open thousands of images in DxO, I think it will crash may PC! ;D

Also how do you get the props or rotor blades to blur without blurring the whole thing, I dropped the shutter speed progressively until I had blade blur but got about 5 keepers from dozens of shots, speed was well below 1/focal length less four stops for the IS, I guess it is down to panning technique more than anything else?

Cheers, Graham.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

I hope you do not have a Nikon Dxxx. I tried editing just under 1000 from a nights shooting. Never again!.. I sold it shortly after.

When using a 10fps camera, I quickly learned to limit myself to 2-5 shots at a time. The first time I had 200 shots of a subject and had to pickout the best ones, taught me to concentrate on getting just one good shot. After that I rarely used the machine gun approach.

In lightroom, I first go thru and reject obviously unusable ones (poorly exposed, oof). I move thru them with the right arrow key, and my left hand on the X key. I can do that pretty quickly, and I get a good idea as to the scope of the job ahead.

Then I delete all the bad ones. These are not salvageable, so they just go. That's usually only 2% or less, but its a start.

Then I go thru the same process, but the 2nd pass, I press a numerical key (1-5) according to a quick evaluation of how good the subject and framing are. 1 is acceptable, 5 is a super shot. If I see some where the framing cuts off a important part, it gets a "X".

After that, I compare images of the same subject side by side, rating the best one higher. Depending on how many there are, I might have to go thru the process multiple times until I get the best 2 or 3 of a subject.

It takes a lot of time, the idea is to quickly narrow them down to excellent shots of each subject, and then spend your time sorting those out. By assigning numbers (stars), I can filter out everything below a 4, for example and then work on the best ones. The others are still there, just not visible. I've occasionally gone back and upgraded one of those when the ones I thought were excellent turned out to have flaws.

 

[Jim Saunders]

I use Photomechanic to go through the .cr2 files, and then the compare tool in Lightroom to compare similar shots.

Jim

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Mt Spokane.
No I don't have Nikon, the guy beside me did and he passed comment on the size of the files it output! I have a 7D, I was mostly shooting singles or twos, just so many opportunities to take another couple of shots!
Thanks for the tip, keeping going in one direction and looping sounds like a good idea, each back selection takes ages to load, but forward seems to preload the pic ready in windows photo viewer. I think it will do star ratings so that would seem like a good plan too.

Hi Jim.
Thanks for the tip, I just had a look at photo mechanic software, I think I will have to stick to what I have and what comes free with windows, another $150 is not going to happen at least at the moment! I know there is a free trial, but I don't want to try something I know I cannot afford to buy.

Cheers, Graham.

I hope you do not have a Nikon Dxxx. I tried editing just under 1000 from a nights shooting. Never again!.. I sold it shortly after.

When using a 10fps camera, I quickly learned to limit myself to 2-5 shots at a time. The first time I had 200 shots of a subject and had to pickout the best ones, taught me to concentrate on getting just one good shot. After that I rarely used the machine gun approach.

In lightroom, I first go thru and reject obviously unusable ones (poorly exposed, oof). I move thru them with the right arrow key, and my left hand on the X key. I can do that pretty quickly, and I get a good idea as to the scope of the job ahead.

Then I delete all the bad ones. These are not salvageable, so they just go. That's usually only 2% or less, but its a start.

Then I go thru the same process, but the 2nd pass, I press a numerical key (1-5) according to a quick evaluation of how good the subject and framing are. 1 is acceptable, 5 is a super shot. If I see some where the framing cuts off a important part, it gets a "X".

After that, I compare images of the same subject side by side, rating the best one higher. Depending on how many there are, I might have to go thru the process multiple times until I get the best 2 or 3 of a subject.

It takes a lot of time, the idea is to quickly narrow them down to excellent shots of each subject, and then spend your time sorting those out. By assigning numbers (stars), I can filter out everything below a 4, for example and then work on the best ones. The others are still there, just not visible. I've occasionally gone back and upgraded one of those when the ones I thought were excellent turned out to have flaws.

 

[Jim Saunders]

Hi Jim.
Thanks for the tip, I just had a look at photo mechanic software, I think I will have to stick to what I have and what comes free with windows, another $150 is not going to happen at least at the moment! I know there is a free trial, but I don't want to try something I know I cannot afford to buy.

Cheers, Graham.

At the risk of slithering out of a tree to tell you this, Photo Mechanic scrolls through .cr2 and .dng files as fast as you can push an arrow key...

Jim

 

[Loswr]

I don't want to try to open thousands of images in DxO, I think it will crash may PC!

DxO have been making improvements in their preview speed, but it's still slow and to me, unsuitable for image triage. No help to you, but I use Apple Aperture for triage before doing RAW conversions in DxO. Images open fast, it can automatically make 'stacks' of sets of images shot in close temporal proximity (i.e. high speed bursts), there's a loupe tool to check critical focus on a panel of several images, etc.

 

[Omar H]

Same for me, go through them with LR, rate them 1 and up. You may have to go through them more than once though. A great piece of advice is to limit yourself to an acceptable number of files. But only you can determine what that is. Particularly important if these are just for fun and not a business. Good luck.

 

[wtlloyd]

Breezebrowser Pro. Free two week trial, quick download. Affordable. I've been using it at least 10 years now (well, I mostly use Lightroom but this is my backup file browser in case I have doubts about what Lightroom is showing me, or just to handle images I don't want in my catalog).

There is a great compare feature (grid mode, select two files, right click, choose compare. Vary the zoom amount with another right click. Choose to view side by side or top/bottom)

Super fast, it builds views based on the embedded jpeg. I highly recommend it.

Breezesys.com

 

[takesome1]

I sort mine with Adobe Bridge in full screen view, the older LR wouldn't read Bridges stars when you mark. LR 5 does and I like that.

I sort mine using full screen view in bridge. When I have identical pics I scroll in to 100x and toggle back and forth between pics to compare focus. Then if no clear winner 200x. You can go to 500x but at some point you have to decide all are good and just grab one. This happens often with the 1D iV in burst mode.

I have tried LR sorting tools but Bridge just works so much better IMO.
Also you do not have to import all your unwanted pics in to LR this way.

 

[agierke]

i regularly deal with 4000+ images from a wedding between 2 shooters.

to reduce culling time i have begun using Adobe Bridge. on a Mac you can hit the space bar and it will enlarge the image to full screen (large enough to quickly tell if critical focus was achieved). you can then cycle through images with the arrow keys. i delete anything that isnt in focus, has blinks, flash misfired, etc. once i am confident the remaining images are all acceptably usable images, i hit space bar again to return to the thumbnail window where i then start removing redundant images. i try to get it down to about 800-1000 images total. from there i upload the raws into lightroom where i make my final adjustments and then output the final Jpgs.

i used to do this all in lightroom but it took too long even if i did the 100% preview on upload. the bridge method cut the culling time by 2/3rds for me.

 

[Dylan777]

This is why I shoot RAW+JPEG.

I review the jpegs, mark down keepers. PP RAW files.

 

[expatinasia]

I only shoot RAW and use DPP to go through them. I am a really big fan of DPP and find it so easy to use.

Generally speaking I know what my goal is in terms of the number of keepers I need, and I am also quite good at remembering the better shots and where they fall in the day/match etc.

It is actually quite good to get two shots that are both so good you do not know which is better - but which are not identical - because if you do not have too many on the money shots, you could always sell those two to different buyers and still offer exclusivity as they are officially different pictures. Not something I recommend, though.

 

[JimKarczewski]

Another vote for Photomechanic. Not only can I cull my photos, I can keyword tag them which will show on my Zenfolio site allowing easy access to an particular person/group/etc.

 

[benherman]

I have recently forced myself to be more harsh, in Lightroom I do first pass using arrows and hitting x for garbage, but also using p when I see a good one. My objective is to only keep good usable images, not just images that turn out ok. Anything without a pick, I leave for now, but usually will go back later and erase.

When I shoot portraits, I often take multiple exposures to avoid blinking etc, so they take longer comparing for the better expression. I will usually keep variations for longer, but I try to eliminate shots that I won't use.

So far I haven't ever wished I'd kept a shot that I had erased earlier, once they are gone, they will be forgotten. My hard drives will soon fill up again anyway, so I'll be looking for more shots to eliminate and every time I go back through my shots I say to myself "shoot less".

Keep only your best is my advice. The only other reason to keep a shot is for memory or historical importance.

 

[pwp]

Another vote for Photomechanic. Not only can I cull my photos, I can keyword tag them which will show on my Zenfolio site allowing easy access to an particular person/group/etc.

Which software & why?

1. PhotoMechanic for sorting & ranking. It's the #1 choice worldwide of heavy shooting professionals for good reason.
2. The Windows only Breezebrowser Pro while not quite as full featured as PM loads massive folders of .cr2 files even quicker than PM.
3. Bridge...forget it. It's just glacial for sorting & ranking images if you throw a big folder at it.
4. LR...same comments as Bridge. Brilliant at everything else it does.
5. Canon software. Errrgh. Pretty GUI full of promise but perplexingly weak delivery.

PM and BB Pro both have generous free trial periods.

Assume now you've got the software sorted. The trick is to be utterly ruthless with your choices. If you've loaded 1000-2000 shots into PhotoMechanic, use the full screen Preview mode and swiftly Arrow through your shots checking for sharpness, only tagging/flagging absolute hero shots or shots that a job brief requires. If you pause and say to yourself, "will I or won't I?..." then skip it. It's not a keeper. Be tough and unsentimental. Your very first reactions to a shot are usually the most accurate. You should get to a point where you can distill down a 2000 shot job to a hundred or so keepers in under 45 minutes. It takes a little practice and a lot of self trust.

-pw

 

[Hannes]

I do large previews on my secondary screen in lightroom and delete from them as a first pass. If I can see them being bad in roughly 4x6 they go in the bin. I go through and number them one to five for the ones that are keepers. With the keepers I then usually go through and assign colours depending on what it is. For example for a climbing competition I shot I did one colour for candids, one for action sequences, one for climbing shots, one for venue shots. Any larger amount of shots, i.e. more than a hundred I will put them temporarily on one of my SSD drives to make them load so much quicker. Then when I'm done I transfer to a mechanical back up drive.

On my slow laptop though I generally use fast stone viewer which is fast to load and only shows you the embedded jpg which is usually good enough. It is also free but not so good for deleting files but much better than windows photo viewer (which isn't very hard but still)

 

[Vivid Color]

I don't want to try to open thousands of images in DxO, I think it will crash may PC!

DxO have been making improvements in their preview speed, but it's still slow and to me, unsuitable for image triage. No help to you, but I use Apple Aperture for triage before doing RAW conversions in DxO. Images open fast, it can automatically make 'stacks' of sets of images shot in close temporal proximity (i.e. high speed bursts), there's a loupe tool to check critical focus on a panel of several images, etc.

This may not help the original poster, but it helps me as I'm still learning Aperture, so thank you for posting this information.

 

[mackguyver]

I use Photomechanic to go through the .cr2 files, and then the compare tool in Lightroom to compare similar shots.

Jim

Jim, I do the same, but use PM for my side-by-sides as well. They have a special "G" as in Greg Gorman key feature that works really well for this. Esentially you pull up photos and when you find a better copy, you push the G key which makes it the reference photo and then you can keep scrolling and push G again if you find a better shot. It's a simple but killer feature that saves me lots of time.

Back to the OP, I run through all of my shots in Photomechanic (Zoombrowser before that) and "star" the better shots and delete the obviously bad (blurry, parts cut off, accidental shot of my shoe ) photos. Then I go back and pare those down by selecting the best of each series of similar shots.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Folks.
Thank you all for your insights, I would love to buy another bit of software to make this task easier, but it is a hobby and as such one that has a limiter in the form of SWMBO. I already have Fast Stone something or other for batch resizing, so I will try their product.
It seems that the methodology is very similar between many of you and as such will be a good place to start from. Following this situation my Christmas wish list contains a couple of larger CF cards to allow me to shot JPEG and raw again. This will likely be my first and last raw only shoot as the lack of JPEG for preview has made this very slow / require faster viewing software. I will also try to limit the number of shots I take, I will find out how that goes at the Goodwood Revival next Sunday. We go to collect money for charity for a couple of hours but that gets us the rest of the day there to enjoy!
The "G" button sounds really useful, especially with the side by side comparison.
Once again thank you to all for your input, it is extremely helpful.

Cheers, Graham.

 

[Marsu42]

This will likely be my first and last raw only shoot as the lack of JPEG for preview has made this very slow / require faster viewing software.

You can enable the jpeg option for little cost (at lest on my cameras) as a jpeg preview for the cr2 is created in any case. If you didn't enable jpeg sidecars you can even simply extract the jpeg previews from the cr2 (see http://www.gdzid.com/QJFC.htm or http://echoone.com/filejuicer/formats/cr2 or various others)!

This is one of the reasons why dng raw files are much smaller than cr2: the preview can be discarded. Many image viewer and browsing apps don't use the embedded jpeg previews in the cr2 anyway, so you have to be picky (see above for apps which seem to use it).