LIGHTROOM; Pick-flags, star-ratings.. Left or reset?

Ok, at the risk of appearing like an less-then smart person, (wouldn't let me use the "st_id" word)
Am I alone in my practice of leaving the pick-flags, star-ratings, color labels once I'm finished with the images? I do have some smart collections based on some of those attributes. These are tied to some publish services.

What I'm working on, photo books for my wife's sisters. Using my keywording, I've narrowed them to 500. All of them already have pick-flags and color labels, some with star-ratings from other projects. So to cull them further I need at least one of those attributes free.

Oh and I do have a Collection Set containing those 500 images, which span a few years and HDDs. So how would you recommend proceeding?

I start a collection set with a collection it called "all". I create a second collection called "round1". Pick the best from "all" using the flag and move the flagged photos to "round1". I then remove the flag from the photos in the "round1" collection. Flag and Cull into a "round2" collection if needed. It may not work for you but it works for me.

You'd need to start new collections to hold all of your currently rated photos to not lose them before adopting this method.

It took me a few years of using Lightroom before I evolved a system of using flags/metadata/stars that suited me. This was after a couple of false starts. I'm happy with my system now, but find it is a chore to maintain.

I suspect everybody has different ways of using LR's cataloging capabilities, so there is likely to be little common ground for comparing systems.

You ask about "leaving the pick-flags..." Please clarify. Do some people clear their flags and stars after an editing/culling session? Smart collections will be wiped if you clear them.

Anyway, if you have used up all your color/flag/star identifiers, maybe consider keywords to do your sorting.

Smart collections are only going to get you so far with sorting the images automatically, along with any additional sorting you may apply. Once you have got to the point where you need to yes/no/maybe the image for the final cut manually you could simply create a normal collection and as you scroll through the pool of potentials. If your sort criteria for that pool removes the image once it has been transferred to one of the manually selected collections you will even know where you are between sessions.

Another option would be to enter the number 1, 2, or 3 in the IPTC Subject code line, you will need to have IPTC enabled in the METADATA section to see it. I actually use the correct IPTC codes to help me sort my images, but there is nothing to stop you using any number you want. Then you can have a smart collection/search on the value and again by entering a value you can have them dropped from your pool.

Either of these will do what you want without having to change existing metadata, since I use the IPTC already my choice would be number 1 above.

Alan

Can you give us an idea of how you're currently using the pick-flage, stars, and color labels? That might help us give better recommendations.

Archibald wrote in post #18158241
It took me a few years of using Lightroom before I evolved a system of using flags/metadata/stars that suited me. This was after a couple of false starts. I'm happy with my system now, but find it is a chore to maintain.

Same, although mine isn't too much of a chore to maintain.

Star ratings: How much I like the photo. One star or higher means I likely won't delete it, two stars will probably be finished/shared/publis​hed, three stars for my favorites of that set or session, five stars are portfolio material.

Pick flags: I apply the white Pick flag only on images that are processed, finished, and ready to export or publish. All Pick images should have at least one star, usually more.
It's rare that I use the black Reject flag; I usually just delete any that don't have any stars by the time I'm done culling and publishing the set. Sometimes I use the black flag on my first culling pass-through, for things that are definitely trash (misfires, missed focus, etc).

Colors: Blue means it's a keeper out-take, ColorChecker shot, behind-the-scenes, maybe something that's silly that I want to share with the subject but not publicly publish. Red and yellow mean they need work in Photoshop, for example, sets that will be merged to a panorama, a face-swap to fix a blink, or the occasional portrait that gets the "full treatment" (frequency separation retouching, etc). I'll sometimes use green on an ad-hoc basis.


For cataloging purposes, my folder hierarchy and file naming conventions do most of the work. I don't need to use the keywords, stars, etc when my folder tree and filenames do that work.

I must be strange. I don't use any of the LR ratings tools. I bin the rejects, and keep everything else. Hard disk space is cheaper than dirt.

Bassat wrote in post #18159160
I must be strange. I don't use any of the LR ratings tools. I bin the rejects, and keep everything else. Hard disk space is cheaper than dirt.

This is me. Hence why I have over 90k images in my catalog lol. I need to bin the duplicates and my old back in the day "spray and pray" thought patterns.

Talley wrote in post #18159168
This is me. Hence why I have over 90k images in my catalog lol. I need to bin the duplicates and my old back in the day "spray and pray" thought patterns.

Right - the more you have, the harder it is to find stuff.

I also have tens of thousands of pics. Do I really need all of them??

In my workflow I create a Collection Set called "_FLAGS" that contains collections that I manual assign photos to as additional flags besides the one we get in Lightroom.

Then I create Smart Collections using one of the _FLAGS collections (or more) as a criteria.

Selecting a Category as a criteria for a Smart Collection requires choosing the Source sub-menu under the criteria choice.

Once you start using "Collections" that way, you don't have to worry at all about what you have left to manipulate in terms of color labels, ratings, or flags. In my workflow, ratings and labels are already occupied, so I only have the standard flag. I use it as a temporary way of grouping photos together and then move all flagged photos to a "_FLAGS" collections mentioned above. At that point, I usually reset the real flags for the next time I need to do this.

When I am done with a collection under _FLAGS, I can delete it to essentially "unflag" the photos or keep it indefinitely. They are just collections, after all.

nathancarter wrote in post #18159145
Can you give us an idea of how you're currently using the pick-flage, stars, and color labels? That might help us give better recommendations.

Same, although mine isn't too much of a chore to maintain.

Star ratings: How much I like the photo. One star or higher means I likely won't delete it, two stars will probably be finished/shared/publis​hed, three stars for my favorites of that set or session, five stars are portfolio material.

Pick flags: I apply the white Pick flag only on images that are processed, finished, and ready to export or publish. All Pick images should have at least one star, usually more.
It's rare that I use the black Reject flag; I usually just delete any that don't have any stars by the time I'm done culling and publishing the set. Sometimes I use the black flag on my first culling pass-through, for things that are definitely trash (misfires, missed focus, etc).

Colors: Blue means it's a keeper out-take, ColorChecker shot, behind-the-scenes, maybe something that's silly that I want to share with the subject but not publicly publish. Red and yellow mean they need work in Photoshop, for example, sets that will be merged to a panorama, a face-swap to fix a blink, or the occasional portrait that gets the "full treatment" (frequency separation retouching, etc). I'll sometimes use green on an ad-hoc basis.

For cataloging purposes, my folder hierarchy and file naming conventions do most of the work. I don't need to use the keywords, stars, etc when my folder tree and filenames do that work.

Pick-flags for quickly selecting keepers vs rejects. I probably can remove/reset them. Any rejects are promptly deleted as they are way beyond hope.

Star Ratings to rank the images.

Color Labels for workflow, red to be processed, the basic processing, yellow for further processing in LR or On1, Green has been processed but should review it later, Blue are completed, to be uploaded to a published service, then Purple are those that in a Published Collection.

Since I've posted this and received some great responses, I've reviewed my workflow numerous times, always asking myself questions, such as why, and can I do this differently and not create a big mess. I've tried the keyword method described, and discovered I had somewhat of a mess there. For example while looking for images with the keyword Christmas, I had images with Easter and Thanksgiving. These both are found under my main keyword EVENTS. I think I finally got that straightened out.

So what I going to do is review some of my smart collections and redo them, so I can use my pick-flags. I've just grown accustom to using them for selections.

Thanks again, it's really appreciated.

The "Refine Photos" feature may be of use to you, if you use the Pick/Reject flags to decide on keepers during your initial cull. Library > Refine Photos

It demotes all unflagged photos in the set to Reject (black flag), and demotes all Pick flags in the set to unflagged. Use it after your initial cull to quickly get rid of anything that doesn't make the first pass, and reset all the pick flags so you're ready to do a second pass of selecting. It doesn't actually delete the photos that didn't make the first cull, but it marks them with the black flag so they're ready to be deleted.

I used to use this feature, but I realize I was occasionally throwing away too many in my first cull.

More notes:
https://helpx.adobe.co​m …ag-label-rate-photos.html