Help keep yourself organized with these best practices
Thanks to a follow up question from one of my Patreon supporters, Barbara L., I produced a new tutorial/best practice video to share my process for keeping myself organized as I review and edit photos.
I've also summarized my workflow in written form below, but I recommend watching the video to see it in action as it's hard to convey solely through words (or screenshots). Also, please note that color labels are only available in Lightroom Classic. None of the other Lightroom apps have that feature at this time.
Star Ratings
Everything starts with my image review and culling process. As I touched on a bit in my Survey View video, I make multiple passes of new images once I import them into Lightroom Classic, gradually whittling my selection down to a final grouping of photos I feel have the most potential.
1-STAR: I start here. I make a first, quick pass of all the photos from my latest trip or outing, more or less relying upon my initial gut reaction to each one to determine if it deserves to move onto the next round of culling. If I feel it does, I simply hit the "1" key on my keyboard to assign it a 1-star rating.
Since this is a quick pass, I often include multiples of the same scene; for instance, there could be 2-3 slightly different compositions of the same scene, or variations of light. I'll narrow down to my final selection as I continue the review and culling process.
If I have groups of images that are parts of panorama, HDR, or focus stack sets, I'll usually take the time to stack them together during this stage, as well (learn more about stacking images in Lightroom Classic in this video).
2-STARS: Once I've made that first pass and applied all my 1-star ratings, I'll then filter the group of photos to exclude all the ones that didn't get rated. I then repeat the process, this time slowing down and taking a closer look at each frame or comparing similar frames of the same scenes to start deciding which ones will make it into my final review stage (this is where that Survey View video comes into play).
3-STARS: Once again, I filter the group of photos, this time limiting what I see to only my 2-star selections. I then make one more pass, really taking a discerning eye to each image. I may still end up with some borderline images in my final 3-star selections, for a variety of reasons, such as:
I may simply want to play around with an image to see if it has hidden potential
I may still be undecided between two similar images; instead of wasting time trying to decide, I'll just move on and play with both in the edit stage to see which I like best
4-STARS: I never rate anything a four until I'm confident the editing process is done. At this point, I should feel comfortable sharing the image on social media and adding it to my print offerings on my website.
5-STARS: This may not apply to you, but I use this to indicate that the image is a soft proofing copy I've made of the final edit for the sake of printing, either for my Artist Series of self-produced prints, or for fulfillment via my preferred lab for ready-to-hang artwork. 5-stars always indicates it is a proofing copy, AKA not the version to be shared online as it is edited specifically for print production.
Color labels
Color labels are also a vital piece of my organizational workflow as I start editing photos, although how I use them is pretty straightforward.
BLUE: This is the only color label I may apply during the review and culling stage. I use it to indicate sets of photos that are part of panorama, HDR, or focus stack series. So, in addition to be stacked within Lightroom Classic from an organization standpoint, they're also labeled blue so I can easily remember that I need to worry about more than a single frame.
From here on, I'm generally working within a filter that limits my view to only 3-star rated images.
RED: Now we're getting into the actual editing stage. A red label gets applied as soon as I make my first adjustment on an image, no matter how minor. This lets me know I have started an edit but am not done. Sometimes, an image may never move beyond this point, if I decide it just isn't working out as I had hoped when I assigned it a 3-star rating.
I never apply sharpening or noise reduction until the edit is done, since I expect I'll be making further adjustments, and those detail settings can slow down performance (note that this doesn't apply to the newer AI noise reduction... I typically do that early on in an edit).
YELLOW: This label indicates I've mostly landed on the final edit, including sharpening and noise reduction, and the image is now in what I call the "percolating" stage. I will generally revisit yellow-labeled images with fresh eyes - that could be the next day or even weeks or months later - to see if any final, minor tweaks are needed.
GREEN: And now we're done! Once I've decided a yellow-labeled image is, indeed, finished, I'll add it to my website and also export a version for sharing on social media. Once I've completed those steps, I switch the label to green so I can see at a glance that it is done.
As I said above, my color labeling process is pretty simple, but it has a huge impact on my overall workflow as it lets me see at a glance (and filter by color labels) where within the editing process each photo is sitting.
Not quite clear on things? Watch the video! It's a pretty short one at under 10 minutes.
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