For those who own Lightroom when importing your images, in the file import window top right next to Build Previews select Sidecar & Embedded which will show the embedded Jpeg and it should cycle through the images quicker. You can then rate the images directly in Lightroom. Thanks to @budriunas for the tip. Cheers, Duade
My first step in the process is importing in LR, no matter what: One step of work for - copying from the memory card to the drive - generating a backup on a 2nd drive - adding some basic metadata to be shared across all files. My second step is auto stacking all of those images imported. This dramatically cuts down the number of displayed images in zero time and without any effort on my side! This done I focus on a staple of interest: expanding the staple, fast clicking through the staple culling and rating, if needed cutting the tape where the subject changes within the staple. putting the highest rated image on top of the staple (click on the image's upper left corner in the grid view), closing the staple With this process I get an overview of all the motives, the status of culling/rating and after starting of processing the processed images in the grid leaving a one click option to get access to those shots closely related. Staples I never saw the need to look closer at might be deleted in some future in a whole .... In my archive ALL shots are in staples since LR brought this feature. Side note: I never sort my files other than according to shooting time (and this top of staple feature). I use the filter features to select groups (i.e. for deleting). If I need a sorted row this is done in a collection. Thanks for your vid, Duade!
Hi Duade, I use Lightroom to cull my images. I download them into Lightroom and then use the flag keys (MAC) 'X' to delete later, and 'P' to keep. I have Lightroom set up to auto advance the images so that I can quickly scan my images at 100 % and select my keepers. As I am doing that, if I see an image that is a real standout, I will mark it with a 1-5 rating at that time. In the end I delete all the images that I don't mark as keepers as you do. Once you get use to the keyboard shortcuts It moves very quickly. Depending on the number of images, I may cull them a few times to weed out obvious multiple duplicate images to save more hard drive space. If you are already using Lightroom, it can save time. Great video as always.
Thanks Mark, I have a pretty powerful PC but when I cycle through in lightroom it takes second to fully render the image each time. If I am trying to go quickly this delay makes it slightly annoying, that is why I am using XNView, I would much rather use Lightroom but perhaps I need a Mac which likely does not have the lag? Cheers, Duade
@@Duade yes I have recently got a new MacBook air with 16G memory. While it takes a bit of time on the import (cup of coffee) if lots of images it is instantaneous when culling with auto advance. As far as workflow Lightroom is so well designed. I pick or reject. Then delete rejected. I also try to always tag species, activity etc. Makes for a very powerful database .
@@MarkHayden-je9umThat's because unless you have changed your settings, Lightroom creates preview images on import which takes quite a while, even on fast PCs. Duade's point is that using a software like faststone or XN view is always faster because no preview generation is ever done at all. So you don't end up wasting time creating a bunch of previews for images you're not going to keep.
I use Faststone Image Viewer. I love that you can scroll the images with the mouse wheel (right hand), and tag with the left hand. It’s very fast. I find decision making difficult, so I try to keep it binary. First pass is just yes or no, and delete the no s. Second pass I then chose the ones I like as I then have an idea of what I have taken and am better able to judge. And maybe a third pass to pick the very best. I keep some images that aren’t particularly good, but tell a story, or make me smile. I never delete straight from the card . . I know I can’t be trusted! So I always transfer to the computer for culling, and only when I am done do I delete the images on the card. I also rename all my photos to include the place and name of the bird, as I think there’s no point having that lovely photo if you can’t find it. Love your videos Duade and greetings from Brisbane.
Thanks for sharing your process Anne, yes Faststone is very quick and I would like to use that but the ratings do not transfer over to Lightroom unfortunately. Have fun with all those beautiful birds in QLD. Cheers, Duade
Thanks for this video! I've been using Lightroom for years to call my images and it always slows down my machine. I decided to build a better machine as I'm editing video from concerts in weddings as well. Long story short I just built a custom machine with about $2600 worth of parts and it is lightning fast.. the only issue I've ever had out of this computer is with Lightroom sometimes crashing as well as photoshop. But that's an app issue. The other issue is Lightroom will sometimes take up to 55% of my Ram usage. And I've got 7000 MTS ddr5 Ram! 55% is what Adobe Lightroom is hogging up on my Ram exclamation mark that is so unacceptable. I even try to make it so that it only runs on the graphics card but that still doesn't help the ram.
Duade, you sure do make the exact videos i am looking for. Its marvelous how well you pick topics, absolutely splended. Thank you for your most sincere education🙂↕️🤚
I have a syndrome that i don't have the heart to delete most photos thinking i might use it later even if i know that it is garbage, anyone has the same syndrome as me? 😂😂
Yep! I originally started taking bird photos because I wanted to learn here to draw them. Got caught up on the photography and haven’t really got to the drawing bit yet. But have thousands of pretty rubbish photos that I keep for that interesting posture or the shape of that wing, thinking I’ll draw it one day!!
Oh Yes!... But the medication works much better since I switched to using Capture One to import the files from SD card: Just this morning I managed to get the 3,000+ frames of yesterday's Fulmar shoot down to ~350 & those will sit in the capture folder 'Just in Case' {:0)
I go through phases where I can't bring myself to delete anything (often remembering the good time I had taking the photos), and then on other days I am ruthless, deleting far more than I should, often regretting it later. On days like that I may only keep four or five out of two or three thousand shots! My criteria on days like that might be, "Can I sell that shot? No, or probably no....it's history!" Hard to find the middle ground! The thing about "totally out of focus" pics from 15 years ago is that they probably looked good at the time. You probably thought something like, "I'm just glad I got a photo of a (fill in blank) at all! I may never get another!!"
Atm, I select all and mark reject. I then go through a remove the reject tag for those that are in-focus, interesting, or unique - deleting the ones that remain rejected. Then I have narrowed maybe 3000 images down to 500. These 500 I will keep forever as backup, reevaluation, etc. I then go back through the list and select the best of the best for editing / sharing. Thank you for this video, Duade! It's helpful to see how other people do it and pick up tips along the way
I use Faststone for culling, which is better than the Adobe sorting software. I find that distance from the photo session also clarifies my ability to cull. If I have an amazing photo session I am inclined to run home and want to see if I got THE SHOT. If it is the first time photographing a subject, it is harder for me to cull as severely as I should. If I wait a week or more and go back to these same images, I am more objective. I do not think you can ever make too many videos about your culling process. It is vital to photographers. Maybe more than the equipment. Without selective culling, we can drown in a sea of images and be paralyzed to move forward and process our images. I often will say to myself while culling "I will never use this", delete it and move on. Rating our images is vital to being able to process the very best and review our metadata so that we are constantly improving our photographic abilities.
Ah, I used that one too for a while. But I found "FastRawViewer" to actually be better. It was faster and more customizable. But I guess that is all personal preference
Hi Duade, been following your channel for a few years now and you are one of my favourite wildlife photographers out there! I’ve always been clumsy at culling my photos, so I’m glad I got to watch this photo before my wildlife photography trip to the UK next week. Thank you!
I'm old school, very old school! I learned to try and make my first couple of shots count, colour print and transparency film was expensive back then & I did all my own wet processing and printing in a darkroom, of course. It wasn't possible to to fire off the multiple shots as it is today and so I, very fortunately, learned to make each shot count, or at least aimed to. I managed, on average, to have a keep rate of 20 - 30 shots out of a roll of 36. Not bad considering no auto-wind and no image stabilisation! I am now well into the 21st century and take advantage of all the new tech and I have my dream "darkroom in the light", a computer! Along with more up to date cameras and lenses that allow me far more flexibility. However, I still have managed to maintain the ability to hit a high keeper rate without having to continually use high speed bursts. Please don't misunderstand me, I do use the high frame rate shooting occasionally, but I like to keep it to a minimum. My preferred genre is wildlife and primarily birds, so I can appreciate that high frame rates has a place and most certainly anyone shooting professionally may well require it. Many thanks Duade for your channel & it's content. Regards from the UK - Ken.
I'm with you and have fond memories of bin bags over windows and a board over the bath for trays and the enlarger but it's way easier now. With the R7 and the 200-800 high speed bursts seem to be the only way to get at least some properly focused shots for BIF but it still goes against the grain.
@@SurreyAlanI'm smiling at the vision of your darkroom setup, it feels very familiar 😊. I'm currently sat at my 21st century "darkroom in the daylight" & thoroughly loving it. Regarding the culling of pics, I find that I'm more ruthless now and those that may have been keepers some years ago just don't get look in. I'm so glad that I've been fortunate enough to embrace new tech, but I use it to my liking and not just because it's there, if that makes sense? To anybody out there who may be struggling a bit, just keep at it and keep learning. If you like the end result, that's all that matters, if someone else likes it, that's a bonus! Just enjoy your photography whatever your preferences.
My process is similar, but I do it all in Lightroom--flipping through images is essentially instantaneous on the M1 MacBook Pro. I start by setting a filter to "=0 stars". Then with my left hand on the 1-2-3 keys and my right hand on the arrow keys, I rip on through: 1 star = trash, 2 = keep, 3 = intend to edit. With the =0 filter, images disappear when rated. When all are gone, I start editing and change the filter to >=3. If I like an edit, I whack the 4 key. When I'm all done, I delete the 1's, share the 4's, and maybe tag some as 5 for "portfolio."
Fine video, duade. I am in the process of choosing a way to cull my images. I have been struggling to find a good work flow. This video, along with the comments from other viewers, is helpful. Thank you for addressing this topic.
Thanks for the video. My approach is to import all images to Lr, scroll through them and hit P to pick each image that will be worth editing. Including a couple either side like your 1* selections. I then put all flagged picks into a collection and just edit them. Unedited pics can be deleted later. Love your videos.
Great to hear another photographer’s perspective. For the longest while I’ve found the camera itself is the quickest way to scan through the images, and I use the rating button to give a single star for keepers, and I’ll assume to delete the rest. If when I check on the computer that one of the starred photos isn’t pin sharp etc, I just look for the others around about it and change the starred photo. But my main issue was lightroom is slow Fo render the raw file, so your program that reads the embedded jpeg is a great idea for computer based culling!
Thanks, this video was way overdue for me. Culling is my weakest skill haha. I use a NAS to store my photos and culling, now watching this makes me realize that maybe I do it wrong. The NAS has incredibly slow reading speed so even with Photomechanic it takes long to go to each photos, maybe I should offload them into a SSD first, and do the culling and then transfer the photos into the NAS later. I try to delete photos but except for the obvious accidental, I always get attached to them even the bad one, because they are markers of my photography journey.
Awesome video Duade again very helpful and informative thank you again, I use the rate button on my canon camera and I have it set to 5* only for the rate button then I zoom in using the magnifying button and the cycle through my burst and then any ones that are sharp or ones that i’m looking for I then press rate button 5* instantly, non rating means delete later Then i use ADOBE BRIDGE which allows me to filter my only rated images and then i add them to a folder then put that folder in DXO RAW and then edit in lightroom 👍🏻 great video 🎉
Great video, Duade ! I'm using FastStone Image Viewer to flick through the RAW files. Not doing rating, but going through 1 by 1 and delete, keep only the very best of each subject or scene. I might do a 2nd or 3rd run through and delete more when I think there are too many similar photos. Then I import into LR. Some more photos might be culled during processing. I try not to import too many maybe-photos into LR as my 12yr old laptop takes too long to go from one to the next photo displaying in full resolution.
Thanks Duade your recommendation is timely. I recently switched from Windows to MacBook Max for better AI processing speed. I was using Faststone for culling & that won’t run on Apple. I have XnView running now & still figuring it out but it is the best culler that I have tried on the Mac. Sorry to hear you are laid up hope you get back full to speed quickly. Thanks again!
I use Digital Photo Professional (free with a Canon body). Select all images, click on Quick View, then as each image appears simply hit X to reject or 1,2,3,4 or5 as you wish. Once finished go to Filters and filter by rating then delete rejects, and save any others that you wish. Save the 5 star images in a directory and import thiose images to LR/PS. Works for me 🙂, but nice to see an alternative👍👍👍
Very useful video. One of my last trips I must have come back with over 12,000 photos and it was a bit of work to choose and process the 100 or so that I kept and actually edited. I liked the software tip and the star scheme and I'm going to start following it.
Thanks mate, appears you can do it quickly in Lightroom also if you use Lightroom, on import top right under fil handling change Build Previews to Embedded & Sidecar will make the preview load quicker. Cheers, Duade
As soon as I saw the title, I clicked. Any help in getting over my "keep them all, I'll sort them out later" tendancy and I'm all in. It was really helpful to see how you went through your process. I'm impressed by your discipline. I'm going to work on mine. Thanks
For me the best way is to take a break of a few days between taking images and sorting them. If I go to the same location multiple times - do the sorting after several sessions. That way I have a good idea of what images were actually the best across multiple sessions and once any emotions and excitement is out of the equation, I can select the best (5stars), backups (4stars) and the rest is usually horrendous:-) Basically the more delay I put between taking a shot and assessing it in comparison to higher number of other samples, the better I can identify the keepers and then super quickly dismiss the rest. Also if a pc is slower , this process can be super fast in-camera with the right setup of scroll wheels , buttons and selections.
I’m currently without a PC but have all images backed up. I really need a huge culling session once I get a new one. My images are a right mess currently. I will have a look at this software and see how it works against using LR directly. Good insight Duade.
Good morning Duade I do something similar but in different software the software are use is bridge which is a part of the package that you get on you use Photoshop/light room. There is another RUclipsr called Barry Beckham videos that does a good introduction to use in bridge as well.. He is also from Australia originally from the UK keep up the good work which is always nice to find out different ways of doing things, you're never too old to learn
As always, great video, Duade! One question-- you eventually put the photos in Lightroom. Why not just start there, import all of them in Lightroom, then rate them 1-5? Lightroom lets you type just the numbers 1-5 to rate them, and a click of the mouse will bring you back and forth to 100% view. Seems like the other software is superfluous? Would love to understand your reasoning. Thanks!
LR takes to long that's why, I use FastRawViewer and it's lightning fast but I'm going to also try XnViewMP to see how it compares, Thanks for the video Duade!
I currently use Lightroom, and it seems a bit slower, it also loves to either use the embedded jpeg or I have to build smart previews. Maybe it’s my settings, but it takes me quite a while to cull as I have to wait (albeit not too long) for it to display at 100%
You can generate the 100% preview for all images on import so you don't have to wait, but import takes a while if you do that so depends on if I want to edit right now, or start import do something else (sleep for example) and come back.
FastStone Image Viewer is very fast, gives me a nice side-by-side view of up to 4 raw images and a double press on M moves the selected picture(s) directly to my keeper folder on my pc.
We need more videos like this one as taking photos is not as hard and painstaking as culling them to decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete esp on computers that are not fast enough to render 45mb plus raw image one by one in a quick sorting way.
You may already be using them, but if not consider using SSD drives whenever you can - they are way faster, in the range of 10X, and more reliable than standard hard drives. The time you save transferring large numbers of files, and the time between files while you are loading individual files and processing them, will be worth it to you. Cheers!
I use faststone image viewer, i like it. I struggled a lot with culling the images, but now i think i will use 5 stars rating system... And delete all that is not 4 or 5 or just something i like, because i don't have much of a patience to stack photos. So it's easier for me just cull most of the images and move on except ones i ready to work with. But that's my position of a person who suffered from clutter enough to not bear any of it now. The best way is just cut something in the day of the shoot, few days or week after, and if something really make hesitate about deleting it, you can let them lay for any time you want to just anyway delete them later. If they wasn't used in any way they're not something you need.
Great workflow,btw I developed almost the same, with XnView and LR. Only I personally just import the high rated images to LR and ignore the rest. I don't delete the low rated or unrated images, I copy them first to an external drive, and when rated I copy to my laptop/PC only the rated ones. And when 2-3 ext drives are full, I can delete the old unrated ones or leave them alone still.
Hi Duade, I really like your content. Can't wait for you to review R5 MII, if it ever arrives. I import (copy) using lightroom and quickly go through them and rate any decent ones and delete the 0 stars. Since I usually come back from a international birding trip with between 15 and 30,000 images it takes a while. I then repeat the process increasing star levels. I usually end up keeping about 5-10% of images but since I put together a slide show I process about 200 of them. I don't reformat the card until I feel I am done.
I feel the pain 3000 photos in two hours last week . So very apt video and free software awesome. I have been recommended Photo Mechanic as a paid ulturnative . Great work Duade probably saved people hours at the Computer 👍
Thank you for this. I go through my images in Lightroom. It is usually a multi-pass rating workflow. I typically mark the ones I don’t want with a delete flag (x), do a 1 pass for images I like (your 2). I then do a 2 pass for images I might process, then a 3 pass for images I want to process. I usually only have a few 3, and rarely get to a 4 pass. Finally, images that are processed get a 5 star. It takes many hours to parse 3000 images, even though maybe 10% make it past the 1 pass. Part of the reason is because Lightroom is so slow to generate an image, let alone zoom to 100% for 50-60 megapixel images. I am going to try your workflow.
I use Canon R8. Often takes bird images in 40 fps! Just browsing through all will be tough. There is a function in R8 which will allow to delete series of images with similar composition. Bad frame or out of focus images I could delete in a single shot in camera. This is where I start sorting.
Excellent video, I like this workflow as it saves time on import where you can build minimal previews and just build the smart ones / fuller preview when the import is complete and you've sorted by rating. I suppose there is no way of just importing the rated files to Lightroom? All in all really speeds up the end to end waiting to cull in LR itself. I guess Photo mechanic would also be efficient there but this is free. Edited to add as you can filter by rating and file type (I shoot JPEG and RAW, back up both but only import the RAW to Lightroom) you can select the rated ones and drag and drop them into Lightroom, saving the time on the bulk import of all the files and deleting them (can always go back to double check and add more if one selection turns out to be duff) Nice. And will save tonnes of time. Really helpful video. I like the software, it makes culling much faster with no lag as mentioned and is easy to use and like the shortcut folder too. I find I keep / process far less photos than I used to. The more you shoot the more you can make a call on what's really good vs what is just 'there'. I don't cull in the field as I find it takes away from the moment.
For me the culling process begins in the field with my decision to release the shutter. Maybe that's a holdover attitude from the days of film but shutter discipline and knowledge of subject behavior greatly reduce the number of frames you need to get a keeper. If I come back from a shoot with more than 700 to a 1000 frames I consider it a lot. By the end of the shoot I already have a pretty good idea of the sequences I really like so the time spent to flag them in Lightroom is minimal. Once a sequence is tagged I'll go through it with a more critical eye to select the one or two frames per sequence I want to edit and star those. Everything else is deleted.
I aim to keep 3% of my shots and do my culling in On1 Photo Raw. X = delete 5 = 5 stars 4 = 4 stars etc.. Super easy and I'm already in my raw editor so no need to switch programs when I'm done
I have been using Faststone after Jan Wegeners reccomendation. I flag the duds and delete them from my card and then input to an external SSD with LRC. I have downloaded this software as I watch this and it looks faster than Faststone. I was hoping there was a simple way to do the physical cull before importing into LRC. I must say it is MUCH faster than Faststone. You have converted me.
Duade , I sorted out my issue.. In the tab Sidecar I had to ensure I tick the box CREATE OR UPDATE XMP SIDECAR I did that and she appears r to work a treat.
Very interesting video; I use a similar selection process based on the colors, which perhaps stand out better, for example red corresponds to 5 stars and so on... but in the end the long selection process is similar including deleting the images that don't satisfy me
My approach is backwards: Sort out all the pictures and mark 1start the ones that caught my eye (I also use R for rejects, instead of leaving them blank) 2nd pass, build previews for that 1star pictures so that I can zoom in to inspect the quality. Usually during second pass I can choose the best ones I rate 4 since I already know (after 1 pass) what I took that day and I dont need to wonder if next picture is better. But I usually do my final rating after I edit them, it changes the picture and for future reference 5* ones are already finished pictures. All done within lightroom
Thanks for the video, your 5 star culling method sounds good and I may adopt it with slight amendments. I use photools imatch as my DAM (with Photolab RAW processor). I have imatch setup so that pressing rating or the delete key automatically jumps to the next image in full screen mode. If I then use the arrow keys, images marked for deletion will be skipped. I can shift or control click to compare up to 8 images. I have been experimenting using your method in imatch and it works well. I did download xnview mp and while it's good and free, I much prefer the power of imatch which is of course more expensive.
Hi Duade, great to have you back. Great video! Culling is so important, but a painful chore that takes time and discipline. I'm keen to try your method. However, I can't get the Viewer to stay in 100% when moving to the Next or Previous image. I have set the "Last Used" as you explain at 04:09 (Tools/Settings/Auto Zoom to Last Used). When I scroll left or right it reverts to "Fit image to Window". I have tried with the "Reset 'Auto zoom' button on and off without success. However, if this is set and I close XNView after saving, when I open it again it goes to the Last Used image. Is that not what it is for? I see on the Forum that some folk battle with this too. I there something else that needs to be set to maintain the zoom when scrolling through images?
In my method, I first use Nikon viewNX to browse through all images on the card, no importing yet. I first get rid of the obvious ones - you know, those with nothing there, subject going out the fram, total misfocused ones and ones I simply don't like. Then I start browsing through the candidates, whittle them down to only acceptable ons. Once down, that's when I import. Further decisions are made later with fresh eyes. Seems the quickest way for me.
I use Canon DPP, but images are already imported into my MacBook Pro. I need to improve the workflow to avoid importing images I don’t want to even bother rate and as such, delete. This would save some SSD health since I now take many more images on the R7 than I previously did with the 7Dii. So I liked the fact you rated directly on the memory card (I could stop the auto import feature but will need to take the card out the body) but it stores the rating in that additional file which to me is odd but I guess understandable. Last step, I move the imported images from my Mac to the NAS.
I used software called BreezeBrowser for many years to do this, but it’s only on PC and got really expensive. Thanks Duade this is the perfect replacement! The only question I have: can you delete zero star images before importing them to LR? Seems a pity to import so many images knowing you’re going to delete them?
Great question and yes, makes sense to delete first however I don't fully trust myself so will often double check the best shots in Lightroom first, if there is any issue with the photo that I somehow missed I still have the photos either side if you know what I mean. I rarely have to do this but its just insurance that I check in Lightroom before deleting the rejects. Cheers, Duade
Culling is important when I am on a trip. Because I want to free space on my CFExpress card. And on my external SSD HD and on my Mac laptop. Back at home I import the pictures from my external SSD (Lightroom) into my PC Lightroom. I have learnt that Adobe does not give you the chance to import Flags and History. I am using an 18 months old MacBookAir M2 and FastRawViewer. I am on the road at the moment and utterly frustrated by the lag I am experiencing. I don‘t know if it is the bloody apple or the software. Will try your suggestion. Thanks!
👍👍.. I follow pretty much the same process almost to the letter but using Canon's free DPP and the quick check feature. It's way way too slow for editing but it is excellent and fast for culling, with a star rating a reject rating and with all the same bells and whistles you described. It also shows the focus point with a little red square which I find quite useful in my culling. I view and rate all the images on my CF Express using a Delkin card reader then sort by rating and delete all the R rated images while still on the CF express card and then I transfer the images rated from 1 to 5 to my hard drive. I come home with 1-4,000 images pretty much daily and can cull 4,000 in about 1/2 an hour to 40 min. I do have a very powerful fast computer I'm not sure if that's what facilitates my ability to do this as fast as I do with DPP??
Hi Duade, I’m using DXO 6 and import all my images into a folder (onto my hard drive) for that shoot. I then open the photos in DXO, I reject the ones I don’t want select filter rejected and delete. This leaves me the ones I want to consider processing. This may not be the smoothest but, it works well for me.
Duade, love the site and whatnot, but this has become a sore spot for me. I too have zillions of images to cull, and i've gone to great lengths to address the issue. i'm going to go through my experience for [hopefully] the benefit of someone in your audience. First, i need to mention that i shoot a Sony a1 (50MP, ~60MB RAW files too). that's a heap of data to deal with. I sold me pre-Apple-Silicon Mac and got an M2 Studio that's fairly hopped up. My problem with the older computer was that there was a lag, sometimes up to 6 or 8 seconds for an image to sharpen up enough for me to make a decision. I can make the decision in 1/4 of a second, but waiting 8 seconds to see the image first, added up to too much wasted time. The M2 Studio is much better, but even that, sometimes, after reeling through 100 images, it starts to bog down just like the old computer (well, not quite as slow). When it does that, i give it a rest, and sometimes, that fixes the problem, and sometimes it doesn't (grrrr). After doing some testing with a 3rd party application that i used specifically for culling (and I won't mention any names), I've concluded that Lightroom does just as good a job, with the following caveat. Recall, i mentioned that I shoot Sony. I believe all brands include a tiny JPEG thumbnail in the XMP file, its what you see at the bottom of the Lightroom filmstrip, and what you see from the operating system. Sony (and i don't know if other brands do this) also includes a full sized JPEG in the XMP or RAW file itself, somewhere (I don't really know which) when it creates the file, so when you copy the files from the card to your storage, that full JPEG is in there somewhere. I have Lightroom's Import Settings for Previews set to Embedded & Sidecar, so it simply goes with whatever is already included. In other words, Lightroom does not have to generate a preview for each file added to the Library. All of the excessive import time i had experienced by importing files while generating previews with ANY of the other settings {Minimal, Standard or 1:1}, went away. Importing a zillion files took a very few minutes. Huge time saver there. The resulting previews are quite good, easily adequate for culling, especially when zoomed in. I thought the image quality was better than what was displayed on the 3rd party S/W. Another trick is that i edit off of my SSDs, prior to their final storage site (my RAID). RAIDs and NAS drives are pretty slow. If you have the room on your computer's internal drive (I don't), that's likely the fastest data access, but my SSDs are a close second. Other external drives are much slower. From there, my process differs only slightly from your's. I just give each image a 1-star (keeper), or nothing. If its an important shoot from a place I'm unlikely to go back to, I do a second sweep to make sure i know all the species in the shoot. If i don't, i add any images that might be lousy images, but provide alternative views that might show other markers for that species. If i see some image that i think is really nice that i missed (hey, mistakes happen when you're moving fast!), i add them to the 1-star collection. Then i delete the 0-star images. From there, i guess my process is similar to your's, except i usually only go to 3 stars. 4 if its a super shot. I never use 5-stars; that's to remind me that there's always a better shot out there. I would use 5-stars to indicate what i felt was a contest winner, but i don't really have any. One other trick to speed things up in Lightroom is that there is an Auto Advance feature that can be found in the Library Module Photo pull down menu. When checked, all you have to do is hit 1 or 0 to rate and advance to the next shot. When set, it works in both the Library and Develop Modules. Finally, I stipulate that I'm a weird photographer. Most wildlife photographers share the best of the best of the best. I share more images (still, it only adds up to about 1%). My theory is that I want to share a few shots of each species so that my audience (my friends) can get a sense of the species behavior, a classic reference shot, a portrait, and some sense of the environment (habitat). My goal is to raise awareness and stimulate at least a small amount of moral support for species beyond humans. I mention this because I do admit, I wind up editing more images than I probably should, but I have developed one other trick, that maybe someone might find useful. At the 2-star stage, i add captions or labels or keywords to name the species. I do that so that I can use Lightroom's filters to work just that one species and cull/edit all the instances of just it, raising the best to 3-stars in the process. With my aging memory, I find that makes selecting the best shots from time-disparate sequences, easier. on rare occasions, if there's really a lot of 2-star images of a particular species, i'll even specify male or femaIe, and group edit each separately. I hope this helps someone. (longest comment i've ever made! must be a sore subject)
Works great, cycles much faster than FastStone! I noticed that when I set e.g. 5 to set rating to 5 and move on, it doesn't advance. Has anyone gotten it working?
I mostly used the simple Windows viewer and I had rare problems with pictures damaged and not usable anymore without any manipulation on them apart from the viewer. For that reason the pictures are first copied to an archive drive without any selection and where nothing is done with them (normally). There should be a continuous succession of picture numbers over all shoots. Then they are copied to my computer and selected and worked on there. The card is only cleared if I run out of other cards.
Hi Duade, I might have missed something in the video … but do you need to “save” the ratings. I have been trying out the software but each time I click out back to the browser all the ratings have vanished and I have to go through and rate all the photos again … only for the ratings to once again disappear! Any pointers?
hi Duade i got the software but unfortunately the files show up twice ones as raw and ones as jpg, this means that i have rate every photo twice. Is there something i can do about that?
Is there a reason for not using Lightroom from the beggining? It seems like the additional software you're using doesn't have any advantages over Lightroom.
G'day, I find XnView much faster than Lightroom to cycle through images, for whatever reason Lightroom has slight lag for me. But yes Lightroom allows you to do it within Lightroom. Cheers, Duade
See - The problem I have with rating shots, partickly when I've got multiple SD cards with 1378 shots on each, is that I start off OK, until I start to come accross very similar, but better/cleaner/sharper shots than those I've already given 5☆. I know I could start out giving early shots 4☆, but then the rot sets in & I have to go back through & check the previous ratings & so on, ad nauseam... I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure, so the nurse says I',m getting better.
I tried this after watching your video. Set up as you described. I rated some images, imported to Lightroom but the ratings didn't migrate across. If I reopen the folder inXNViewMP the ratings are still there?? The issue my be I only shoot in RAW and looking in Tools>Settings>Metadata>Sidecar. RAW is not supported. Has anyone else had this issue? Any suggestions? Thanks
I'm on a Mac and had a similar situation. I read the images directly from my express card. After you make a rating, ensure that the .xmp file is created in your photo's folder. If not, got to the XnView's settings and go to the Metadata panel. Make sure "Create or update XMP Sidecar" is checked. It wasn't the default setting when I first installed the app. Everything works for me after that and the .xmp's carry over when I import the images into my Lightroom catalog.
Assuming you're shooting RAW+JPEG, if you've starred all of your JPEGs and go to delete in Lightroom, how are the raws deleted after only starring the JPEGs?
Why not just import the files with a * rating? Then you dont have to import and delete them in lr. Importing to lrc can be pretty slow, and i do not love the deletion methodology personally. Maybe that screening software doesn't do that easily (but I am going to try it)since it is free, . I use fast raw viewer, not free but cheap. In my opinion that program is designed too much to prevent you from accidently deleting a file so its actually a little hard to get of of images. But thats what culling is! It also has alot of very nice guality evaluation tools that i do not use and in my opinion that makes it overly complex My bad photos are really bad, and i have alot of them to get rid of. Good topic for a video, and great job as always. I feel much better about taking lots of images now. Even at 10 fps on my 7dII it was bad enough, with 30 fps silent shutter on my r6II it is worse. I hope you have gotten over missing the adrenaline spike from hearing the shutter on the slr, I kind of still miss it. The silent shutter is definitely an advantage when birdd are close, but i think i need an electrode on a sensitive part of my body to let me know how many shots i am taking and when my buffer fills.
Very nice video Duade, I really like this software and it is worthy for even a donation to the creators, But on the zoom feature using the arrow key it doesn't stay at 100% and I even in settings did what you said to set last used, Can you tell me why? Thanks;)
Why the extra step if you can rate and cull on lightroom? You showed you imported everything anyway and then deleted on lightroom, looks like a waste of time to me.
I personally think you would just be better of first copy the raw images of your media card to your computer, storage, etc the just use Lightroom. When doing an import choose "minimal" for previews and the import process goes extremely fast, Cull and rate in the Library module. I think what you are doing is not really saving any time..
I import onto my hard disk into temporary folder and do my initial cull in Photo Mechanic. I am shooting using a Sony A1 and A9iii and therefore may get 4k images in one shoot. In Photo Mechanic I can go through very quickly holding down the forward button and mark the frames with potential. I may get that down to say 50 images, so probably less than 2%. I then import into Lightroom my picks and delete the rest (if important shoot like safari I may keep all on external drive in case I ever want to re-evaluate). I will then start editing my favourites from the picks, and when I feel those unedited do not add anything to the shoot, I will delete those. So out of that 4k images maybe 20 might be edited in the end and go into my portfolio. Those will mostly be marked 3 star, with 2 star being backups. A 4 star would have potential for printing and 5 star for entering in photo contest.
Hello Duade ones again🙂↕️🤚. I had to ask the one and only, the best of the best, Duade himself for this one😉 I just bought the canon R5 and i am in a dilemma. I cant figure out which lense to buy to it. I live in the Faroe Islands, so there is not to much light. And im trying to photograph small and rare birds. Im wondering if i should buy the rf 200-800mm but its apeture is to high i would think. Correct me if im wrong. Can you give me yout best choice. Around 3.000$ us dollars is the price range im looking for. And i want some focal lenght too. What would you pick🙏?
Hey Duade thanks for again a great video! A good culling strategy is very usefull as it allows you to take a lot of photos without beeing bogged down by the result. My technique is a little bit different. I first just import them to Lightroom in a temporary folder, this takes some time but I just let it run while making diner, etc. Then I use an iterative process where I first do a rough selection and then a more fine selection. I think my workflow is a little slower but I still manage to go through thousands of photo's.
Thanks for sharing, ultimately it is just finding a process that works for you and sticking to it, the key is having a process that allows you to cull all those extra images we don't need. Cheers, Duade
I use Fastone image viewer and just highlight any I want to keep. I also invert the photo order on import. I have always found my better images come at the end of a sequence so once I have picked a keeper I can just go past all the others in a sequence. The other thing that I find makes culling easier is I use a PS5 controller that is programmed to sort through and rate the images. I find this much easier than using the keyboard and mouse.
@joanneabramson2645 It is a PlayStation 5 controller but XBOX or PC joy pads can also be used. You just need a piece of software (free ones out there) that let you map keyboard shortcuts to joypad buttons. You can program the joy pad to work with virtually any program but I find that it works really well for culling images with the pad set to scroll through images and buttons assigned to tag/untagged images. I find it much easier than sitting at the computer desk using the keyboard and mouse. You can also assign different buttons to different start ratings if you want to.
@pdel7007 I shoot a lot of aviation/motorsport so tend to find I start shooting with the object smaller in the frame then stop when it becomes too big. My best shot is normally between 3-5 images from the end.
I'm able to rate the pictures with ease but when trying to import to Lightroom, I seem to be loosing all my ratings and end up with all the photos? Where might I be going wrong?
G'day, are you copying over the xmp files at the same time? Just make sure undermeta data it has export rating in XMP data. You should be able to see an xmp file in the same folder as your raw files. Good luck, Cheers, Duade
I make JPG and RAW. So first I move RAW files to other folder and preview JPGs, deleting those bad ones. Then I move RAWs into the same folder, and run my python app, which deletes RAWs without JPGs. As a last step, program reads exif and changes filenames to date and hour of shot - that is because sometimes I use more than 1 camera - the second is with macro lens (and its faster to take other camera, than change the lens) - this way I have shots aligned with timeline of shooting Now I can import them to lightroom and edit RAWs
Always interesting to see how another photographer culls images. I haven't tried this software yet but have used fast raw viewer a few times. One thing I don't understand is having to bring ALL the images into LR, even the 95% you're just going to delete, seems inefficient and a lot of writing to your HD for no reason. Personally I do that myself, I bring them all into LR and use the keys right in LR to rate them, I generally just do one star for anything I want to keep then move the rest into a "rejects" folder, I then go through the one star photos and up the best ones to 2 stars then process them out. Most of my work is music photography but it's similar to nature, you way overshoot and pare down to maybe 5% but it's important sometimes to have backups, every now and then the artist simply doesn't like how they look or some other detail in a photo isn't right so then I rely on my lower rated yet similar images. On another note, not happy with Adobe's latest EULA, way over-reaching what companies should be allowed to do. If there's a way to import all my adjustments into another program like C1 I'd switch but having many thousands of images with raw data xmp files it's not that easy.
G'day, if I am being honest I usually dont delete all the rejects until I have processed the best shots and checked the best shots just in case one of the tagged images for whatever reason wasnt quite right. Maybe a touch soft or eyelid etc. I can then double check the images either side that I may not have rated originally. I then delete the files once I have double checked in Lightroom. Cheers, Duade
@@ronjenkins4257 I purchased Resolve for any video work I need years ago, a great decision since to get Premiere made it so you might as well get the entire creative suite cost-wise... plus I LOVE how Davinci just builds on something that works and doesn't re-invent or move things around. I too would like to move from LR and Adobe products all together because that EULA is simply just way too invasive. Do you really want a human looking through your photos and deeming what's appropriate or not or the likelihood of something very personal being leaked? We're definitely not alone, my programmer avoids Adobe totally on any machines he builds because of all the overhead it has and has been telling me for years to get out.
Duade, nice video, culling is a pain. I find the 'which one of x essentially identical images' to keep from a burst my main problem, especially through the tears caused by that perfect picture, framing, posture, lighting etc etc except focus missed! Fastone has an advantage of dual screen display giving simultaneous 100% views, also free. Another useful video, please keep it up
Just got an R5markII to use with my R5. Sure am glad I found this video. I want to rate on my memory card, then import. I use 1,2 ratings before editing and 3,4,5 after editing. I look forward to trying this method, as I am capturing a lot more images with the R5II. The other change I would make is I don’t erase my cards until I create a monthly off-site hard drive backup. Not using cloud. I learn a lot from you. Thank you
Very interesting video. I use a similar method, the only difference being that I rate iteratively from bottom up, first pass everything "acceptable" and better gets one star (usually cuts already 85%), then in the next round "good" images get two stars, then "excellent" images three, and so on. I am curious though. what is the reason that you use an extra software to rate your images, and not just rate them in Lightroom directly? Greetings, Christoph
Great question, for some reason my Lightroom has a slight lag when loading images so I cannot go as quickly as I can with XnView or Photomechanic etc. I would prefer to do it in Lightroom, Cheers, Duade
Hi Duade, thanks for the great video. Super helpfull. Do you have any idea how to scroll through photos in 100% view? I can't find this anywhere, but that seems very handy.
For those who own Lightroom when importing your images, in the file import window top right next to Build Previews select Sidecar & Embedded which will show the embedded Jpeg and it should cycle through the images quicker. You can then rate the images directly in Lightroom. Thanks to @budriunas for the tip. Cheers, Duade
My first step in the process is importing in LR, no matter what: One step of work for
- copying from the memory card to the drive
- generating a backup on a 2nd drive
- adding some basic metadata to be shared across all files.
My second step is auto stacking all of those images imported. This dramatically cuts down the number of displayed images in zero time and without any effort on my side!
This done I focus on a staple of interest: expanding the staple, fast clicking through the staple culling and rating, if needed cutting the tape where the subject changes within the staple. putting the highest rated image on top of the staple (click on the image's upper left corner in the grid view), closing the staple
With this process I get an overview of all the motives, the status of culling/rating and after starting of processing the processed images in the grid leaving a one click option to get access to those shots closely related.
Staples I never saw the need to look closer at might be deleted in some future in a whole ....
In my archive ALL shots are in staples since LR brought this feature.
Side note:
I never sort my files other than according to shooting time (and this top of staple feature). I use the filter features to select groups (i.e. for deleting).
If I need a sorted row this is done in a collection.
Thanks for your vid, Duade!
@@peterebel7899 Thanks for sharing Peter, Cheers, Duade
@@peterebel7899when you say stapling, are you referring to stacking?
@@falxonPSN I think yes, I don't use the English UI of Lightroom.
I click RAW and JPEG. And browse through JPEG to sort !
It's easier.
Hi Duade, I use Lightroom to cull my images. I download them into Lightroom and then use the flag keys (MAC) 'X' to delete later, and 'P' to keep. I have Lightroom set up to auto advance the images so that I can quickly scan my images at 100 % and select my keepers. As I am doing that, if I see an image that is a real standout, I will mark it with a 1-5 rating at that time. In the end I delete all the images that I don't mark as keepers as you do. Once you get use to the keyboard shortcuts It moves very quickly. Depending on the number of images, I may cull them a few times to weed out obvious multiple duplicate images to save more hard drive space. If you are already using Lightroom, it can save time. Great video as always.
Thanks Mark, I have a pretty powerful PC but when I cycle through in lightroom it takes second to fully render the image each time. If I am trying to go quickly this delay makes it slightly annoying, that is why I am using XNView, I would much rather use Lightroom but perhaps I need a Mac which likely does not have the lag? Cheers, Duade
@@Duade yes I have recently got a new MacBook air with 16G memory. While it takes a bit of time on the import (cup of coffee) if lots of images it is instantaneous when culling with auto advance. As far as workflow Lightroom is so well designed. I pick or reject. Then delete rejected. I also try to always tag species, activity etc. Makes for a very powerful database .
@@MarkHayden-je9umme too!
@@MarkHayden-je9umThat's because unless you have changed your settings, Lightroom creates preview images on import which takes quite a while, even on fast PCs. Duade's point is that using a software like faststone or XN view is always faster because no preview generation is ever done at all. So you don't end up wasting time creating a bunch of previews for images you're not going to keep.
I use Faststone Image Viewer. I love that you can scroll the images with the mouse wheel (right hand), and tag with the left hand. It’s very fast. I find decision making difficult, so I try to keep it binary. First pass is just yes or no, and delete the no s. Second pass I then chose the ones I like as I then have an idea of what I have taken and am better able to judge. And maybe a third pass to pick the very best. I keep some images that aren’t particularly good, but tell a story, or make me smile. I never delete straight from the card . . I know I can’t be trusted! So I always transfer to the computer for culling, and only when I am done do I delete the images on the card. I also rename all my photos to include the place and name of the bird, as I think there’s no point having that lovely photo if you can’t find it. Love your videos Duade and greetings from Brisbane.
Thanks for sharing your process Anne, yes Faststone is very quick and I would like to use that but the ratings do not transfer over to Lightroom unfortunately. Have fun with all those beautiful birds in QLD. Cheers, Duade
Thanks for this video! I've been using Lightroom for years to call my images and it always slows down my machine. I decided to build a better machine as I'm editing video from concerts in weddings as well. Long story short I just built a custom machine with about $2600 worth of parts and it is lightning fast.. the only issue I've ever had out of this computer is with Lightroom sometimes crashing as well as photoshop. But that's an app issue. The other issue is Lightroom will sometimes take up to 55% of my Ram usage. And I've got 7000 MTS ddr5 Ram! 55% is what Adobe Lightroom is hogging up on my Ram exclamation mark that is so unacceptable. I even try to make it so that it only runs on the graphics card but that still doesn't help the ram.
Duade, you sure do make the exact videos i am looking for. Its marvelous how well you pick topics, absolutely splended. Thank you for your most sincere education🙂↕️🤚
It is my pleasure, glad you found it helpful, Cheers, Duade
I have a syndrome that i don't have the heart to delete most photos thinking i might use it later even if i know that it is garbage, anyone has the same syndrome as me? 😂😂
Yep! I originally started taking bird photos because I wanted to learn here to draw them. Got caught up on the photography and haven’t really got to the drawing bit yet. But have thousands of pretty rubbish photos that I keep for that interesting posture or the shape of that wing, thinking I’ll draw it one day!!
Oh Yes!... But the medication works much better since I switched to using Capture One to import the files from SD card:
Just this morning I managed to get the 3,000+ frames of yesterday's Fulmar shoot down to ~350 & those will sit in the capture folder 'Just in Case' {:0)
+1.
It's tough...
I did years ago, I spent almost all of 2020 going through 15+ year old totally out of focus photos
I go through phases where I can't bring myself to delete anything (often remembering the good time I had taking the photos), and then on other days I am ruthless, deleting far more than I should, often regretting it later. On days like that I may only keep four or five out of two or three thousand shots! My criteria on days like that might be, "Can I sell that shot? No, or probably no....it's history!" Hard to find the middle ground! The thing about "totally out of focus" pics from 15 years ago is that they probably looked good at the time. You probably thought something like, "I'm just glad I got a photo of a (fill in blank) at all! I may never get another!!"
Atm, I select all and mark reject. I then go through a remove the reject tag for those that are in-focus, interesting, or unique - deleting the ones that remain rejected. Then I have narrowed maybe 3000 images down to 500. These 500 I will keep forever as backup, reevaluation, etc. I then go back through the list and select the best of the best for editing / sharing.
Thank you for this video, Duade! It's helpful to see how other people do it and pick up tips along the way
I use Faststone for culling, which is better than the Adobe sorting software. I find that distance from the photo session also clarifies my ability to cull. If I have an amazing photo session I am inclined to run home and want to see if I got THE SHOT. If it is the first time photographing a subject, it is harder for me to cull as severely as I should. If I wait a week or more and go back to these same images, I am more objective. I do not think you can ever make too many videos about your culling process. It is vital to photographers. Maybe more than the equipment. Without selective culling, we can drown in a sea of images and be paralyzed to move forward and process our images. I often will say to myself while culling "I will never use this", delete it and move on. Rating our images is vital to being able to process the very best and review our metadata so that we are constantly improving our photographic abilities.
Ah, I used that one too for a while. But I found "FastRawViewer" to actually be better. It was faster and more customizable. But I guess that is all personal preference
Thanks Joanne, great advice and to be honest I still keep way to many shots. I could probably cull way more myself. Cheers, Duade
Hi Duade, been following your channel for a few years now and you are one of my favourite wildlife photographers out there! I’ve always been clumsy at culling my photos, so I’m glad I got to watch this photo before my wildlife photography trip to the UK next week. Thank you!
Have fun on your trip and my pleasure, Cheers, Duade
I'm old school, very old school! I learned to try and make my first couple of shots count, colour print and transparency film was expensive back then & I did all my own wet processing and printing in a darkroom, of course. It wasn't possible to to fire off the multiple shots as it is today and so I, very fortunately, learned to make each shot count, or at least aimed to. I managed, on average, to have a keep rate of 20 - 30 shots out of a roll of 36. Not bad considering no auto-wind and no image stabilisation!
I am now well into the 21st century and take advantage of all the new tech and I have my dream "darkroom in the light", a computer! Along with more up to date cameras and lenses that allow me far more flexibility.
However, I still have managed to maintain the ability to hit a high keeper rate without having to continually use high speed bursts. Please don't misunderstand me, I do use the high frame rate shooting occasionally, but I like to keep it to a minimum. My preferred genre is wildlife and primarily birds, so I can appreciate that high frame rates has a place and most certainly anyone shooting professionally may well require it.
Many thanks Duade for your channel & it's content. Regards from the UK - Ken.
I'm with you and have fond memories of bin bags over windows and a board over the bath for trays and the enlarger but it's way easier now. With the R7 and the 200-800 high speed bursts seem to be the only way to get at least some properly focused shots for BIF but it still goes against the grain.
@@SurreyAlanI'm smiling at the vision of your darkroom setup, it feels very familiar 😊.
I'm currently sat at my 21st century "darkroom in the daylight" & thoroughly loving it.
Regarding the culling of pics, I find that I'm more ruthless now and those that may have been keepers some years ago just don't get look in.
I'm so glad that I've been fortunate enough to embrace new tech, but I use it to my liking and not just because it's there, if that makes sense?
To anybody out there who may be struggling a bit, just keep at it and keep learning. If you like the end result, that's all that matters, if someone else likes it, that's a bonus!
Just enjoy your photography whatever your preferences.
My process is similar, but I do it all in Lightroom--flipping through images is essentially instantaneous on the M1 MacBook Pro. I start by setting a filter to "=0 stars". Then with my left hand on the 1-2-3 keys and my right hand on the arrow keys, I rip on through: 1 star = trash, 2 = keep, 3 = intend to edit. With the =0 filter, images disappear when rated. When all are gone, I start editing and change the filter to >=3. If I like an edit, I whack the 4 key. When I'm all done, I delete the 1's, share the 4's, and maybe tag some as 5 for "portfolio."
Fine video, duade. I am in the process of choosing a way to cull my images. I have been struggling to find a good work flow. This video, along with the comments from other viewers, is helpful. Thank you for addressing this topic.
My pleasure mate, I hope its helpful, Cheers, Duade
Thanks for the video. My approach is to import all images to Lr, scroll through them and hit P to pick each image that will be worth editing. Including a couple either side like your 1* selections. I then put all flagged picks into a collection and just edit them. Unedited pics can be deleted later. Love your videos.
Thanks Duade for showing your photo culling technique!
My pleasure, Cheers, Duade
Thank you kindly for this presentation. It was extremely helpful. ✌️
Great to hear another photographer’s perspective. For the longest while I’ve found the camera itself is the quickest way to scan through the images, and I use the rating button to give a single star for keepers, and I’ll assume to delete the rest. If when I check on the computer that one of the starred photos isn’t pin sharp etc, I just look for the others around about it and change the starred photo. But my main issue was lightroom is slow Fo render the raw file, so your program that reads the embedded jpeg is a great idea for computer based culling!
I like it Duade, always appreciate the great tips and tricks. Cheers.
Thanks mate, glad it was helpful, Cheers, Duade
Thanks, this video was way overdue for me. Culling is my weakest skill haha. I use a NAS to store my photos and culling, now watching this makes me realize that maybe I do it wrong. The NAS has incredibly slow reading speed so even with Photomechanic it takes long to go to each photos, maybe I should offload them into a SSD first, and do the culling and then transfer the photos into the NAS later. I try to delete photos but except for the obvious accidental, I always get attached to them even the bad one, because they are markers of my photography journey.
Awesome video Duade again very helpful and informative thank you again, I use the rate button on my canon camera and I have it set to 5* only for the rate button then I zoom in using the magnifying button and the cycle through my burst and then any ones that are sharp or ones that i’m looking for I then press rate button 5* instantly, non rating means delete later Then i use ADOBE BRIDGE which allows me to filter my only rated images and then i add them to a folder then put that folder in DXO RAW and then edit in lightroom 👍🏻 great video 🎉
Great video, Duade !
I'm using FastStone Image Viewer to flick through the RAW files. Not doing rating, but going through 1 by 1 and delete, keep only the very best of each subject or scene. I might do a 2nd or 3rd run through and delete more when I think there are too many similar photos. Then I import into LR. Some more photos might be culled during processing. I try not to import too many maybe-photos into LR as my 12yr old laptop takes too long to go from one to the next photo displaying in full resolution.
Thanks Duade your recommendation is timely. I recently switched from Windows to MacBook Max for better AI processing speed. I was using Faststone for culling & that won’t run on Apple. I have XnView running now & still figuring it out but it is the best culler that I have tried on the Mac. Sorry to hear you are laid up hope you get back full to speed quickly. Thanks again!
This is a fantastically useful video!
I use Digital Photo Professional (free with a Canon body). Select all images, click on Quick View, then as each image appears simply hit X to reject or 1,2,3,4 or5 as you wish. Once finished go to Filters and filter by rating then delete rejects, and save any others that you wish. Save the 5 star images in a directory and import thiose images to LR/PS. Works for me 🙂, but nice to see an alternative👍👍👍
Thank you for the video. Its very very helpful!
Hi Duade, great video, thanks for the tips and your shortcuts.keys file.
Very useful video. One of my last trips I must have come back with over 12,000 photos and it was a bit of work to choose and process the 100 or so that I kept and actually edited. I liked the software tip and the star scheme and I'm going to start following it.
Thanks mate, appears you can do it quickly in Lightroom also if you use Lightroom, on import top right under fil handling change Build Previews to Embedded & Sidecar will make the preview load quicker. Cheers, Duade
As soon as I saw the title, I clicked. Any help in getting over my "keep them all, I'll sort them out later" tendancy and I'm all in. It was really helpful to see how you went through your process. I'm impressed by your discipline. I'm going to work on mine. Thanks
Excellent video with so smart use of tools. Will save tons of time for me. Thanks a lot
For me the best way is to take a break of a few days between taking images and sorting them. If I go to the same location multiple times - do the sorting after several sessions. That way I have a good idea of what images were actually the best across multiple sessions and once any emotions and excitement is out of the equation, I can select the best (5stars), backups (4stars) and the rest is usually horrendous:-)
Basically the more delay I put between taking a shot and assessing it in comparison to higher number of other samples, the better I can identify the keepers and then super quickly dismiss the rest.
Also if a pc is slower , this process can be super fast in-camera with the right setup of scroll wheels , buttons and selections.
Thanks for sharing, yes, I used to do it on the camera also, but now prefer on the PC. Cheers, Duade
I’m currently without a PC but have all images backed up. I really need a huge culling session once I get a new one. My images are a right mess currently. I will have a look at this software and see how it works against using LR directly. Good insight Duade.
G'day Gaz, Lightroom works well enough, just a slight lag for me on my machine, so maybe try both, Cheers, Duade
Good morning Duade I do something similar but in different software the software are use is bridge which is a part of the package that you get on you use Photoshop/light room. There is another RUclipsr called Barry Beckham videos that does a good introduction to use in bridge as well.. He is also from Australia originally from the UK keep up the good work which is always nice to find out different ways of doing things, you're never too old to learn
As always, great video, Duade! One question-- you eventually put the photos in Lightroom. Why not just start there, import all of them in Lightroom, then rate them 1-5? Lightroom lets you type just the numbers 1-5 to rate them, and a click of the mouse will bring you back and forth to 100% view. Seems like the other software is superfluous? Would love to understand your reasoning. Thanks!
Good question. I wonder too. Yes, Duade, please clarify.
LR takes to long that's why, I use FastRawViewer and it's lightning fast but I'm going to also try XnViewMP to see how it compares, Thanks for the video Duade!
I currently use Lightroom, and it seems a bit slower, it also loves to either use the embedded jpeg or I have to build smart previews. Maybe it’s my settings, but it takes me quite a while to cull as I have to wait (albeit not too long) for it to display at 100%
@@mattflorez2183 LR is to slow it would take a long time to cull through 3k files, FastRawViewer and this software are instant even going to 100%.
You can generate the 100% preview for all images on import so you don't have to wait, but import takes a while if you do that so depends on if I want to edit right now, or start import do something else (sleep for example) and come back.
Super helpful vid! You laid out your process so clearly
Incredible tips Duade, I will definitely try this soon 👍
Same!
@@KurtisPape let's go kurtis
FastStone Image Viewer is very fast, gives me a nice side-by-side view of up to 4 raw images and a double press on M moves the selected picture(s) directly to my keeper folder on my pc.
We need more videos like this one as taking photos is not as hard and painstaking as culling them to decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete esp on computers that are not fast enough to render 45mb plus raw image one by one in a quick sorting way.
You may already be using them, but if not consider using SSD drives whenever you can - they are way faster, in the range of 10X, and more reliable than standard hard drives. The time you save transferring large numbers of files, and the time between files while you are loading individual files and processing them, will be worth it to you. Cheers!
Thanks William, I have a 4TB NVME SSD for editing etc but for backup I still use old hard drives as I have too many photos :-) Cheers, Duade
I use faststone image viewer, i like it. I struggled a lot with culling the images, but now i think i will use 5 stars rating system... And delete all that is not 4 or 5 or just something i like, because i don't have much of a patience to stack photos. So it's easier for me just cull most of the images and move on except ones i ready to work with. But that's my position of a person who suffered from clutter enough to not bear any of it now. The best way is just cut something in the day of the shoot, few days or week after, and if something really make hesitate about deleting it, you can let them lay for any time you want to just anyway delete them later. If they wasn't used in any way they're not something you need.
Great workflow,btw I developed almost the same, with XnView and LR. Only I personally just import the high rated images to LR and ignore the rest. I don't delete the low rated or unrated images, I copy them first to an external drive, and when rated I copy to my laptop/PC only the rated ones. And when 2-3 ext drives are full, I can delete the old unrated ones or leave them alone still.
Hi Duade, I really like your content. Can't wait for you to review R5 MII, if it ever arrives. I import (copy) using lightroom and quickly go through them and rate any decent ones and delete the 0 stars. Since I usually come back from a international birding trip with between 15 and 30,000 images it takes a while. I then repeat the process increasing star levels. I usually end up keeping about 5-10% of images but since I put together a slide show I process about 200 of them. I don't reformat the card until I feel I am done.
I feel the pain 3000 photos in two hours last week . So very apt video and free software awesome. I have been recommended Photo Mechanic as a paid ulturnative . Great work Duade probably saved people hours at the Computer 👍
Thank you for this. I go through my images in Lightroom. It is usually a multi-pass rating workflow. I typically mark the ones I don’t want with a delete flag (x), do a 1 pass for images I like (your 2). I then do a 2 pass for images I might process, then a 3 pass for images I want to process. I usually only have a few 3, and rarely get to a 4 pass. Finally, images that are processed get a 5 star. It takes many hours to parse 3000 images, even though maybe 10% make it past the 1 pass. Part of the reason is because Lightroom is so slow to generate an image, let alone zoom to 100% for 50-60 megapixel images. I am going to try your workflow.
I use Canon R8. Often takes bird images in 40 fps! Just browsing through all will be tough. There is a function in R8 which will allow to delete series of images with similar composition. Bad frame or out of focus images I could delete in a single shot in camera.
This is where I start sorting.
Excellent video, I like this workflow as it saves time on import where you can build minimal previews and just build the smart ones / fuller preview when the import is complete and you've sorted by rating. I suppose there is no way of just importing the rated files to Lightroom? All in all really speeds up the end to end waiting to cull in LR itself. I guess Photo mechanic would also be efficient there but this is free.
Edited to add as you can filter by rating and file type (I shoot JPEG and RAW, back up both but only import the RAW to Lightroom) you can select the rated ones and drag and drop them into Lightroom, saving the time on the bulk import of all the files and deleting them (can always go back to double check and add more if one selection turns out to be duff) Nice. And will save tonnes of time.
Really helpful video. I like the software, it makes culling much faster with no lag as mentioned and is easy to use and like the shortcut folder too.
I find I keep / process far less photos than I used to. The more you shoot the more you can make a call on what's really good vs what is just 'there'. I don't cull in the field as I find it takes away from the moment.
For me the culling process begins in the field with my decision to release the shutter. Maybe that's a holdover attitude from the days of film but shutter discipline and knowledge of subject behavior greatly reduce the number of frames you need to get a keeper. If I come back from a shoot with more than 700 to a 1000 frames I consider it a lot. By the end of the shoot I already have a pretty good idea of the sequences I really like so the time spent to flag them in Lightroom is minimal. Once a sequence is tagged I'll go through it with a more critical eye to select the one or two frames per sequence I want to edit and star those. Everything else is deleted.
Thanks Jack, sounds like a great way to do it, Cheers, Duade
I aim to keep 3% of my shots and do my culling in On1 Photo Raw.
X = delete
5 = 5 stars
4 = 4 stars
etc..
Super easy and I'm already in my raw editor so no need to switch programs when I'm done
I have been using Faststone after Jan Wegeners reccomendation. I flag the duds and delete them from my card and then input to an external SSD with LRC. I have downloaded this software as I watch this and it looks faster than Faststone. I was hoping there was a simple way to do the physical cull before importing into LRC. I must say it is MUCH faster than Faststone. You have converted me.
I must be doing something wrong I did the star rating and imported into LRC, but they didnt carry the stars over ...
Did you copy over the XMP files? Make sure you have ticked export rating to xmp in settings.
@Duade No... that didn't happen. Thanks I will try it.
@@Duade I am having trouble. I have ticked export rating to xmp in settings but I am not getting a xmp file generated .. tearing my hair out atm
Duade , I sorted out my issue.. In the tab Sidecar I had to ensure I tick the box CREATE OR UPDATE XMP SIDECAR I did that and she appears r to work a treat.
Very interesting video; I use a similar selection process based on the colors, which perhaps stand out better, for example red corresponds to 5 stars and so on... but in the end the long selection process is similar including deleting the images that don't satisfy me
My approach is backwards:
Sort out all the pictures and mark 1start the ones that caught my eye (I also use R for rejects, instead of leaving them blank)
2nd pass, build previews for that 1star pictures so that I can zoom in to inspect the quality.
Usually during second pass I can choose the best ones I rate 4 since I already know (after 1 pass) what I took that day and I dont need to wonder if next picture is better.
But I usually do my final rating after I edit them, it changes the picture and for future reference 5* ones are already finished pictures.
All done within lightroom
Thanks for the video, your 5 star culling method sounds good and I may adopt it with slight amendments. I use photools imatch as my DAM (with Photolab RAW processor).
I have imatch setup so that pressing rating or the delete key automatically jumps to the next image in full screen mode. If I then use the arrow keys, images marked for deletion will be skipped. I can shift or control click to compare up to 8 images.
I have been experimenting using your method in imatch and it works well. I did download xnview mp and while it's good and free, I much prefer the power of imatch which is of course more expensive.
Hi Duade, great to have you back. Great video! Culling is so important, but a painful chore that takes time and discipline. I'm keen to try your method. However, I can't get the Viewer to stay in 100% when moving to the Next or Previous image. I have set the "Last Used" as you explain at 04:09 (Tools/Settings/Auto Zoom to Last Used). When I scroll left or right it reverts to "Fit image to Window". I have tried with the "Reset 'Auto zoom' button on and off without success. However, if this is set and I close XNView after saving, when I open it again it goes to the Last Used image. Is that not what it is for? I see on the Forum that some folk battle with this too. I there something else that needs to be set to maintain the zoom when scrolling through images?
View menu > Zoom > tick Lock Zoom
In my method, I first use Nikon viewNX to browse through all images on the card, no importing yet. I first get rid of the obvious ones - you know, those with nothing there, subject going out the fram, total misfocused ones and ones I simply don't like. Then I start browsing through the candidates, whittle them down to only acceptable ons. Once down, that's when I import. Further decisions are made later with fresh eyes. Seems the quickest way for me.
I use Canon DPP, but images are already imported into my MacBook Pro. I need to improve the workflow to avoid importing images I don’t want to even bother rate and as such, delete. This would save some SSD health since I now take many more images on the R7 than I previously did with the 7Dii. So I liked the fact you rated directly on the memory card (I could stop the auto import feature but will need to take the card out the body) but it stores the rating in that additional file which to me is odd but I guess understandable. Last step, I move the imported images from my Mac to the NAS.
I used software called BreezeBrowser for many years to do this, but it’s only on PC and got really expensive. Thanks Duade this is the perfect replacement! The only question I have: can you delete zero star images before importing them to LR? Seems a pity to import so many images knowing you’re going to delete them?
Great question and yes, makes sense to delete first however I don't fully trust myself so will often double check the best shots in Lightroom first, if there is any issue with the photo that I somehow missed I still have the photos either side if you know what I mean. I rarely have to do this but its just insurance that I check in Lightroom before deleting the rejects. Cheers, Duade
@@Duade makes sense Duade: you can never have enough backups!
Culling is important when I am on a trip. Because I want to free space on my CFExpress card. And on my external SSD HD and on my Mac laptop. Back at home I import the pictures from my external SSD (Lightroom) into my PC Lightroom. I have learnt that Adobe does not give you the chance to import Flags and History. I am using an 18 months old MacBookAir M2 and FastRawViewer. I am on the road at the moment and utterly frustrated by the lag I am experiencing. I don‘t know if it is the bloody apple or the software. Will try your suggestion. Thanks!
To ensure zoom setting remains when moving to the next image... View menu > Zoom > tick Lock Zoom
👍👍.. I follow pretty much the same process almost to the letter but using Canon's free DPP and the quick check feature. It's way way too slow for editing but it is excellent and fast for culling, with a star rating a reject rating and with all the same bells and whistles you described. It also shows the focus point with a little red square which I find quite useful in my culling. I view and rate all the images on my CF Express using a Delkin card reader then sort by rating and delete all the R rated images while still on the CF express card and then I transfer the images rated from 1 to 5 to my hard drive. I come home with 1-4,000 images pretty much daily and can cull 4,000 in about 1/2 an hour to 40 min. I do have a very powerful fast computer I'm not sure if that's what facilitates my ability to do this as fast as I do with DPP??
Thanks mate, great to hear, to be honest I have not tried DPP for this process but sounds like it works exactly the same which is great. Cheers, Duade
Which is the best camera for wildlife
Hi Duade,
I’m using DXO 6 and import all my images into a folder (onto my hard drive) for that shoot. I then open the photos in DXO, I reject the ones I don’t want select filter rejected and delete.
This leaves me the ones I want to consider processing. This may not be the smoothest but, it works well for me.
Duade, love the site and whatnot, but this has become a sore spot for me. I too have zillions of images to cull, and i've gone to great lengths to address the issue. i'm going to go through my experience for [hopefully] the benefit of someone in your audience. First, i need to mention that i shoot a Sony a1 (50MP, ~60MB RAW files too). that's a heap of data to deal with. I sold me pre-Apple-Silicon Mac and got an M2 Studio that's fairly hopped up. My problem with the older computer was that there was a lag, sometimes up to 6 or 8 seconds for an image to sharpen up enough for me to make a decision. I can make the decision in 1/4 of a second, but waiting 8 seconds to see the image first, added up to too much wasted time. The M2 Studio is much better, but even that, sometimes, after reeling through 100 images, it starts to bog down just like the old computer (well, not quite as slow). When it does that, i give it a rest, and sometimes, that fixes the problem, and sometimes it doesn't (grrrr). After doing some testing with a 3rd party application that i used specifically for culling (and I won't mention any names), I've concluded that Lightroom does just as good a job, with the following caveat. Recall, i mentioned that I shoot Sony. I believe all brands include a tiny JPEG thumbnail in the XMP file, its what you see at the bottom of the Lightroom filmstrip, and what you see from the operating system. Sony (and i don't know if other brands do this) also includes a full sized JPEG in the XMP or RAW file itself, somewhere (I don't really know which) when it creates the file, so when you copy the files from the card to your storage, that full JPEG is in there somewhere. I have Lightroom's Import Settings for Previews set to Embedded & Sidecar, so it simply goes with whatever is already included. In other words, Lightroom does not have to generate a preview for each file added to the Library. All of the excessive import time i had experienced by importing files while generating previews with ANY of the other settings {Minimal, Standard or 1:1}, went away. Importing a zillion files took a very few minutes. Huge time saver there. The resulting previews are quite good, easily adequate for culling, especially when zoomed in. I thought the image quality was better than what was displayed on the 3rd party S/W. Another trick is that i edit off of my SSDs, prior to their final storage site (my RAID). RAIDs and NAS drives are pretty slow. If you have the room on your computer's internal drive (I don't), that's likely the fastest data access, but my SSDs are a close second. Other external drives are much slower. From there, my process differs only slightly from your's. I just give each image a 1-star (keeper), or nothing. If its an important shoot from a place I'm unlikely to go back to, I do a second sweep to make sure i know all the species in the shoot. If i don't, i add any images that might be lousy images, but provide alternative views that might show other markers for that species. If i see some image that i think is really nice that i missed (hey, mistakes happen when you're moving fast!), i add them to the 1-star collection. Then i delete the 0-star images. From there, i guess my process is similar to your's, except i usually only go to 3 stars. 4 if its a super shot. I never use 5-stars; that's to remind me that there's always a better shot out there. I would use 5-stars to indicate what i felt was a contest winner, but i don't really have any. One other trick to speed things up in Lightroom is that there is an Auto Advance feature that can be found in the Library Module Photo pull down menu. When checked, all you have to do is hit 1 or 0 to rate and advance to the next shot. When set, it works in both the Library and Develop Modules. Finally, I stipulate that I'm a weird photographer. Most wildlife photographers share the best of the best of the best. I share more images (still, it only adds up to about 1%). My theory is that I want to share a few shots of each species so that my audience (my friends) can get a sense of the species behavior, a classic reference shot, a portrait, and some sense of the environment (habitat). My goal is to raise awareness and stimulate at least a small amount of moral support for species beyond humans. I mention this because I do admit, I wind up editing more images than I probably should, but I have developed one other trick, that maybe someone might find useful. At the 2-star stage, i add captions or labels or keywords to name the species. I do that so that I can use Lightroom's filters to work just that one species and cull/edit all the instances of just it, raising the best to 3-stars in the process. With my aging memory, I find that makes selecting the best shots from time-disparate sequences, easier. on rare occasions, if there's really a lot of 2-star images of a particular species, i'll even specify male or femaIe, and group edit each separately. I hope this helps someone. (longest comment i've ever made! must be a sore subject)
Works great, cycles much faster than FastStone! I noticed that when I set e.g. 5 to set rating to 5 and move on, it doesn't advance. Has anyone gotten it working?
I mostly used the simple Windows viewer and I had rare problems with pictures damaged and not usable anymore without any manipulation on them apart from the viewer. For that reason the pictures are first copied to an archive drive without any selection and where nothing is done with them (normally). There should be a continuous succession of picture numbers over all shoots. Then they are copied to my computer and selected and worked on there. The card is only cleared if I run out of other cards.
Hi Duade,
I might have missed something in the video … but do you need to “save” the ratings. I have been trying out the software but each time I click out back to the browser all the ratings have vanished and I have to go through and rate all the photos again … only for the ratings to once again disappear! Any pointers?
Hi Duade!
Are you using the electronic shutter?
Regards, Jan
Hi, Is it a good way to rename all the imported pictures to lightroom classic or leave the pictures name as is.
Thank you.
hi Duade i got the software but unfortunately the files show up twice ones as raw and ones as jpg, this means that i have rate every photo twice. Is there something i can do about that?
I use a similar process with Adobe Bridge. But I either rank it a 5* or nothing. Then I pull my 5*s into LRC and may cull down even more there.
Excellent advice Duade thanks
Duade. Thank you for the XNview link. I downloaded it. I file in Photoshop folders. Will this allow me to do so?
Great video. I need to buy a new pc any tips what to buy? :)
Is there a reason for not using Lightroom from the beggining? It seems like the additional software you're using doesn't have any advantages over Lightroom.
G'day, I find XnView much faster than Lightroom to cycle through images, for whatever reason Lightroom has slight lag for me. But yes Lightroom allows you to do it within Lightroom. Cheers, Duade
See - The problem I have with rating shots, partickly when I've got multiple SD cards with 1378 shots on each, is that I start off OK, until I start to come accross very similar, but better/cleaner/sharper shots than those I've already given 5☆.
I know I could start out giving early shots 4☆, but then the rot sets in & I have to go back through & check the previous ratings & so on, ad nauseam...
I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure, so the nurse says I',m getting better.
I tried this after watching your video. Set up as you described. I rated some images, imported to Lightroom but the ratings didn't migrate across. If I reopen the folder inXNViewMP the ratings are still there?? The issue my be I only shoot in RAW and looking in Tools>Settings>Metadata>Sidecar. RAW is not supported. Has anyone else had this issue? Any suggestions? Thanks
Good questions, hoping to see answers.
I'm on a Mac and had a similar situation. I read the images directly from my express card. After you make a rating, ensure that the .xmp file is created in your photo's folder. If not, got to the XnView's settings and go to the Metadata panel. Make sure "Create or update XMP Sidecar" is checked. It wasn't the default setting when I first installed the app. Everything works for me after that and the .xmp's carry over when I import the images into my Lightroom catalog.
Assuming you're shooting RAW+JPEG, if you've starred all of your JPEGs and go to delete in Lightroom, how are the raws deleted after only starring the JPEGs?
Why not just import the files with a * rating? Then you dont have to import and delete them in lr. Importing to lrc can be pretty slow, and i do not love the deletion methodology personally. Maybe that screening software doesn't do that easily (but I am going to try it)since it is free, . I use fast raw viewer, not free but cheap. In my opinion that program is designed too much to prevent you from accidently deleting a file so its actually a little hard to get of of images. But thats what culling is! It also has alot of very nice guality evaluation tools that i do not use and in my opinion that makes it overly complex My bad photos are really bad, and i have alot of them to get rid of. Good topic for a video, and great job as always. I feel much better about taking lots of images now. Even at 10 fps on my 7dII it was bad enough, with 30 fps silent shutter on my r6II it is worse.
I hope you have gotten over missing the adrenaline spike from hearing the shutter on the slr, I kind of still miss it. The silent shutter is definitely an advantage when birdd are close, but i think i need an electrode on a sensitive part of my body to let me know how many shots i am taking and when my buffer fills.
Very nice video Duade, I really like this software and it is worthy for even a donation to the creators, But on the zoom feature using the arrow key it doesn't stay at 100% and I even in settings did what you said to set last used, Can you tell me why? Thanks;)
View menu > Zoom > tick Lock Zoom
Thank you thank you thank you.
I rate mine in LR to do this
like ... before even watching.
For 10 years of owning a camera I have only taken about 22,000 photos.
My great grandma took zero over her lifetime
@@_systemd but did she had a camera?
Why the extra step if you can rate and cull on lightroom?
You showed you imported everything anyway and then deleted on lightroom, looks like a waste of time to me.
I personally think you would just be better of first copy the raw images of your media card to your computer, storage, etc the just use Lightroom. When doing an import choose "minimal" for previews and the import process goes extremely fast, Cull and rate in the Library module. I think what you are doing is not really saving any time..
1500 photos every 10 mins? 2.5 photos a sec? That is ridiculously fast
More than 3000 photos? Thanks digital
Hey Duade, amazing content! I had a few questions that I've sent you on your email so could you check it out
I import onto my hard disk into temporary folder and do my initial cull in Photo Mechanic. I am shooting using a Sony A1 and A9iii and therefore may get 4k images in one shoot. In Photo Mechanic I can go through very quickly holding down the forward button and mark the frames with potential. I may get that down to say 50 images, so probably less than 2%. I then import into Lightroom my picks and delete the rest (if important shoot like safari I may keep all on external drive in case I ever want to re-evaluate). I will then start editing my favourites from the picks, and when I feel those unedited do not add anything to the shoot, I will delete those. So out of that 4k images maybe 20 might be edited in the end and go into my portfolio. Those will mostly be marked 3 star, with 2 star being backups. A 4 star would have potential for printing and 5 star for entering in photo contest.
Thanks for sharing, Photo Mechanic seems to be the pick of the professionals, I just couldnt justify the perpetual licence. Cheers, Duade
Hello Duade ones again🙂↕️🤚. I had to ask the one and only, the best of the best, Duade himself for this one😉 I just bought the canon R5 and i am in a dilemma. I cant figure out which lense to buy to it. I live in the Faroe Islands, so there is not to much light. And im trying to photograph small and rare birds. Im wondering if i should buy the rf 200-800mm but its apeture is to high i would think. Correct me if im wrong. Can you give me yout best choice. Around 3.000$ us dollars is the price range im looking for. And i want some focal lenght too. What would you pick🙏?
Fast Raw viewer for less than £20 is best for culling raw files . That’s one off payment
Hey Duade thanks for again a great video! A good culling strategy is very usefull as it allows you to take a lot of photos without beeing bogged down by the result. My technique is a little bit different. I first just import them to Lightroom in a temporary folder, this takes some time but I just let it run while making diner, etc. Then I use an iterative process where I first do a rough selection and then a more fine selection. I think my workflow is a little slower but I still manage to go through thousands of photo's.
Thanks for sharing, ultimately it is just finding a process that works for you and sticking to it, the key is having a process that allows you to cull all those extra images we don't need. Cheers, Duade
I’m an absolute amateur, but this is so helpful, because I’m overwhelmed by the number of photos, even if it’s just 100-200. You explained it so well.
I use Fastone image viewer and just highlight any I want to keep. I also invert the photo order on import. I have always found my better images come at the end of a sequence so once I have picked a keeper I can just go past all the others in a sequence. The other thing that I find makes culling easier is I use a PS5 controller that is programmed to sort through and rate the images. I find this much easier than using the keyboard and mouse.
I use Faststone as well. What is "a PS5 controller"?????
@joanneabramson2645 It is a PlayStation 5 controller but XBOX or PC joy pads can also be used. You just need a piece of software (free ones out there) that let you map keyboard shortcuts to joypad buttons. You can program the joy pad to work with virtually any program but I find that it works really well for culling images with the pad set to scroll through images and buttons assigned to tag/untagged images. I find it much easier than sitting at the computer desk using the keyboard and mouse. You can also assign different buttons to different start ratings if you want to.
Yes I usually start with the last photo first , same reason
@pdel7007 I shoot a lot of aviation/motorsport so tend to find I start shooting with the object smaller in the frame then stop when it becomes too big. My best shot is normally between 3-5 images from the end.
I'm able to rate the pictures with ease but when trying to import to Lightroom, I seem to be loosing all my ratings and end up with all the photos? Where might I be going wrong?
G'day, are you copying over the xmp files at the same time? Just make sure undermeta data it has export rating in XMP data. You should be able to see an xmp file in the same folder as your raw files. Good luck, Cheers, Duade
I make JPG and RAW. So first I move RAW files to other folder and preview JPGs, deleting those bad ones.
Then I move RAWs into the same folder, and run my python app, which deletes RAWs without JPGs.
As a last step, program reads exif and changes filenames to date and hour of shot - that is because sometimes I use more than 1 camera - the second is with macro lens (and its faster to take other camera, than change the lens) - this way I have shots aligned with timeline of shooting
Now I can import them to lightroom and edit RAWs
Sounds like a great process and thanks for sharing, it really does help to have a good system in place. Cheers, Duade
Always interesting to see how another photographer culls images. I haven't tried this software yet but have used fast raw viewer a few times. One thing I don't understand is having to bring ALL the images into LR, even the 95% you're just going to delete, seems inefficient and a lot of writing to your HD for no reason. Personally I do that myself, I bring them all into LR and use the keys right in LR to rate them, I generally just do one star for anything I want to keep then move the rest into a "rejects" folder, I then go through the one star photos and up the best ones to 2 stars then process them out. Most of my work is music photography but it's similar to nature, you way overshoot and pare down to maybe 5% but it's important sometimes to have backups, every now and then the artist simply doesn't like how they look or some other detail in a photo isn't right so then I rely on my lower rated yet similar images. On another note, not happy with Adobe's latest EULA, way over-reaching what companies should be allowed to do. If there's a way to import all my adjustments into another program like C1 I'd switch but having many thousands of images with raw data xmp files it's not that easy.
G'day, if I am being honest I usually dont delete all the rejects until I have processed the best shots and checked the best shots just in case one of the tagged images for whatever reason wasnt quite right. Maybe a touch soft or eyelid etc. I can then double check the images either side that I may not have rated originally. I then delete the files once I have double checked in Lightroom. Cheers, Duade
I'm also unhappy with the new EULA. Looking for another way than Lightroom for culling images is a first step in searching for a non-Adobe workflow.
@@ronjenkins4257 I purchased Resolve for any video work I need years ago, a great decision since to get Premiere made it so you might as well get the entire creative suite cost-wise... plus I LOVE how Davinci just builds on something that works and doesn't re-invent or move things around. I too would like to move from LR and Adobe products all together because that EULA is simply just way too invasive. Do you really want a human looking through your photos and deeming what's appropriate or not or the likelihood of something very personal being leaked? We're definitely not alone, my programmer avoids Adobe totally on any machines he builds because of all the overhead it has and has been telling me for years to get out.
Great... Does the zoom select the focus point? That's what I need!
Duade, nice video, culling is a pain. I find the 'which one of x essentially identical images' to keep from a burst my main problem, especially through the tears caused by that perfect picture, framing, posture, lighting etc etc except focus missed!
Fastone has an advantage of dual screen display giving simultaneous 100% views, also free.
Another useful video, please keep it up
Just got an R5markII to use with my R5. Sure am glad I found this video. I want to rate on my memory card, then import. I use 1,2 ratings before editing and 3,4,5 after editing. I look forward to trying this method, as I am capturing a lot more images with the R5II. The other change I would make is I don’t erase my cards until I create a monthly off-site hard drive backup. Not using cloud. I learn a lot from you. Thank you
Very interesting video. I use a similar method, the only difference being that I rate iteratively from bottom up, first pass everything "acceptable" and better gets one star (usually cuts already 85%), then in the next round "good" images get two stars, then "excellent" images three, and so on.
I am curious though. what is the reason that you use an extra software to rate your images, and not just rate them in Lightroom directly?
Greetings, Christoph
Great question, for some reason my Lightroom has a slight lag when loading images so I cannot go as quickly as I can with XnView or Photomechanic etc. I would prefer to do it in Lightroom, Cheers, Duade
Thanks really helpful. Will definitely use. But jeez all this computer work makes me wish there was something equivalent to the Leica M for wildlife !
Hi Duade, thanks for the great video. Super helpfull.
Do you have any idea how to scroll through photos in 100% view? I can't find this anywhere, but that seems very handy.
This sounds like a better system than I’m doing! I’ll definitely have to give it a try, thanks for the tips!
Good luck, most software has a rating system built in so use whichever you find easiest. Cheers, Duade