Lightroom Workflow Tutorial Part 2: Edit Select and Rate

 

Hello there!

I am back with the second part of my Lightroom workflow tutorial.

This post is about editing, rating and finally selecting the photos which will be later processed  and delivered.

In case you haven’t read the first part I highly suggest you do so by clicking here.

If you followed the first tutorial you should now be in front of Lightroom which has a grid with all your imported images ready to be reviewed by you.

The Grid View in Lightroom

So how do you go on from there?

Here’s what I do.

Once Lightroom finishes the import and render standard previews procedures, I immediately leave the Grid View and enter the Loupe View by pressing the letter “E” in order to be able to see each photo as large as possible.

The Loupe View in Lightroom

I then start racing through the photos by using the right arrow on my keyboard and rate each photo based on the following rating system:

Rejected ( X button )
These are the photos that will be deleted from Lightroom and the file system as well, because they are out of focus, have horrible composition, contain funny face expressions etch. I mark them by using the X button. If I want to remove the flag for some reason ( unmark them ) I hit the U button which removes the flag.

1 Star ( 1 Button )
These photos will be kept for archival purposes and nothing more. They currently have no value whatsoever and probably will never see the light of day.

2 Stars ( 2 Button )
These photos will stay in Lightroom because I might want to review them again or maybe a client will ask or them for a who-know-why reason. Also these images might have a “stock” value for me and might be useful as textures of pieces that I might use in my Graphic Design artworks, ( I am talking about photos that I have taken during a personal session of cource and not during a client session ).

3 Stars ( 3 Button )
These photos are quite good and probably with a bit or a lot of work might be promoted to 4 stars. They usually are the majority in a session.

4 Stars ( 4 Button )
These are the photos that pop out from the session. The ones that you liked the very first time you saw them, or you took them. You want to work on them and deliver them to your client. You may even consider putting them online to your Flickr account or website.

5 stars ( 5 Button )
The real rockstars. These scream “Please Pick Me” to you. You are really proud of them. These are the ones that will make you, and the client, go WOW! You will use them in a publication, exhibition or event in order to showcase your talent and skill.

Once the very first run is done I go to Grid View again by pressing the letter “G”, and then go to Filters Bar, select Attribute and click on the Black Flag ( the third one ). This action will filter the session and will show me only the photos marked with the Rejected flag.

The Rejected Flag icon

Since these need to go I select them all by pressing Ctrl + A ( Option + A in Mac I believe ) and hit the Delete button. Then I choose to “Delete From Disk” since I want them to leave not only my Lightroom Catalogue but also my file system.

The button you must press to remove the rejected photos from your hard drive

Once this is done I click on the third flag again to deactivate the filter and leave the session to rest for a day and walk away from the PC.

The next day I reload the session, and while in Grid View mode I go to the Filter bar, select Attribute and click on the third star in order for me to see the only the photos which have a 3 star rating. If you see also the ones that got 4 or 5 stars as well, click on the small icon right next to the “Rating” word on the filter bar and select from the pop up menu “Rating is equal to”. This will show you only the photos with a 3 star rating. Run through them one more time and see if you might want to upgrade some of them to a 4 star photo.

The "Equal To" option

Once this is done, I click on the small symbol again next to Rating and select “Rating is greater than or equal to”. Finally I click on the fourth star until all four stars are active. This way I can see the best shots from this session in Grid or Loupe mode and I am good to go to the next step: processing into Lightroom, which will be covered in the next part of the Lightroom Workflow tutorial series.

Now you can see all the photos that have 4 or more stars

In the next part I will cover in detail how I edit my photos with the help of Lightroom and Photoshop as well. As usual if you have any question of suggestions hit the comment section. I’d be glad to check them out.

Until then Happy Shooting.