How I pick photos to edit
I have read recommendations to not go through photos for at least 3-6 weeks, so you can get past the emotions and separate yourself from them being so personal. I actually tried this for a while, and found it really did not help much. Doing this, I ended up with too many photos to go back through, and did not always get to them.
After downloading, I try to go through my images within 24 hours. Preferably, I go through them as soon as the download has finished. I have a three step process using Lightroom features.
My 3 step process
Step #1 – I look at each image individually. I try my best to not compare one image to another. Is the image worth possibly editing? Is there a composition in it that is interesting, even with a crop? What is the lighting like? Is it sharp? Or maybe intentionally unsharp? Is there something that captures my attention and makes the image stand out? Does something call to me in the image? If so, I give it 5 stars. I used to give 3-5 stars, but I realized that was not worth the time. If it is not a 5 star image, it is not worth my time.
Step #2 – I look ONLY at the 5 star images, and flag the best. From Lightroom’s grid view you can use the image attributes to filter out all the other images so you only see your 5 star ratings. Now comes the more challenging part. Of all the 5 star ratings, picking the ones worthy of spending time to edit. There can be a few similar images, but something in those few will cause one to be the best. When you find that one, flag it as picked. You can use the letter ‘p‘ shortcut.
Step #3 – I look ONLY at the images I flagged as picked. The final step is reviewing them to look at how they stack up against each other. Sometimes I still agree that all my flagged images are worthy of editing. Most of the time, I realize that some images I picked in step #2, don’t stack up in the end. If I have flagged 20 from a large initial set, I will try to narrow those down to 5-8. In the end, I may only actually edit 2-4 from an entire set. Those few I do end up editing, are the the true winners.
All three steps can take some time, but it is worth it. The end goal is to pick the winners and truly focus on the best images.
