jr168

Lightroom's culling/ viewing system is extremely slow. I use a program called Photomechanic to do my culling and tagging/ color-coding. Once my images are loaded on my computer, I can go through and select, load to Lightroom, edit, and export images in less than 30 minutes.

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

As OP have said, weeding out is a process and you need to develop a system that works for you. It is difficult to sort out questionable images before they are imported [too small], so once the obvious ones are deleted, the rest need to be viewed on your computer screen. [I import ALL photos to LR and then sort.] Then you can do a quick run-through to find the ones that are boring, uninteresting, etc. Also, in full screen you may be able to detect additional ones with camera shake or quite a bit of blown out highlights. Be sure to check any under exposed images before deleting, because often the detail is still there, found by increasing exposure in LR. If you are not sure about an image, don't delete it right away. Look at them again another day. Looking at them at 1:1 or 3:1 magnification can help with deciding if any blur is mild enough to be dealt with during editing.

The beauty of using LR is that you can decide how to organize your photos. One standard way is to have them all in a "Master Folder" which is then subdivided into layers of sub-folders. The way to do that is to right-click on the Master Folder name [such as LightRoom Photos], and in the dialogue that pops up choose "Create folder inside xxxx". Then you write the name of that sub-folder and click OK. Note that you can have images highlighted that you want included in that new sub-folder, and they will be moved into it. So the arrangement you described is definitely a good option. Each sub-folder can contain sub-folders of its own - this is what I mean by Layers of sub-folders! It makes it possible to keep images pertaining to a particular topic together, and you can even divide individual topics into folders for different years. Experiment with it until you are happy.

The main thing to remember is that ALL moving of images should be done from within LR. When you do it this way, those images are automatically moved in the images folder on your hard drive. But if you move the images on your hard drive instead, when you open LR it will tell you that photo is "missing"! That is because LR lost its "connection" to that photo because it does not know where you moved it. LR has a cataloging system, where you see and move and edit photos, while the actual photos themselves reside on your hard drive.

LR and PS do not do the same things. There is some overlap, but as you start to learn PS you will discover which things are best done in LR and which ones to do in PS. First take the time to learn LR before tackling PS. A lot of people use LR exclusively for editing, and it does a good job. I used LR for about 4 years until the Adobe CC subscription came out and I could get PS with it. Previously PS alone was way too expensive for my budget! But in the big picture, LR is a good way to start, PS is where you can put on the finishing touches. PS also offers a lot of features that LR does not, such as layers. They work together very well - you can open your photo in PS from within LR by going to Photo --> Edit in --> then choose an option. For first time editing an image I choose Open in PS as a Smart Object - this ensures that your edits will be non-destructive. Then if you decide to go back into PS to do additional edits, you can choose Open in Adobe Photoshop cc 2018, and it brings up your image with the previous edits included.

You will also want to decide on what format you will be saving your images. Shooting in RAW the image will contain the maximum amount of information. Editing in LR will result in a file that is still in the RAW format. To change that, you can either export the image and choose from the options, including format. For email and social media, .jpg is the best to choose. For all other purposes I prefer .tiff [which also retains the information found in the RAW file]. One of the reasons for these choices is because I do not like images being represented in the folder on my hard drive as "sidecars" or by icons - I want that folder to be able to stand alone with all images visible. Otherwise, you will have to open LR in order to see them with the changes you have made.

Make sure you back up your photos to an external hard drive, better to have more than one. With hard drives, whether internal or internal, it is not a question of IF they will fail, it is WHEN they will fail. Backing up means you will still have a copy of your images.

Hope this helps.
Susan

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

To cull through photos in LR, use Library mode in grid view. That's where you see all the squares or thumbnails. Double-click one (first one) and then if you like it press the right arrow key. If you don't like it press the X key. X marks the image as a "reject". It doesn't reject or delete the image, it just marks it. You can press the right arrow key again and keep any that you like or x to reject. When all finished with all 729 images, press Ctrl/Backspace and it will prompt you to delete or remove the images. Choosing delete completely deletes all the images to the trash. Choosing remove just removes the images from the database or "catalog" in LR. You can set up LR to advance to the next thumbnail after each press of the X key. You'll have to look for that in the upper menus.

LR is a database program and Photoshop (PS) is a pixel editing program. In other words, LR doesn't actually change the file at all. It simply creates a database of instructions that changes how the image looks on your screen but doesn't actually change the original file. It's impossible to change the actually file in LR other than deleting the file. When you have completed the actions or changes on how your image looks in LR, you can open the image into PS and do more editing - this time pixel editing does actually change the pixels of the file, but it still doesn't over-write the original but creates a new file with pixel editing changes. There are several ways to open the LR image into PS. One quick way is to type Ctrl/E. The file in LR opens in PS. As PS saves those pixel edited changes it writes the new image file with a similar name as the original so that you can see the two images in LR next to each other. You can see the changes and compare them.

Shutterbug57

This will work very well. Thanks for posting.

Jaackil Loc: Massachusetts

In an hour? Really? Are you shooting raw or jpg?

bcrawf

When you use Lightroom to cull (review) your images, doesn't Lightroom send the images to the Cloud?

Jaackil Loc: Massachusetts

This video is very good however it really is only talking about culling down similar images which can go very quickly I think what the OP is talking about is very different images from an event. That can take more time assumig you shoot raw. A couple of things that I don’t think were highlighted in the video. Delete the Definate no’s right on the Card first. Then import them to LR. Once in LR in the Library view go to Survey view. I think he could explain survey view better. You Survey view allows you to move through the pictures faster I have found. If I am viewing similar images I will use the grid view. But from an event like a sporting event or game where most of the images are different I go to single image view. Then just scroll through I use X key for the ones I don’t want and P for the ones worth considering. Scroll through those pretty fast. Then I move to the develop module and at the bottom right I choose flagged. That eliminates all the ones I don’t want and just leaves the ones I thought I wanted visible. Then I go through them one by one and adjust them as needed. If they are a keeper I tag them as green. If not I move to the next one. If there is still some that are similar, for example if you took a couple of pictures of 3 people standing together I will highlight those images jump back to Library and survey this time using grid view. This allows you to compare those images side by side. Chose the best one and x the others. Jump back to develop and keep moving. On average I usually figure 3-4 minutes per image for the final keepers. So if you end up with 30 keepers the whole process from reviewing the card to importing to culling and processing to the final 30 would take about 90 to 120 minutes. Sometimes you can speed the process up if the images are similarly exposed under the same lighting conditions by batch processing those ones together. Or applying the same adjustments to them.
If they need work in PS then that will add time. This is my work flow which works well for me but everyone has their own workflow and some of it depends on the type of images you are taking. The biggest suggestion to speed things up is only work on the absolute best images. If they are not sharp and the focus is not dead on eliminate them. Or if the composition is not right and you can’t get it right with some cropping forget it move on. I sat with a proffesional once (I am just a hobbiest). I thought her work was so brilliant and I could never have her skills. After seeing her work flow I realized she took really bad shots too just like me but no one ever saw those. The only images she ever let anyone see were the ones that were perfect. Not near perfect. She discarded many that I would have been inclined to keep because they were near perfect. Granted she always ended up with more perfect shots than I did. The key is being able to let go of the ones that are not perfect. Good Luck!

SharpShooter Loc: NorCal

Ghost, here’s what I would do. For one, pics of that type would never even make into an Adobe product.
I download into DPP(Canon) so I keep the original file canon file.
I would creat a separate folder for each weight class/wrestler. It should be quick to find the start and end of each macth and move to folders.
Then I’d go through each folder very quickly by placing a crop on each photo I will keep and that is my finished crop.
I’ll assume that the light is the same in all pics so I’d do basic PP to one pic then paste that recipe to all pics.
I wouldn’t bother to take out bad ones, it would take to long.
I just shot 600 bicycle race pics yeterday. It took me about 2 hours, start to finish. I put about 100 on an album on Facebook. Good luck
SS

Mary Williams Hyde

I take about 2000 photos on average a week these days birding, but as a ranch and ranch rodeo event photographer I have taken as many as 24,000 photos over the course of four days. Lightroom is my workhorse photo processing software, though looking at about 700 a day is about all my eyes can take so 24,000 took me two months. I don't use Lightroom to catalog my photos, I create a new folder for the event and export all of the processed photos that I want to keep to a sub-folder in that folder which I can name anyway I want. Examples would be: Saturday ranch broncs a, Saturday ranch broncs b, Sunday team roping, etc. Best of birds 1-20-2018 is another example of a subfolder in the folder Birds 1-20-2018. Just make sure that you process and export all the photos at the highest resolution settings available. I have opened up to 6000 photos at a time in Lightroom because I have a big computer with a powerful processor and 24 mgs of ram. Then I sit there and keyboard as much as I can: delete/return to delete a blurry photo, I hit the "R" key to straighten horizon lines and crop, and the sliders to do individual and batch color corrections as needed. To make similar color corrections, make your color correction on the first of a series, then select all of the ones that need similar color corrections with your shift/click keys and select the sync option. Because Lightroom is non-destructive, anytime you want to go back to the master photo, you can click revert. Hope this helps. Photoshop is what I use for those special photos that I want to fine-tune for printing or social media.To open 6000 photos one at a time would drive me nuts.

Chuckwal Loc: Boynton Beach Florida

think you can check utube

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

delete the obviously bad ones (out of focus), then keep/reject or rank the remaining photos before doing major editing. I use the following:
5 stars (to be edited)
3 stars (maybe edit)
1 star (edit as a last resort)

I find that it helps to do this when looking at no more than 4 or 6 photos at a time. You can scale the view to achieve this in LR.

Shutterbug57

It depends on which version of lightroom you are using. If you are using the classic, images are saved on your hard drive.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

You asked quite a few questions. I am a Lr CC Classic user. This is not a program that you should just "un-box" and jump into with two feet. I would strongly suggest learning about what Lr does before using it. I HIGHLY recommend training DVDs from Laura Shoe which is what I used initially. Took me about two months to learn going at my own pace. I import files into Lr and then I view each and every frame and PICK the ones I'm interested in for further review and work. I do this by adding 'colors' to the image. For example, I would normally add a red outline simply by pressing the number 6 while viewing. This is a very basic answer -- you need to do some Lightroom training FIRST! It would take me about 20 minutes, or less, to sort through 750 images and pick the ones I'm interested in. I would then take me less than an hour to work on 125 selected images. I do this almost every day, some days with several thousand images. Best of luck.

morkie Loc: Simi Valley CA

Most replies suggest using Lightroom. I assume you have the subscription CC version of Lightroom (now LR Classic). If so, suggest you consider looking at Bridge which is included with the subscription. Bridge is the forerunner of LR. It is much faster to load and organize photos and has all )or virtually all) of the functionality of LR. I used LR for 3 years until trying Bridge a few months ago. The interface is somewhat different from LR and it is also "more manual" than LR - but I find that an advantage as I then have to consider how I want to organize the upload, etc.

On the other hand there are more and better organized videos and tutorials for LR. If you go with LR look at Julianne Kost and also Lydia.com videos - they are both excellent. But, don't forgaet about Bridge - you have want to use it for your very large uploads - and import them into LR after you have culled in Bridge.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

One of the drawbacks of LR is the efficiency for culling, particularly RAW. Adobe has stated publicly they plan to work on performance. In the meantime, there's a few candidate software proposed to cull prior to import to LR. I use FastRawViewer on RAW files. I'm able to take maybe 1000 images down to 100 prior to importing to LR, usually with a few I couldn't make a final decision until I see the edited results.