Welcome.
My name is Marcin Lewandowski
and you are watching The Viewfinder
on AdoramaTV.
In this episode I'll talk
about editing your collection
of photographs in a way that
makes it more enjoyable
and easier to manage.
Most of this episode
will be based
around the Lightroom library.
I will also show
some useful shortcuts
which are the same for
both Mac and PC.
Deleting photographs,
especially personal works,
it's not as easy as it seems
and takes years to master
but it gets easier along the way.
To give you an example,
in my early
digital days
I was not only shooting
too much but I also had an idea
that I must archive
all images.
This meant that,
even after Lightroom
was introduced in 2006
and after I edited my photographs,
I kept all the rejected
stock in place
just in case.
This built up to over
500,000 RAW files and it
became a library
harder and harder to revisit.
Last year, bit by bit,
I got rid
of almost half of my files
and I hope to
reduce it further this year.
Fingers crossed I'll find time for it.
In terms of my current workflow,
this is how I do my edits.
The first thing I do after
importing new photographs
is to quickly
run through them in Loop View,
keyboard shortcut E,
and mark as 'Rejected'
any blurry,
out of focus
and other unusable photos,
that's keyboard shortcut X.
Once that's done,
I then filter for the rejected photos
and delete all of the original files.
Now that I have a reasonably clean
selection to work with,
I run through the
photographs again
and mark with a one star
anything interesting.
Once that's ready,
I filter for one stars
in Grid View,
keyboard shortcut G,
and mark them
all with two stars.
Then I filter for two stars
and photo by photo
I get rid of
any images that are weaker
by giving
them a one star.
This process might sound
a bit counter intuitive
however,
editing in this way by removing
the weaker images
from the selection,
the latest edit of your work
is always on the screen.
This process also reminds me
of working with prints
on a table where
I would shuffle them around,
getting rid of photographs
that don't fit
in the sequence.
I then repeat the same process
for two stars
by marking all as three stars
and then downgrading
to two star
all of the weaker images.
I will repeat this process again
the same way
up to five stars,
or until I have
my absolute best frames.
I find that the easiest way
to get rid of weaker images
is by comparing
similar photographs
in Survey mode,
keyboard shortcut N,
and downgrading directly in here.
After completing this,
I will usually revisit the lower ratings
for one more run through
to find any missed gems
which might be hiding
from my preying eyes
and in the end delete
anything with zero stars.
There will be
naturally some exceptions
which I will flag
or color label on the go.
But that's a whole new topic.
This workflow
leads us directly to having a collection
that is more enjoyable
to look through.
Once you have less photographs
you will pay
more attention to them.
It will be easier to find
what you're looking for
and instead of searching
for a needle in a haystack,
you will simply open
a gallery of images
you already liked in the first place
so that you can choose your
absolute favorite.
I hope this episode will
motivate you to edit your collection
a bit and let us know
in the comments
what challenges you face
while working
on your libraries.
Subscribe to our channel for more
and check out
the Adorama Learning Center
for some more tips
and tutorials.
This was Marcin Lewandowski
for AdoramaTV.
See you next time.