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DPChallenge Forums >> Photography Discussion >> How do you pick the good ones?
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 09/03/2005 04:02:58 PM · #1
I have developed a bit of a workflow problem, and here's a good example.

We went on vacation in Maine this August. I took a lot of pictures. All in RAW format. Thanks to Bibble, and RSE, I can deal with having so mny photos as far as doing the basic processing them as "proofs". But many need real PS to become wall hangers, and sellable images.

But I am finding it hard to decide which ones are worth spending the editing time needed to take some of the photos into production for resale.

So I'm curious how others deal with this dilemma? It's a little easier when I take 50 pictures of the same "subject" to figure out which are the best. Not too easy, though. I still struggle with various shots taken at different angles--which one is best?

So what is your process for going through "general" shots you've taken, say on a scenic mountain hike. Or walking through the city one day? Backup aside (taken for granted), what percentage to you keep, spend individual time editing, etc. Do you delete the others from your hard drive? And for the ones you might keep but not process further (e.g., for resale), what do you do with them then?

Thanks in advance for discussing this with me!

09/03/2005 04:14:53 PM · #2
I have the same issues. I tend to weed them out in RSE. I use the slideshow to cycle through them and use the category buttens until I'm down to the best 10 or so.

I look for sharpness - anything slightly soft gets cat 3
I look for compostion - if it has a compostional error it gets cat 3
I look for lighting - if its flat it gets a 3

Then its down to working out the 1's and 2's

To get a 1 it has to have WOW otherwise its a 2. Its difficult to know what and how WOW gets into an image, but when you see it you know ;-)
 09/03/2005 04:44:54 PM · #3
Keith---thanks for your reply.

Yes, I like the tagging/sorting function of RSE. Wish Bibble had that! (I used to simulate it in folders, but I am beginning to think I like RSE better.)

So if you don't have any 1's, what do you do. Bag the photo session as producing nothing. Do you delete them then? Or do you start looking through 2's to see if there's something to fix. Or do you just leave the whole set there for another day.

I am starting to get itchy to delete these many shots from my drive. Why keep them, I am trying to figure out. If it's not for a photo print, or contest now, will you ever do anything with it later? Sooner or later, we are all going to run out of space.

I also have the temptation to create a little index of all the shots before I delete any using the Bibble batch function to reduce them to 1024x768 and keep it in a subfolder _index. But even that starts to add up, and I wonder whether I should just say goodbye to the ones I don't pick and not look back ;)

Also, at what point do you show them to others for an opinion? My family hasn't enough patience to help me look through a set and pick the best one, so there would have to be very few. ;)


09/03/2005 04:58:07 PM · #4
Originally posted by nshapiro:


Also, at what point do you show them to others for an opinion?


Never. Let them see them when you are ready to display them. Some people will say they like everything you show them, while other will be critical for all the wrong reasons. Unless you have a mentor or an honest peer that is not prone to jealousy it is better to keep them under your hat until you have made your own choices.

I find that after I have culled the obviously OOF and poorly composed shots, letting the shots age and coming back later to look at them again with a new eye is the best way to choose which ones have impact.
 09/03/2005 05:01:56 PM · #5
Having just "run-out-of space," I am intensely interested in this subject!
(Yeah, I did fill an 80 gig hard-drive with images....the largest being PSD files, so there's hope.)

Since I can't seem to throw anything away, I have been working to back up all my folders to CD's (no DVD burning yet, coming soon). I then delete the I-can-live-without-it folders, such as temporary things done in my workplace. And then compress/re-size/delete PSD files I don't really want to keep. I plan to go back and dump the OOF and JPU (out of focus and just plain ugly) ones from my hard-drive....having done some of that, I found it easiest to open Windows Explore (I run Windows XP-pro) and view through the film-strip where I can select and delete easily.

I am looking/hoping for a better solution....QUESTIONN: What are RSE and Bibble? (And will I have hard-drive space to install them?)

There was someone here who seemed to have an excellent workflow that kept originals and created back-ups that would keep one's peace of mind--can't remember who, though.
 09/03/2005 05:03:29 PM · #6
Ooh! As far as sorting as well, if anyone uses IView, the sorting and ranking feature is very helpful! I have 5 or 6 categories, which they get moved to folders or sorted/deleted as I need them.

(I love Iview, I was a big bibble fan, but mine is corrupted).

M
 09/03/2005 05:53:18 PM · #7
Neil,

if there are no 1's then I look for a 2 simply for my PAD, I don't bother with them for any other reason.
The only person who gets to see the un-photoshopped originals is my daughter who is taking an photography A-level at college. I appreciate her advice, but I wouldn't trust anyone else to make an objective assessment.

I never delete anything, the raw files all get copied onto the 200Gb Hard drive and copied to DVD. I have over 30,000 images of variable quality.
The cat 1's get indexed, photoshopped and stored on both the 200Gb drive and the 120Gb drive as well as the DVD.

I'm just evaluating iView which looks pretty good, however I think I like iMatch better for indexing and categorisation. I still haven't decided which to buy yet.

Message edited by author 2005-09-03 17:54:33.
 09/03/2005 06:44:44 PM · #8
I wish I could answer that... I prune ruthlessly, and instantaneously, but it comes from decades of practice I think. I know "it" when I see it. I have 2 categories of things; "useful" images and "super" images. The "useful" ones might make their way into a portfolio for various commercial usages (Cape Cod scenes are marketable) but will never make it onto my wall. The "super" images have something that appeals to me as an artist.

On my first crawl-through I'm deleting without a backward glance any that aren't sharp, have bad DOF, or have unfortunate juxtaposition of elements, mostly. Then I go back and double-check the duplicates or very similar images, and save only the best of those.

It's not very scientific. Nearly all of what I keep, I process. I can do "routine" processing very rapidly so it's no tmuch of a chore for me.

Robt.
 09/03/2005 08:02:52 PM · #9
I use two programs the first called pixsort which lets me sort the images into five categories. (somehow I find it easier to delete afterwards). I then look at all my level 1, images and choose the best of from there, normally by selecting again 1 to 3 one being WOW! two being well I like, and three everything else. It might be a prefectly clean, clear shot but just misses that wow factor. Finally I look at the last level of ones (a day or week later so I am seeing what is ACTUALLY in the picture not what I remember from that day - Does anyone else have that problem?) Anyway then I look at them again against pictures of a simular subject I have taken and decide if they hold their own or can be classified as better then previous bests.
 09/03/2005 08:17:53 PM · #10
If I had to pick the 'good one's' I wouldn't have had these few in my recent sales thru alamy.com...

Alamy Sales

I just find it difficult, to throw any images away after the initial editing. 3 of these 4 images I consider rubbish, but I submitted them and they sold (and not for 20 cents :-) )

Message edited by author 2005-09-03 20:18:51.
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