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Rules for Selecting Images in Lightroom CC

We have gone through some fairly essential but basic things s so far on the course, we talked about the process of, uh, bringing your images in we've talked about the hard drives and where you store your photos and all that kind of stuff um and all that is really important the under that's, the underpinnings of your entire workflow has to be organized because if you're not organized you dropping balls, you're losing things and every second you spend finding a file is the second you wasted in your life you really if you if you knew where things were, you wouldn't you constantly lose my keys because I don't put him in the same place every time now my wife has created a drawer in which I can put my keys, I clearly know this, but for some reason my physical space at home is like vacation time for me or something and I don't put my keys in the right place, and so then I'm looking for keys or stealing hers and it drives her nuts and I totally understand it should drive her nuts, but but if y...

ou put things in the right place and you always have a place for him, then you always know where they are and you never spend that extra time looking for him and therefore your life goes by smoother, so I'm trying to help you guys get to the point where your life is smooth and quick in a digital realm that doesn't mean that I'm really organized in my sock drawer anything it just means my digital world is very organized maybe I'm compensating for the lack of organisation for my keys and my sock drawer okay rules let's cover some rules here for editing or selecting images so once we have imported our images we have a set of images and remember these images we imported also are available on the ipad through the creative cloud eso they're on light her mobile but I'm not going to select him there I'm gonna select him here but I wanted to show you a couple things really quickly before we got into that I wanted to talk to you about some rules for editing um some of you have heard me speak before will have heard these rules, but they're important I think they're worth repeating so let's talk about those rules for editing so let's go to a wedding and this is there's a wedding I shot in england in the southern southern coast of england in a place called ripe ripe england super super cool place um but anyway, these air at the cliffs they're kind of like the cliffs of dover, but they're not there they're in a different spot, but they're the same concept um and uh I'm going to go through and make some selections but while I'm doing this I want to teach you some rules about selecting eso rule number one rule number one is that we always do this in a distraction lis environment so the less distractions we can have in selecting our images the better off we'll be for instance um if you are selecting images and you are also answering the phone and you were also doing email and you're also getting lunch for the kids and you were also you are not going to do a very quick or a good job at selecting your images because you're always going to be distracted by something else that is not your primary goal and if you consider the way that you photograph you don't allow things to distract you while you're photographing you are in the zone and like literally some people could be run over by cars around you wouldn't even know it because you're totally focused on the things that your look king four and you just dismiss everything else right and so we get in the zone and we shoot and we don't allow things distract us we don't get on the phone and talk to people while we're shooting we with zone out and we do our thing you got it you got to feel that way about your photos when you're selecting him because really there is no difference between selecting photos and taking photos it's it's all the act of selection it's just where you're selecting, you can select in the field with your camera or you can select in the computer with images that's it's all selecting that's if you break down photography that's what photography is the act of selection so that's the first rule is just get rid of all of the distractions now what are some of the distractions? Obviously email and twitter and things like that are major distractions but other things that are distractions are things like the grid so if you look at the grid here inside of light room, we're looking at maur data and information than we are at actual photos and so those air distracted those things those elements like the names you know this name and this and that and the flag over here and all of that is distracting me my eye from seeing what's actually on my screen so that's the first problem and that is solved by going to what we call the survey mode and this is the button for the survey mode but if you just hit the n ki and is the survey mode, so if you click on end you will go to the survey mode when you're only selecting one image shows you one image, but if you shift click a set of images down here it will show you a set of images and as you remove images from that, it will reconfigure the images to try and give you the most amount of space so that the images are taking up the screen there's a much more attractive way to look at photos and I'm not distracted by all the things around them, so now I can make good decisions in my selection, so the survey mode is critical in that process. Um secondly, remember your time is valuable, and so if you're zooming in on a photo, it needs to be sharp see how when I come in it's just instantly, sharpe, I can see it that's because I've built my one for one previews if you haven't built your one phone previews, it will cycle, and that will be a that will take you a long time to wait. And at that point, when you're waiting for something, you find something else to think about or do and it's gonna take you out of the zone. So you really need to pay attention to that another thing that's a distraction that most people don't think about is this keyboard. So the fact that I have to look down at the keyboard and find a keystroke and push it and then look back up the photos is a distraction, and it takes me a certain amount of time to do that process now aiken, I confined a certain number of keys just with my hands so I can like if I'm on an airplane instead of using the peaky for pick because pick so if I see an image here and I like say this image a lot I actually like this one because he's got the surfboard if I like this image a lot and I have to look down to find the peaky which is way over to the right hand side here um if I have to do that that is a distraction hit peking right oh and by the way I'm glad this happened did you notice that when I hit the peaky um all of these see that one got lit that one got late I picked him but it picked all six of them I get a lot of questions like what is going on? I'm trying to do it the way you tell me to and when I picked this it picks all of them and I can't stop it from doing that um let's unpick them see how they all went away all the flags on the way if you hit the tab can bring the sides back in. Down at the bottom of the survey mode is an auto sync if you click on this little toggle it will turn auto sync off now, eh if you click on this and pick it on ly picks the one you're highlighting and then the secondary selections don't get picked so that sink sink everything it sinks the picks it sinks the adjustments or whatever sometimes you want it on when you're in the developed process and you're working on images but when you're in the selection process you on ly wanted to pick one image infact I've gone back and forth with adobe on it like why but what in what lunatic world would you actually want to pick a photo that you have selected and have it pick all the photos around it I understand in the grid pick yeah anything you're selecting you know because it's kind of an informational place where you you know do things but in the survey mode the serving notice meant to compare images and yet if I pick it should never do that but anyway turn off the auto sync and it won't do that if you have the out of sync on it will so those of you out there they're following this method you don't need to email me anymore you have the answer unchecked that sink okay now so if I like this image and I want to pick it and I have to go over to the peaky to do that that's I have to find the peaky there's no rational easy way to find a peaky on a keyboard with just your you know I mean maybe I'm not very good at typing but that's a hard thing to find however over here on the left hand side maybe you can do the overhead cam um there is the till the key the till the key is a toggle between pick and unpick so I unpick it picket unpick it picket unpick it pick it itjust toggles back and forth which is really conveniently located next to the one two three, four and five keys which with stars so now if I like something I can pick it and give it to stars all at the same time and now I can be on an airplane with my hand right here and then my other hand right here and now I've got a pinkie on the pick I've got one two and three stars all covered here by these fingers and I happen to not have a full finger here so it's useless uh one of my fingers is removed and so um I can't really rationally get anything with this so it just kind of sits there points of the screen like this like do that but anyway so I've got my pick my one to three stars and then my thumb is useful toe like hitting the shift key or the command key because the shift key is used for if I click on an image and then if I hit the shift key I can then shift click a set of image into the survey right? So or if I want to do discontinuation midges the command key allows me to add images that are not necessarily continuous to the other images or to remove images that are not necessarily you know, interesting or whatever so the thumb allows me to do that kind of stuff. Plus the thumb allows me to hit the zoom key and zoom out so one hand on an airplane allows me to do that by feel I can feel it it's not that I have to look I do this the whole time which is really annoying um and I get cramp e and you know it's all it's no fun but on an airplane fourteen hour ride home from hong kong or whatever you do what you got to do um but that being said there are better ways to do this if you have a desk so if you're out of desk and you have the ability teo plug in a some kind of another device that could do this for you that's my preferred method so I have what's called a shuttle pro too. So this is what it looks like the shuttle pro too is a keyboard replicator and that the concept behind the shuttle pro too is simply this you've got a number of keys it's ergonomically designed to fit your hand so I actually would prefer resting my hand on the shuttle pro two resting it on my desk because it's actually better it's better design so I'm going to um I got all sorts of information coming in off of this thing so someone's trying to telescope me or periscope me or whatever anyway um so I rest my hand here and on all these keys are all the keys that I would likely need to push here and it's just a simple method of I go to my preferences up here in the top there's a when you installed the software for this thing there is a little key pad thing that right up here it's just for the shuttle pro too and you go into shuttle settings and when you're in the shuttle settings you can just tell it I want key number one to do this which you can see it's saying I wanted to be the peaky so it's very easy to program so you click on that and it clicks on pick so if I'm inside of light room and I click on an image and I say I want say this image of him tossing the rock into the end of the ocean I'm gonna hit pick and it picks it right now like I said I could do that over here with this you know hand and I could do like pick one to three stars and I could do all this shift and zoom with one hand so that's fine easy to do but I can't do this so when I'm starting with a set of images and I want to start picking so I like this image so I'm gonna pick it and give it to stars and I'm doing this all here on the shuttle probe but now I want to move off to the next set of images so do you see how has different options developed keyword ing in library by the way, those people who have my shuttle pro two settings already I used to have just developed and just library and now I have a key wording option two so that's my new c c version so I have to click on library and that allows it to do the library centric keystrokes so I'm gonna click on this and it just adds the next six so then I can zoom through him and look and say okay, I want you know this image so I can zoom in zoom back out and pick it and then go to the next six images I like this one of this driftwood so I'm gonna go in zoom make sure it's sharp pickett I like this one we've already picked and to start it this is him chipping away like any boy would do on any anything that you can chip on so I'm gonna pick that one go to the next set there and I could just keep doing that now think how much quicker that is then doing click on this image hit the shift key go to here then pick then click on this image scroll this way shift kilic it's a lot slower to go that way than it is to just simply hit one button and it does the work for you when I designed that all it is is just a siri's of keystrokes so I tell this button when I push you I want you to do a series of keystrokes one of the first one is g for grid it goes to the grid and then it uses they uh I think it's shift command uh arrow too maybe it's shift option command arrow anyway does a keystroke to get to the next image and disregard all the other images and then it does shift arrow because if you had the shift arrow key it adds to the survey and then it goes back to the survey mode to show them tio and so it just kind of goes back and forth and does that but it's all one keystroke here whereas it would be a serious of about eight keystrokes here if you wanted to do that so back to rule number one get rid of the distractions the distractions are having to push and remember keystrokes you will find that I don't know most of my keystrokes and light room I know kind of what they are and I confined him again, but most of the time I forget him because everything that I do is here I don't have to remember the keystrokes because I found a way for a device to do them for me there are all sorts of types of devices there are a bunch of light room controllers that are on your ipad the reason I don't like those because you have to look because there's no button you can't feel your way to a button and so you have the look distraction I can look and find the key here so if I had the look and find the key there haven't done myself any favors so I need physical buttons there's, rpg keys and so those are our very powerful as well also, if you look at any walk um towel back or walk um tablet there keys on it and there's enough keys here that you could tell it to do a pick a star reject ad next six all that stuff could be done on just a simple welcome tablet. If that's all you have also this is from walking as well it's for their larger like so antique screens and stuff, but when you have one of these it's awesome, all you have to do is plug in this little thing here so I'm gonna I'm going to plug it in right now so I just plug in this little device so that it's it's just a bluetooth thing and once you have the bluetooth open you turn this baby on it literally becomes a remote for choosing your images so it knows that I'm in light room right now and so I could just say I want you know toe I reject that one or no I want to pick that one like uh let me just get back a little ways here I just go like this so let's zoom in zoom out uh let's ah let's give him a you know, a couple extra stars uh you know I mean that's just look at that one all by itself that's pretty cool like I could do this all day long from here you know, that's not a not a problem at all so you know that's that's pretty fun stuff I can I can move between the images aiken you know, choose the er and and then you can see how there's a little light there you can tell it I want to do this or I want to do that. So this scroll button here we'll do something different depending on what you know light you have selected and just just lots of fun little things you could do with something like that so you don't necessarily have to go up by one because you probably already have something you either have this or you have a walk of tablet or you've have a shuttle pro two or your son has a gaming device you know, like I think there's one called the nostril most that's like you you put your hand in like this and it's a throttle for airplane games whatever you know and you got like twenty keys on that thing program utilize um make sure that light room knows that you're playing a game, you know? And once you do that you will find the you don't have to mean it will take you far last time to get through images if you have something controlling, you know the selection process get rid of the distractions, okay? So that's a rule very simple rule but it's a rule that will save you a lot of time if you will follow it. All right, so rule number two rule number two is you'll notice that we have always been looking at our images side by side comparison in comparison. We don't ever look at images one at a time because when you look at images at one of the time like this, you never actually know the difference between the two you can't see it because you're not looking at the other image, so you got to be doing it in comparison that's why we have the survey option in front of us, I choose six images because that's a decent number of images gives me good view of things that happened the uh when when I got married, my wife um, met me and four brothers all at the same time. So there are four of us that met her at the same time from the same family and all of us were marrying age. So my brother, my oldest brother, I have a lot of brothers, so we have seven boys, one girl in my family. And so we all went to church with my oldest brother because his son was being blessed that day, you know, his new son, and so we went to church and he introduce danielle because he my wife stand man name is danielle, he wanted her to be in the family. He didn't care which boy brought her in, but he just was like, this is a cool girl, she should be in our family and he was right she's a cool girl, but who was going to get her? That was, you know, and I don't know what he expected, maybe expected a brawl or something, but anyway, so she came and met all of us at the same time, so she got to see four people of marrying age, all of same family you know, so just like we're looking at here all right they're all in the same family they all look fairly similar to each other, but one of them is best so she just took her shuttle pro too, and she looked at the options and she looked around and she zoomed in on one of them and say hopes oh, she didn't go to the next six so she looked at him and she zoomed in on one of them said, yeah, I like that one and she picked it so it's much easier to make the correct decision when you have all your options in front of you all right? All right, so that is the lesson and I can guarantee you every single one of you chose your spouse, your significant other or whatever based on that rule you went somewhere and saw a bunch of options and chose one, right? Okay, so the next rule and that's a simple rule just always look at multiple images at the same time. That's an easy rule to follow right? The next rule is pick the best option don't reject the other ones if you spend your time looking at all the bad stuff that you shoot first of all if you're going to feel bad about yourself but secondly, you'd be wasting your time clicking a lot of things that you don't need to click the fact that I have in front of me I have six photos and only one of them is picked that means the other ones are no longer pick they're rejected right? And I don't need teo like open them up and tell them how bad they are they already feel bad that they weren't picked just let him go right? So just just let him go just you know we don't need to beat them and tell them how ugly they are they know just let him go so that's not rule number three always pick don't reject so it's positive selection and then your final rule and this is the hardest rule to follow because it's something they have to learn for yourself and that is you have to trust yourself and trust only comes through experience you only trust yourself as you go through the experience and you realize that yes, I made this decision and it turned out good once that happens I made a decision turned out good then you believe in yourself the next time you make the decision and when you make that next decision and it also turns out good then you believe in yourself more and more and more and more until finally you're fairly egotistical and then you are good about making decisions and it's important teo I think if you any great photographer believes in their decisions I think they really do, I think if you found all the great photographers out there and put him in a room and then you made him make a decision, they would all believe in their decision and walk away and say I made the right decision doesn't matter what it was in their life, they like, yet made the right decision, they could be totally delusional, but they believe it because they've done a lot of decision making visually and they've made the right decision that's made them cocky, right? So you should have that feeling of I can make a decision and I making the right decision for me and that's good enough and I can move on the problem is a lot of people make a decision, and then they go, I don't know, though should I just don't know which one should I choose? And and in the end, it doesn't matter, you have to realize what matters and what doesn't matter, and especially when you're shooting for you that's the most amazing opportunity you could have. So when you're shooting for you and I do the same time, I shoot for me, and I shoot for clients when I'm shooting for me, that's an opportunity for me to practice the art of making selections because I'm not going to get sued by me. So that's, when I pick pick, pick and I take all the ones I didn't pick and I literally throw them away, I don't let myself see them. I don't let my wife see everything's gone, just delete because it trains my brain to know that these air final decisions you're making, so stay on the ball and make the right decision, and I just go for it when I'm working for a client, then I can take those same skills and employ them, but now I just have a safety valve where I put them on a rejects dr, put him off to the side and let the client come back if they need something, but usually they don't have only had two clients in fifteen years come back and ask to see anything from the rejects. So that's a pretty good track record, so okay, so, um, with those four rules in place, then I think you have the ability and the understanding what you need to do to get things done quickly. Now, let's, talk about this selection process, so we've already worked inserted the survey mode, so, you know, howto operate inside there, the n key gets you there, the geeky gets you back to the grid if you need to go back to the grid for any reason the e key that puts you into what we call the loop mode, which is one picture at a time. So between g e and n those air pretty much the tools that you need occasionally you'll run into a need for a comparison. That's the seiki. And if you go to see, then you got a comparison between photo number one and photo too. And this is best used for looking at a big family photo, because then you can actually zoom in like this. Zoom in here like this and kind of get them in generally the same spot, and then lock the comparison. And now you can kind of go like this, and so you'll be able to see, you know, freddy and held on whatever, and you just see him and, like, okay, that one's, right, that one's, right, that one's, right? And then once you know, between the two, which one's better because you've been comparing him, then at that point, you can say, okay, this one is actually the better one, or this one is the better one, and then you can start flag it, or you could even move it into the right position. So you could say, okay, I want this one to take the number one position here, and then it knows you obviously don't want the other one, so it takes the next one in line and pulls it up for you to see. So the comparison mode is useful. I don't use it very much, because I don't do a lot of family portrait's in that sense. Um, so I'm not comparing, like a big group of people, so usually I'm comparing family photos like this, and then I'm just looking, is everybody smiling? Yes, ok, I'll zoom in, check on that one and then move on to the next. Okay, so that's, all of your key strokes that you need to be aware of.