Lessons

Lesson Info

Selecting Images in Lightroom

1 So the next thing that we're gonna do with our photos 2 is select them. 3 We've already added some metadata to the images. 4 They're on the cloud, they're backed up there, 5 but I wanna start adjusting 'em. 6 And I'm not about to adjust all of the images that I shoot. 7 I wanna find the best ones, 8 and those are the ones I'm gonna work with. 9 So this is a set of photos that I took of my daughter, 10 and I'm just gonna kind of scan through them. 11 There's a lot of 'em, and I'm just gonna scan through 12 and find the absolute best. 13 So let's start up here, she's just warming up, 14 doesn't look really great. 15 In order to look at an image, 16 I just double click it. 17 If I like it, good, I can give it a one star, 18 or I can hit the Z key and flag it. 19 It's really up to you how you choose to star your images. 20 But then I'm gonna hit the G key, go back, 21 and I'm just gonna keep looking through the images 22 for things that kind of call themselves out to me. 23 And I don't...

wanna look at 'em this way, 24 because I don't get to see all of them 25 in comparison to each other. 26 I can make much better decisions 27 if I just kind of scan through 'em like this 28 and I'm seeing them in comparison. 29 Boom. 30 Okay, now I'm starting to see a good little smile there. 31 So I'm gonna go and double click that one. 32 I like it. 33 I'm gonna pick that one. 34 Back to the G. 35 And then I'm gonna keep scanning, keep scanning. 36 I'm just kind of browsing through the images, 37 so my eyes are just kind of running across the row. 38 And as I see a good set, 39 like there's some good smiles happening. 40 So I'm gonna double click that one. 41 Eh, I don't really like that one, 42 but now the next one I think was better. 43 Yep, it was, oops, there. 44 And so I'm gonna hit the Z key for pick, 45 back to grid, 46 and then I'm gonna keep scanning, keep scanning. 47 See how I'm not spending a ton of time on any one image. 48 I'm just scanning the entire set 49 looking for something that calls its attention to me. 50 So keep moving. 51 And remember, you don't have to select everything. 52 Just because you shot it doesn't mean you have to select it. 53 That's pretty cute, we'll keep that one. 54 That one looks really cute. 55 That's good, so let's keep that one. 56 And that one looks pretty cute too. 57 It's a little sleepy eyes there, so we'll keep it, but nope. 58 All right, so keep going. 59 So I'm just looking for little patterns of good images. 60 Okay, I am starting to see something over here, 61 so I'm gonna double click there. 62 That's pretty good. 63 So I'm just hitting the Z key to pick it, 64 and then I'm hitting the G key 65 to go back to the grid. 66 And I'm just scanning through each line 67 looking for something, that one's kind of cute. 68 Let's see, yeah, that's cute. 69 I like that. 70 So we'll keep that one. 71 Don't ever think 72 that you have to select something on every line. 73 Don't ever think that you have to select anything. 74 You could go through this entire set of images 75 and not select anything. 76 And that would be the right decision. 77 If nothing stood out to you, then it was a fail, 78 and go shoot some more images. 79 The less you choose, the better. 80 So I prefer to choose very little. 81 So now there were three 82 that were really close to each other. 83 So these are the three that I would look at. 84 And I think that one was great, 85 and then that one caught my eye too, so, eh, not really. 86 Okay, so I'm gonna let that one go. 87 So see how I'm perfectly willing to reject images, 88 even images of my beautiful daughter. 89 So I keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. 90 This might be cute. 91 Yeah, that's all right. 92 There we go, now we're starting. 93 See, this is where I'm starting to get her to laugh 94 and she's becoming 95 a little bit more playful now. 96 There we go, that's a real look. 97 And I'm gonna give that three stars as well. 98 So I didn't just add the pick, 99 so with the Z key, I also hit the three 100 in order to add three stars to it, 101 because I really like it. 102 And I'm just gonna, oh, that's even better. 103 Look at that one. 104 That's fantastic. 105 So that one gets a pick and five stars. 106 And then we'll go back out to the grid. 107 And I keep scanning, that one looks. 108 Nope, keep moving. 109 That one looks great. 110 Yep, so we'll pick that one and give it a star. 111 That one's great. 112 And a little coy look there, 113 but not quite. 114 This one might be good. 115 Yeah, that one's good. 116 And keep looking. 117 That's fun, and I think that that one, 118 no, not that one. 119 Good. 120 So one of the things that I'm looking for, 121 and this is important, 122 when you're looking at stuff 123 at this small of a size, 124 you're not looking for the minute details. 125 You're looking for the general composition, 126 the general look on their face. 127 And then once you get in there, 128 that's when you're going to approve that image. 129 So I just liked that one. 130 And then the other one looked pretty good too, 131 just 'cause it's down, but mm, 132 the teeth are a little bit too much on that. 133 So I'm gonna let that go. 134 This one's great. 135 Yep, that one's great. 136 Or that, that one's better. 137 So pick, grid, 138 and I'm actually gonna give that three stars as well. 139 So it's still highlighted, so it's getting the three stars. 140 So if I go to the smaller grid, you'll see the three stars 141 and the flags next to each other. 142 But it's better to see the images like this 143 because you're not distracted by all the other information. 144 So I'm gonna keep moving through. 145 And I like this one I think, no, not that one, 146 but that one, that one's great. 147 So I'm gonna give that four stars. 148 And you notice that I'm not just giving them a flag, 149 I'm giving the flag, 150 and then if I really like them, 151 I'm giving some amount of stars. 152 So just one pass 153 and I know which ones are my absolute favorites. 154 So just keep going, I'm almost done here. 155 And that's probably a good one. 156 That one looks a little blurry, but let's zoom in. 157 Yeah, that one's blurry, so we won't worry about that one. 158 Okay, that's it. 159 So now that I'm looking at these images 160 and I've got all of mine selected, what do I do? 161 I can either trust that I've made the right decisions 162 and get rid of all of the other ones, 163 or I can just keep all of them 164 and just sort by my favorites. 165 And so let's try and do that first. 166 The best way to do that is just come up here 167 and say anything that I've picked, 168 go ahead and show me picks. 169 And now that's all of my picks. 170 That's a pretty good set of picks. 171 I like it. 172 I'm gonna trust that I got all the right settings. 173 So now I'm gonna unselect the picks 174 and I'm just gonna say, 175 show me all of the non picks and the rejects. 176 So I've just selected non picks and rejects, 177 so unselected and rejected images. 178 And then I'm gonna click on that one 179 and highlight all by hitting command A, 180 and I'm just gonna hit the delete key. 181 That's right, I'm gonna delete 'em, 182 because why do I need them? 183 So I hit delete and it says, 184 "Do you really wanna remove these 377 images?" 185 They won't be deleted. 186 You can still find them in "All Photos." 187 That delete key is not deleting them, 188 it's removing them, 189 which means that they're going to be here 190 in all of your photos. 191 So if you go back up to the all photos area, 192 they would still be there. 193 They just won't be in this particular album, 194 which is not what I want to do. 195 I actually want to delete them. 196 Like, I want them to go away and never return. 197 So in order to do that, I need to right click it 198 and come down to delete. 199 See how this one says "remove photos from the album." 200 This one says "delete the photos," 201 and notice that there's a different shortcut key. 202 So this one's the delete key, and this is option delete. 203 If I click on option delete, it's gonna say, "Are you sure?" 204 Because if you remove these, if you delete these, 205 your photos are gonna be deleted from Lightroom photos, 206 and also from all the albums and all the shares. 207 So everywhere. 208 It's gonna remove them, it's gonna delete 'em. 209 It's gonna get rid of 'em. 210 You will never have these again, which is okay. 211 That's fine, don't worry about it. 212 You chose the best ones. 213 So now I'm gonna hit delete. 214 And also remember, anything you delete, 215 you've got 30 days to undelete it. 216 So I'm gonna hit delete. 217 It's going to remove all of those files from Lightroom 218 and delete them completely. 219 So now notice that it says, oh no, there's a black hole. 220 Your search doesn't have anything. 221 That's because we have flags and rejected as our search. 222 So I'm gonna turn those off, and that's our images. 223 So before we go to adjusting our images, 224 I want to take you to another way of selecting images 225 that's kind of fun. 226 It's a great way of looking through images. 227 It has to be to a smaller group of images. 228 It can't be to 3000 images, 229 but it's a great way of selecting 230 the best images from some travel or something like that. 231 So if you choose an album, 232 and then this one has 270 images in it, 233 and it's a travel album. 234 It's a bunch of images from when we were traveling 235 in Europe as a family. 236 And if I click on that, and right click it, 237 and go to the share and invite option right there, 238 and click on that, it's gonna show me a panel. 239 And that share and invite panel 240 we'll go over in a little while. 241 But right now what I want you to see 242 is this customize option. 243 If I click customize, 244 this button takes me to Lightroom Web 245 that has a companion album that's the same as this album. 246 Because whenever you put images into Lightroom 247 on your desktop, it automatically wants to share them 248 with the cloud, and it creates a companion album up there. 249 And so I'm gonna click customize on web, 250 and that's gonna take me to lightroom.adobe.com. 251 So you can see that up there. 252 And here's that same group of images, 253 and you notice that it looks fairly similar 254 to Lightroom on your desktop computer. 255 But if I go back to Lightroom, 256 there's a triple dot button 257 right in the top right hand corner of the grid. 258 And there's something conspicuously missing here, 259 and you'll see it in a second 260 when I go back to Lightroom Web. 261 So when I go to Lightroom Web 262 to that same dropdown menu over here 263 in the top right hand corner, 264 there's something called "Choose Best Photos." 265 If I click choose best photos, 266 it actually analyzes the photos 267 and decides which ones are the best photos. 268 And it does a pretty good job. 269 So it's kind of fun to play with. 270 And it's easy to find some really quick photos 271 that are the best images. 272 And you get to choose some of the settings here. 273 So you get to choose the quality threshold. 274 So we're gonna raise the quality threshold. 275 We can also either ignore or use our ratings. 276 So I'm gonna use my ratings 277 because now what it's gonna do is it's gonna choose images, 278 using my ratings plus AI 279 to see which ones are the best ones. 280 So it kind of uses the best of both worlds. 281 And then also I can emphasize 282 photos with people more, 283 or I can say, I wanna see stuff without people. 284 And so I'm gonna take it down to less. 285 So I'm actually gonna do less. 286 I don't wanna see the people, I just wanna see the places. 287 So now that I've done that, look at that. 288 Those are all the best photos. 289 And I'll tell you what, this is definitely 290 one of my favorite photos. 291 Let's see how well it did. 292 This is also a really cool photo. 293 I like that organization there. 294 I like this photo a lot. 295 I love this photo. 296 I think that's a funny photo, 297 because she's, I think she's taking a selfie at the moment. 298 I love this photo. 299 So it's done a good job at finding 300 some of my favorite photos. 301 This is one of my favorite photos here. 302 This is one of my favorite photos. 303 So it's confirming some of mine. 304 Now let's take off the use my ratings 305 and say ignore my ratings 306 and let's see what it comes up with. 307 You see it's still using 308 a lot of really good images that I like. 309 It still kept this one. 310 That's a good photo. 311 I like that photo. 312 I like this photo. 313 So it's still done a great job at finding good photos. 314 So this is a fun way to look through images 315 that you may or may not have gone through, 316 and just kind of find some gems and pull them out. 317 And anything you do with these photos, 318 so if you see a photo like this 319 and you think, yeah, that really is a good photo, 320 and you come in and give it, say five stars right here. 321 And remember, we're on the web now. 322 If I click on that five star rating, 323 then when I go back to that album 324 inside of Lightroom on my desktop, click on that album. 325 If I go down to that same photo, let's just go find it. 326 Wherever that happens to be. 327 I think it was in that one. 328 Here, I know how we can find it. 329 We'll just sort by five star and above. 330 There, see that? 331 There it is. 332 That used to be a three star, 333 but now it's a five star. 334 I changed it on the website 335 and now it is changed inside of Lightroom on my desktop. 336 And by the way, it's also changed here 337 inside of Lightroom on my iPad. 338 So that's a great way to find some images 339 that maybe you wouldn't find otherwise 340 because the AI is looking at your images 341 and looking for the best possible images 342 based on the way people look, 343 based on rule of thirds, or golden spirals, 344 or, I mean, it's just coming up 345 with a lot of different rules 346 and it's just judging your photos 347 based on how they look 348 in comparison to all the millions and billions of photos 349 that it's looked at. 350 So that's kind of a cool thing, too. 351 So that's another way that you can judge your images 352 and select images. 353 But in the end, we want to select our images 354 before we start adjusting 'em, 355 because we don't want to adjust thousands of images. 356 We want to adjust only the images 357 that we think we're gonna keep.