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Lesson Info

Selecting Images

Now let's go into the process of selecting our images. So that's where we get to look at him and have fun with him. Um, what I'm going to do is, once I'm inside of the folder I want to work on, I'm going to hit the tab key so that I have more real estate and then I'm going to start looking at my images. So here I am, looking at the first image, and I'm just gonna shift click to another set of images here and I'm gonna hit the N key. And while I'm in the N key, that's now I'm in the survey mode. So there's the grid mode and you can see all these options right down here to the left hand side. So there's the grid mode. There's the loop mode, which is one image at a time. And then there's a comparison mode, and then there's survey mode. The survey mode is fantastic because it gets rid of all of the distractions. So that is the first rule of selecting images is to get rid of your distractions. So we're going to get rid of a distraction of grids. Cause grid is a big distraction. I want to ge...

t rid of that so I can just look at the images and I've got the blackness around it, and I could just take a look at him, and and And I'm not all that interested in this one. But I am interested in this one here, so I'm gonna hit that one. So the tilde key is a flag. Oh, there's a great lesson. Um, if you are in the survey mode or if you're in the grid and you push a say you hit the peaky for pick, it will add a pick toe, all of the images, which is not useful to you. But that's just the way the grid works. Anything you have selected is going to happen. Whatever you do is gonna happen. All of the images. Um, so that's why we don't really like to select inside the grid anyway, Um, so I'm in the survey mode. But in the survey mode, if I hit the peaky noticed that it picked everything as well, which is no good for us. And that's because if you go over to the right hand panel and open that up, there's an option called Auto Sync. An Auto Sync, if it's on, does the same thing that happens in the grid. If whatever you have selected, whatever images you have selected, if you do something, it will do it toe all of them. So glad this happened, because I need to show you that. So if you turn it off, see how the auto Sync turns to a dark. This is kind of this is actually a very brand new feature that they realized that people were freaking out because this was happening and they didn't know why. It's because Auto Sync is on. And when auto Sync is on, you'll see this lightness to this. So turn it off. Now. When we get to the develop module, I'll tell you to turn auto Sync on. Fortunately there independent so you can have auto sync off inside of the library. But when you're in the development module, you can have auto sync on, and that's the way you want it to be. That's kind of like your normal operating procedure. Okay, so now that we've set that setting correct so we don't have that issue, we can start going through our images and the tilde key is a nice place. If you're just working on a laptop and you don't have, like, an external key back keypad or something like that, that allows you to, uh, to use like I have at home on my desktop, I have what's called a shuttle pro to, which allows me to touch the keys, and I can assign those keys to anything on the keyboard, which is nice, because then I can assign all of the five or six keys that I use all the time toe one specific area. So it's really easy to to identify those and just click, click, click, click. But on the keyboard you're having to hunt and peck for the peaky, and it's all the way on the left hand side, and I'm using a mouse. So what I prefer to do is use the mouse, and then I just keep my hand, my left hand over on the right of the left hand side of the keyboard, and that's where I can hit the for stars. I can hit the tilde key right next to the one key, so it's the farthest top left corner. Uh, key. That tilde key is a toggle between pick and unpick. So I click it once and I've gotta pick, but noticed none of the other ones did. So this is Ah, a bunch of butterflies and cocoons like that one. I'm gonna pick that one, and then I'm looking at these here, and I noticed I was just trying to catch the horse moving through. And I like the horse covering the actual gate a little bit more, but I don't know, I kind of like this one because he's in the middle of the gate. So I'm gonna use the Z key to zoom in and make sure that the horses see how the horses not sharp. It's ah, it's blurry. And this is more sharp, but notice that I am looking at an embedded preview, So it's not taking me all the way in and showing me it perfectly exactly as it is, but it shows me enough. It gives me enough information that I can decide on this image without having to have full one for one preview present. Um and so that's the value of that embedded inside cars that I have the ability to go through and look at these images really quickly. Um, without having toe be, have a one for one. So it looks to me like when I shot thes the horses moving fast enough. And if I click on the info button the I button, it will show me what the settings were for the camera, and the camera is at a 2/100 of a second. But I'm sure the horse was kind of bobbing up and down as it was walking. And so it didn't quite register like it didn't catch the movement. That's just fine, because it's kind of a cool. It's fine. So I'm gonna choose this one since all of them have a little bit blurred toe. I'm gonna choose this one because I like the framing best on it. So I click on that and hit pick, and then I'm going to go. I'm gonna go down to these images here, and I just click on image and shift click, and then all the images show up that I that section of images that I want to look at and I'm just looking for the They're all very similar. Some zoomed in some zoomed out on this bridge. I'm gonna zoom in. That's good. I'm gonna pick that one, and then I'm gonna pick one that's a little bit more. Ah, far away. I think that one Zoom in. I like that. Done. So notice that here's the second rule for selection that I'm not looking at images one at a time. A lot of people go through their images like this, and I really highly discourage that. Because when you're going through, your image is one of the time you're not actually making good decisions because you don't you're not seeing them in comparison to each other. It's really easy to see a good composition when you see it next to a bad composition. It's easy to see a straight image when it's next to a crooked image. So I'm always looking at my images side by side like this in the survey mode so that there's no distractions and I can see a group of images, and that way I can choose the best one of that group. Um, so I'm always going to be choosing images, uh, in in connection with each other or comparison to each other and The third thing that I'm always doing when I'm selecting images is I'm picking them. I'm not rejecting them. So I'm I'm If you're If you're picking mawr images than you're rejecting, you're doing something wrong. You need to be picking a very, very small few images that are the best images don't pick a ton Images pick a very, very small few images. So going through, you're going to select a set of images and then you're just going to click the next set of images. So click on this image and then move through to say this image and shift click. And now I've got photos of my Children playing in on Mackinac Island and Little Portrait Session going on here. Just go in and make sure that she's sharp enough. Yeah, I like that one better. And I like this one, I think. Nope. Balance out of focus, so I'm not going to choose that one, but notice that I don't reject it. I just just leave it alone, Um, and then my son taking pictures. I'll keep that and then I go to the next set. Simply click and then shift. Click. Now I've got it. and I'm just going to zoom in. Good zoom in. Good. That's my wife. And again, we're just We're just moving through and it's just you let things jump out at you. That's the way we select. That's the way we photographed when were wandering around town and looking for something photograph. We're doing the same thing. We're walking around and we're just kind of letting something pop out at us. So we're looking at lots of things at the same time. And then something pops out us and we investigate it, and then we start shooting it and we shoot it based on kind of our instinctual thought process. And so we're not like scrutinizing things were just looking. And so I'm looking here to find what I think is the best possible, Um, composition. That looks good. It's sharp. Pick it and then I've got So I've got one that this lighthouses on the right hand side, Um and then I think I probably want one where it's on the left hand side. So I'm gonna just go here good, that sharp. And then probably I also want one that shows more water. This one shows more sky so I'll go here and I'll select this one that has more water on it. So I've got three images out of those nine, and then I'll go to the next set, which is this dog hanging out on its porch step. And really, I think that's the shot that I'm looking for. And I think that's the only one I need. And I really like that one. So I'm gonna hit that one is a two, so I'm just scrolling through and looking for those images. Now, if you increase the size of the panel at the bottom, you can actually see if some of them are worth even looking at if some aren't seeing kind of scroll through, um, when I'm not, I would go through all of them, but I just don't wanna spend all the time doing it. But I do want to collect a couple photos here because they will be used to useful to us later. So I like this. This house is bizarre. Cool looking, a little creepy looking. Um, say those weren't even interesting. I like the ducks following each other, so I'm gonna get a shot of those. Yeah, that one's good. Um, and then I remember on the shoot there is a street shot. So I'm out here. This this is one of my favorite shots here. So I got this really interesting little lamp post in the middle of ah, of a road. There's a horizontal of it. Lamppost is sharp. Got it. And then I've got these two images with the bird. I'm gonna pick that one, and I'm going to pick this on because I've got the bird in both versions of flight. So I like those. I'm gonna keep those three images. And now I can go back to the grid once I've done all of my selections, and obviously you would go through the entire thing. But once you're done, then it's a matter of sorting. And we can sort based on metadata by just clicking on right at the top. There's a library filter. And if you look right above your your return key, there is a back slash and that back slash turns on and off. Well, it doesn't turn it on and off it hides it and shows the library filter. So if I sort by something and then hide, it doesn't turn off the filter. It just hides the filter. So I'm gonna click on metadata. Our sorry attributes. I consort by metadata to I could look through these and find all of that all of the images that were shot with a 24 70 or all of the images that were shot with the 72 200 Or I can choose from any of the metadata that's on the photo itself, including I s O focal length, shutter speed, aperture, all that kind of stuff. But right now we want to sort by attributes, and we're gonna sort by so I can, short by flags, unflagging or rejected. I consort by whether it has edits or no edits on it. I consort by how many stars it has or what color label I've placed on it. Or I can even sort by whether it's a regular image, whether it's a virtual copy or whether it's a movie. So there's a lot of sorting that I could do, and I'm just going to sort by flagged images so that I've got a bunch of images that are flagged. I'm gonna highlight all of those. Those are the images that I want to organize