Flagging your best photos in Lightroom for editing
Quite a number of years ago, I went to a photography convention in Las Vegas. I was a new and budding photographer and wanted to learn all the things. The schedule of events was super exciting and I signed up for as many classes as I could. There’s one class, however, that I took that stuck with me through all these years. It was a class on Adobe Lightroom and it completely changed the way I culled my photographs from a photoshoot. I learned about flagging your best photos in Lightroom for editing in a fast and easy way that blew my mind.
At the time, I was very frustrated with how to pick my favorite photographs from a photoshoot to edit. ‘Culling’ is the proper term. I would go through each image and literally write down the image numbers that I wanted to edit on a sheet of paper. Going through a wedding photoshoot with thousands of photographs with that process was extremely time consuming.
I now pick my photos through ‘flagging’ in Lightroom and it saves me an incredible amount of time. I can see side by side comparisons quickly, and pick and choose the photographs worth editing. Here’s the simple breakdown of how to do it in video. Or if you prefer reading, I have that below the video.
Import
With Adobe Lightroom open and ready to go, you’ll first select the “import” button on the bottom left of your screen. Then on the top left, you’ll navigate to the source that has your photos. In my case, it was my SD card named, “Untitled”.
When the import is finished, you’ll see a grid of all the photos in that import. Down along the bottom, select the “survey view” button.
With the survey view option on – you can select multiple photos along the photo strip on the bottom. Shift + click one photo to another to selected all within that range. Or Command + click to select specific photos. All the selected images are shown.
Flagging
Because you have a good view of a group of images (I usually select a group of images that are similar – and no more than 4-6 at a time), you can pick the best image that will go on to editing. To pick an image, you’ll flag it.
To flag, rate, or color an image, make sure the image is selected/highlighted. You’ll see a white border around the image in the main view area and the thumbnail along the photostrip will be lighter and have a white border around it.
To flag an image, enter “P” on your keyboard to add a flag/pick.
To reject an image, enter “X” on your keyboard. This fades out the image from the film strip.
To rate an image, type 1-5 to give it a star rating. A 0 rating removes the stars completely.
To color an image for sorting, enter 6-9. 6 colors it red, 7 colors it yellow, 8 colors it green, 9 colors it blue.
After you’ve gone through and flagged all the images you want to edit – click the drop down box on the bottom right labeled “Filter”. Choose ‘Flagged’ to show only your flagged photos.
Editing
With the flagged photos selected, you can click on the the ‘Develop’ tab near the top right of the screen. The develop section is where you go through the editing process. That is a post for another day because there is SO much ground to cover in that section alone.
Exporting
After you’re satisfied with your edits, you’ll then export your photos to a folder on your computer or hard drive. Lightroom will only export the images selected in the photostrip at the bottom, so make sure you have them all selected, or at least the ones you need for the export.
Go to file, export. Then you’ll go through where you want them located, sizing, etc. Again, that’s a post for another day.
I ALWAYS use the flagging/pick feature. And occasionally I’ll use the star rating when I see a photo that I know is perfect and usable. I personally have never needed to colorize my photo picks into groups.
As you can see from the video tutorial, this workflow process is quick and easy. Flagging your best photos in Lightroom for editing is my favorite feature and I use it every single time I use Lightroom.
More Lighroom Tutorials and Tips!
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