Workflow for basic task of photo selection?

[Notechy]

A really basic question prompted by change from Windows to iMac Retina.

We take loads of photos - family/travel etc, and select perhaps 5% of them to keep. Much of this selection is of course from very similar shots. They are mainly shot on freestanding camera with a minority on iPhone. We call this "editing", but clearly it is not. We might actually edit/enhance a mere 5% of those retained, mainly using Photoshop Elements ( now 12). We generally have the photos organised in folders which are generally year and month, with further subdivision for the larger ones.

Can anyone advise on a suggested workflow and screen arrangement that best aids this selection process, which obviously requires an ability to see numerous photos simultaneously or at least to be able to toggle rapidly between them?

As far as I can see, the Photo app is of little or no help here. Is that right?

Are there other basic apps which would help?

Sorry if this is an incredibly naive post!

 

[robgendreau]

Sounds like you need a light table analog, something for culling. Many such applications are bundled into photo organizers obviously.

There are two main types, the browsers and the parametric image editors (PIEs). The former are like Lyn, Graphic Converter, XnViewMP, etc. The former are Photos, Lightroom, Aperture, Photos Supreme, Capture One, etc. The PIEs use a database to store editing and metadata info. All have some sort of light table view to enable easy culling and marking for further editing. But the PIE type requires some sort of import process first; the browsers just look at the photos where they already are. The browsers can even look at photos still on your iPhone or on an SD card. Browsers are often pretty quick; the PIEs are only quick once you've imported.

If you just manually copy your photos into folders, try the browsers. XnViewMP is free; you can say label files you don't want, then filter for those, then delete them. Or label some picks, and move to specific folders. It's a great application for keywording since it does hierarchical keywording, and it's free. Snapselect and PhotoSweeper, both marketed as duplicate finders, are actually great for culling. They find photos they think are the same subject (not just duplicate files), or by time intervals. That makes it easy to cull. The rejects can be sent straight to the trash.

 

[MCAsan]

The wife and put the SD cards into our rMBPs Then we use Perfect Browser (part of Perfect Photo Suite) to open the folder and quickly look through the images. The browser is using the jpeg preview files embedded in the raw files. It is not wasting time rendering new large previews. So it fairly easy to scroll through and pick the keepers. Those are imported in LR where the import preset uses Develop presets to do my usual basic adjustments and render larger previews. The import puts the new images in the /2015 folder. After the images are edited, we drag them from the rMBP SSD to our external library drives which are included in Time Machine backups.

 

[Notechy]

Sounds like you need a light table analog, something for culling. Many such applications are bundled into photo organizers obviously.

There are two main types, the browsers and the parametric image editors (PIEs). The former are like Lyn, Graphic Converter, XnViewMP, etc. The former are Photos, Lightroom, Aperture, Photos Supreme, Capture One, etc. The PIEs use a database to store editing and metadata info. All have some sort of light table view to enable easy culling and marking for further editing. But the PIE type requires some sort of import process first; the browsers just look at the photos where they already are. The browsers can even look at photos still on your iPhone or on an SD card. Browsers are often pretty quick; the PIEs are only quick once you've imported.

If you just manually copy your photos into folders, try the browsers. XnViewMP is free; you can say label files you don't want, then filter for those, then delete them. Or label some picks, and move to specific folders. It's a great application for keywording since it does hierarchical keywording, and it's free. Snapselect and PhotoSweeper, both marketed as duplicate finders, are actually great for culling. They find photos they think are the same subject (not just duplicate files), or by time intervals. That makes it easy to cull. The rejects can be sent straight to the trash.

Really useful, thank you. I had heard of none of those in your last para yet they seem to be designed largely or wholly to do just what I have in mind. I will give one or more a try soon.

I am pleased that I asked my naive question.