Recently I entered into an interesting debate over workflow with a few fellow Adobe Lightroom users. One photographer kept every single photo they have ever taken in a single Lightroom library and simply increased the storage space as necessary while another ruthlessly rejected photos and actually deleted the entire project once the work was complete and paid for.
The big question is, should we keep every image we capture ? Not only would we like to have your vote we would also love to hear how you mange your library (use the comments). Do you ruthless bin photos that aren’t your best or do you archive your library? if so how often.
The results were probably predictable with the vast majority of readers only deleting the obviously bad photos and keeping the remainder.
The problem with this type of workflow is you can end up with a large number of similar (but acceptable) photos of the same subject.
I am pretty sure if I was to look through my library I would reject a large number of issues that I didn’t think were rejects at the point they were captured but the question is, should we go on a regular photo cull ?
This is hard to answer, as the poll doesn’t take into consideration what happens when chimping out in the field.
My own approach: when out shooting, only the obviously crap ones get deleted on-camera. When I get back, stuff gets copied into Adobe Bridge, and I attempt to process – bulk ops (presets), then per-image tweaks, and if something looks crap with a preset applied (e.g. camera-shake only visible at 100%) then I’ll flag it with a “delete-worthy” preset; then I move those aside to a rubbish/ folder and push the final load of RAWs to JPG at archive (~20MPel) and small (~6MPel) sizes. Then I rsync the whole directory to archive (3 places on 3 disks on two machines). Periodically, I remove these working-directories from the mac when they get out of date.
In short, no CR2 that makes it to the mac is ever actually deleted, but some might go unprocessed.
In the field I delete nothing. The back of the camera is only used for a check up on what I thought the photograph should look like.
I convert everything to DNG on import and bring all files into lightroom.
From there I use a simple rating process, great keepers, good keepers, and deletable files. As soon as I get everything rated, the ones that didn’t make the cut get deleted, and I do delete fairly hard…
The rest of the images will stay with me forever, unless something amazingly bad happens.
I’ve heard it said that one of the biggest things you can do for your photography is to learn what to keep and what to throw out… And I agree with that. If it wasn’t good to begin with, chances are fairly good that Photoshop won’t resurrect it. If it does resurrect it, it is with a loss to file quality.
Thats how I do it…
i delete lots of photos!
most of them on-camera. and when i get home and put on laptop.. i also delete some more..
like if i take 50-60 photos, i keep like 15-20. that is if there’s any good too!
i don’t like keeping much photos anyways, but i do.
and i need to change my camera too! it’s not satisfying anymore! haha!
I only delete off the camera pictures that are obviously horrid. When I get back to my computer, I look at all the images and determine what to process and what to cull. I think I’m averaging about 10% of a shoot that I actually keep, not because the photos were necessarily bad, but because I don’t need them. I tend to only save the best of my shots for the day and the rest go to the recycle bin.
I delete on camera the obviously bad pictures.
Back in the office, I import and convert them to DNG and copy the original to a separate hard-drive.
I mark the bad photos to be deleted, like out of focus etc.
After that I do fast development on contrast, cropping etc and give photos a rating.
First I give all interesting photos 1 star (to be kept) everything else will be deleted.
Then from the one stars I mark the better ones 2 star and three star. Three star is client material.
I generally keep 30-50% of all photos taken.
I keep LR3 catalogues per year. Every now and then from all 2 and 3 star photos I select a few (4 and 5 star) which are for my portfolio. These will be copied to my main catalogue.
I keep almost every photo. I may never use a lot of them but sometimes I find that they can come good with a little (or a lot of) work. Of course, they are in the minority, but they do exist.
So unless a photo is just nothing at all, I keep them.
I wish I could say I ruthlessly delete but I am a bit of a hoarder so I guess I am somewhere inbetween that and deleting the obvious.
I don’t delete in the field. I delete the obviously technically bad shots once I’ve dumped the whole camera onto the laptop (and clear the card, I never keep anything but a photo of my contact info on the camera, but that’s a whole other debate).
Sometimes when I’m presented with something, I may not be in a place to appreciate it at that point in my life, but when I encounter it later I am. I’ve found this to be true with music, movies or TV shows, artwork and photos. I like to go through the archives periodically and discover a photograph that seemed uninteresting when taken, but upon review with fresh eyes I see something I didn’t before.
I only delete the really obviously bad shots in the field. Stuff like shots of the ground or someone’s back or the inside of a lens cap.
I convert to DNG, and tag into three bins: promising (approx 20%), meh (approx 20%), and crap (the rest).
The crap goes out immediately. I process the promising ones and usually end up keeping about half of them. Then I go through the meh pile and see if I can gild any of them. I might pick up a handful worth keeping. I delete all the rest.
Bottom line: I keep about 10% to 15% of what I shoot.
When I first started I would come home with a large number of photos and maybe only get 2-3 keepers (I was learning!). However, I’d keep all but the obviously bad shots and it caused my pre-lightroom editing task to be mammoth! I’m currently in the process of bringing all these old shots into Lightroom, re-editing and deleting all but the very best. It’s cutting my storage by about 80%.
Now I’m very fussy before I press the shutter button, and treat it almost like I’m shooting film. On my last 3 outings for personal photos (i.e. not a wedding/portrait session), I’ve taken only 6-10 shots, and all have been keepers. I’m careful with composition, focus, exposure etc and really try to get it right first time. It’s saving me lots (!) of time in post.
My Lightroom library is now super-tidy, and when I select a Collection folder I know only photos I’d be happy to show are contained in it.
There’s no point keeping poor photos. No amount of Lightroom presets will make a bad photo look good!
I’ve got EVERY photograph I’ve ever taken on file, good bad or ugly. Two points though, one I’ve only been taking photo’s for about 18 months so the count is only at about 1200 to 1500 and secondly they are all in the form of black and white negatives. Though in fairness only the good ones get printed as photo’s (printed as in photo paper and developer, not as in hp, epson, cannon etc). They all get a contact sheet and checked with a magnifying glass, the equivilent of on screen ederting. BTW deleting in camera makes you lazy, think about every frame and get it right first time, imagine paying 20+ pence (Uk) per click and you start to think more carefully about what you photograph. Best regards S. Carpenter.