How To Rate Photos In Lightroom
Seagulls resting on an iceberg in Disko Bay near the town of Ilulissat, Greenland.
Do you rate photos in Lightroom? The ease and speed by which you can rate photos is key to an efficient and professional Lightroom workflow.
I recommend Lightroom as an ideal, one stop shop for the creative needs of most photographers. And it’s far, far easier to use than Photoshop.
Rating photos in Lightroom is a simple process and a great way to quickly organise and then recall your very best images.
This process works just as well regardless of whether you’re searching for images in a specific folder or via a more general search across your entire Lightroom Library.
My Lightroom Workflow
My Lightroom workflow has evolved over the years. I’ve been a Lightroom user since version 1.0 was released way back in 2007.
When my workflow was entirely based in Lightroom I'd process all my photos, except for those that were immediately deleted.
These days, due to HDR and my image processing very much revolving around Photoshop, it takes longer to process photos.
As a consequence I don't process as many images as I used to and I have to be selective with the ones I choose to process.
However, the final results from those images are better and, for me, that's what matters most.
While Photoshop is central to my own post processing workflow, the process begins and ends in Lightroom.
Let me show you how I go about organizing photos in Lightroom.
The grid interface within the Library module inside Lightroom. Notice the star ratings below each of the thumbnails. If you look extra hard you may also see that the image of the seagull in flight has been flagged with a tiny white flag in the top left corner of the thumbnail. You might also notice that the photo of the sheep grazing has a tiny purple colored square to the right of the stars along the bottom edge of that thumbnail.
How I Rate Photos in Lightroom
There are several ways to rate photos in Lightroom, all via use of the Toolbar which you can make visible in the Library module by hitting the T key on your keyboard.
Alternatively, simply head up to the main navigation in the Library module and click View.
The very first option you'll see will be Show Toolbar or Hide Toolbar, depending upon whether it's turned on or off.
Once the Toolbar has been switched on you should notice it down at the bottom of the Library module.
If you have a row of thumbnails displayed along the very bottom of the Library module then the Toolbar will be just above those thumbnails.
Go to the far right of the Toolbar and look for a white downward facing arrow. Click on that arrow and select what you'd like displayed within the toolbar.
For example, you could select one or more of the following options:
Flagging
Rating
Color Label
The amount of options you can display within the toolbar will depend upon the size of the screen on which you’re working.
Needless to say I can fit a lot more options into the toolbar on my 27” iMac compared to what I’m able to on my 15” MacBook Pro laptop.
It might be helpful to think of the word Rating as Star Rating or Stars, given you'll use that feature to rate photos from 0 to 5 stars.
Now let's look at the three methods by which you can rate photos in Lightroom.
Here's a close-up view of the above screen grab showing the various rating systems in the Library module of Adobe Lightroom. Hopefully you'll now be able to make out the stars, flag and purple colored rating. If not simply click on the image to see it enlarged.
How to Flag Images In Lightroom
It's easy to flag images in Lightroom with either a pick or rejected flag.
If you're into keyboard shortcuts you can use the p key to pick an image or the x key to mark an image as rejected.
While it’s simple to flag images in Lightroom I find this particular method restrictive.
It’s important for me to be able to flag pictures with more than what’s, effectively, a simple good/bad or yes/no tag.
Use Stars to Rate Photos in Lightroom
I employ the Star system to rate photos, from 0 to 5 stars, in Lightroom. This approach is central to my own, personal lightroom workflow.
I can outline my approach as follows:
0 star Rating = Unrated photos.
I would not delete any image without first assigning a star rating to it.
1 Star Rating = Photos marked for deletion.
At a later stage I come back and filter (i.e., sort) the photos in a particular folder to equal 1 star.
Once those images are displayed I take another quick look at them prior to deleting them all in one simple action.
2 Star Rating = Photos I consider to be spares.
These photos are not particularly strong images, but are kept just in case they’re needed. For example, the only photo of grandma made at an important family celebration.
Usually such lowly rated pictures remain unprocessed and are not shared. Eventually some or all of them may be re-assigned with a 1 star rating marking them ready for deletion.
3 Star Rating = Photos that I'm happy with that are marked or selected for post processing.
4 Star Rating = Processed photos that are marked for publication or sharing (i.e., social media, blog, galleries, exhibition prints).
5 star Rating = What I consider to be my very best 4 star images that I've processed and shared and have decided to elevate to a 5 star rating.
As a 5 star rating represents the best of the best, in my own Lightroom workflow, I apply this rating very sparingly.
A task for later this year will be to review all my current 4 star images and see which of them I feel deserve to be elevated to 5 star ranking.
I'II feel good when I get that job done and will ensure all my 4 and 5 star rated images are backed up onto several external hard drives.
One of those external drives will be stored offsite.
A final copy of my 5 star pictures will be backed up onto a variety of cloud based backup services.
A graveyard in lush fields behind a church in rural Iceland.
Rate Photos But Avoid the Word Awesome
I know that a lot of folks apply the 5 star rating to their favorite images from a particular photography session or outing.
I don't see the sense in that because, after a few years, you're going to have a significant amount of 5 star images within your Lightroom catalog.
If, like me, you decide to only assign your very best photos with a 5 star rating, then you shouldn't expect that you'll be able to do so following each and every photo session.
Each to their own and, while I'm very happy with a lot of the images I create, I'm not sure I've ever used the word awesome to describe one of my own photos.
On a related matter the above photo features a graveyard in lush fields behind a church in rural Iceland.
I don't consider it to be a great photo but, as it allowed me to explore the use of a wide-angle lens for teaching purposes, I decided to process it.
Now that it's been published it's become a 4-star image. But that doesn't mean I consider it to be just below my very best images in quality. Far from it.
In my own Lightroom workflow a 4-star rating simply defines that photo as being worthy of publishing.
A shelter for the research scientists who live on site at Port Lockroy on Wiencke Island in Antarctica.
You Can Rate Photos By Color
An alternative to the star rating system is to use a color label to rate photos in Lightroom.
You could rate your photos by color using the colors red, yellow, green, blue and purple to separate one kind (e.g., genre) of photo or result (e.g., poor, good, great) from another.
I'd find that system harder to work with and I'm sure I'd have trouble remembering which color was equivalent to a particular quality rating.
I suppose you could simply work left to right with the colors, but I like to keep my desktop and associated application interfaces as clean as possible.
How To Rate Pictures And Stack a HDR Sequence
I don't use colors or flags all that much. However, I do use the color purple to identify a sequence of images that belong to a particular HDR (i.e., High Dynamic Range) series.
After selecting the images in question I then group them into a stack and move the final image composite from that series to the top of the stack.
Are you interested in knowing how to stack images in Lightroom?
You'll find that option, from the drop down menu, in the grid view of the Library module in Lightroom under the following:
Photo>Stacking>Group Into Stack.
I employ the star system to rate pictures in Lightroom. It's the basis upon which I go about sorting and deleting photos as well as retrieving them for post processing and publication.
We now know that it’s possible to flag images via a pic or reject flag. Alternatively, we can mark thumbnails with a color label.
However, as well as being more efficient I find the star system to be a less obtrusive way to rate photos in Lightroom.
Rate Photos With More Than One System
There are opportunities to combine the color and star systems to rate photos in Lightroom.
This approach could be useful if you want to separate particular groups or genres of images within a particular star rating.
While it’s not something I do, you could use color labels to further categorize your photos within your own Lightroom workflow.
Some examples might include the following:
4 star rating with a red color label defines a good quality photo that’s ready for publication on social media
4 star rating with a yellow color label defines a higher quality photo that’s ready for publication on your website or blog
4 start rating with a green color label defines a very high quality photo that’s ready for publication in a book
An alternative would be to separate 4 and 5 star images into genres by adding, for example, a green color rating to your 4 and 5 star landscapes.
You might use a similar approach with, for example, a red color label being added to your 4 and 5 star portraits.
If you have lots of 4 and 5 star images that might be an approach worth thinking about.
However, I prefer to keep things simple and, with the exception of a HDR series, to rate photos via the star system.
I'm able to rate my photos and to classify them as follows:
Portfolio and blog images
Unprocessed images
Images that will remain on my external hard drive as spares, shared only if needed
Images that I’ve marked as ready to be deleted
The Collections panel in Lightroom, a major component in my Lightroom workflow.
I Love To Make Collections In Lightroom
I find Collections in Lightroom to be a fantastic way to organise my images.
Basically I open up a particular folder of imported and processed images, in the grid display (keyboard shortcut g) within the Library module of Lightroom.
Once I rate photos, following my star rating workflow previously outlined, I simply select and then drag the 4 and, where applicable, 5 star images into a Collection (e.g., Iceland) I'd previously created.
To ensure a neat and tidy interface I nest, a little like subfolders, various collections (e.g., Iceland, Belgium, Germany) inside a higher level Collection Set (e.g., Europe) which can be collapsed and expanded as required.
Keywords For More Granular Lightroom Workflow
I also apply Keyword phrases to images to further categorize my photos.
Keywords are a great way to find one or more images, in as little as a few seconds, from a potentially gigantic catalog of images.
You just have to add the appropriate keyword phrase/phrases to your photos as part of your normal workflow, either during import or at a later stage.
It takes time and it isn't for everyone, but I find it a great help and it's usually a far better alternative to scrolling through a whole bunch of folders looking for a single photo.
This is quite a far reaching post that covers how to organize your photos, as part of a Lightroom workflow, via the following tools:
Flag images via the pick and reject flag system
Rate photos via the star rating system
Color labels, which I use as part of my HDR workflow
I’ve also introduced concepts such as Collections and Keywords as part of a professional Lightroom workflow.
In the future there'll be other ways in which we'll be able to dig deeper into each of these topics that are essential in helping you create an efficient and organized workflow for your photos.
If you live in or nearby Melbourne, Australia you may wish to contact me regarding a private one-to-one photography class.
One option would be to spend the session building the ideal Lightroom workflow that’s specially tailored to your own, specific needs.
