Refining my rating system for easier selection of similar images ....
In my last post I discussed the way that I’m now star-rating my wildlife images to ensure that I have a consistent system. The adopted procedure works well except when I’m looking at a number of similar photos from a sequence and where I want to be able to quickly identify the ‘best-of-the-bunch’.
Whilst increasing the star-rating was a good option it produced a slight complication when filtering a selection if I wanted to see all the related photos together. I needed a second marker and the easiest solution was to utilise the ‘P’ flag as I don’t use that flag in the conventional manner during my review and cull process as all my retained images are initially given a one-star rating.
The following screen shot shows six photos of a cheetah. There’s nothing particularly special about them, but they’re all pretty good photos so I decided to keep them all. They’re all very similar and have all been given the standard two-star rating. When I was editing them I decided that the fifth shot in the sequence was my favourite, hence the white ‘P’ flag. If I look at this particular batch of images in the future from either its stored folder, the ‘cheetah’ keyword tag or from a two-star filter, I’ll see all six photos together and will quickly be able to identify the shot that I considered to be the best at the time.
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Now that I’m using the ‘P’ or ‘pick flag’ as it’s also known, my ‘best-of-the-bunch’ shots will now be more appropriately called my ‘pick-of-the-bunch’ shots.
As a strong advocate of robust systems and procedures throughout my business life, I know full well that a good system only works if there’s a similarly good procedure in place and, if that procedure identifies a problem or shortfall in the system, steps should be taken to find a solution in order to rectify the situation. This is what I’ve done here and, whilst it’s just a small refinement, it’s one that I will appreciate making.
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