Winnowing Your Shoot

Photographers who are moving from film to digital are fast learning that they have to establish a whole new routine for what used to be called "initial editing." To distinguish it from the simple business of looking at slides and negatives on a light table and throwing out anything that is not worth keeping, that process has acquired a new trade name winnowing which encompasses the following:

Organizing and regrouping

Photos that are closely related or that show a time sequence should have their thumbnails moved next to one another. These days, that process is called Lightableing. You should do the same to all photos of the same subject that were shot in the same location, lighting condition, and cropping. This results in arranging photos into what we call sequences. You do this to automate the basic processing of whole groups of images at one time and to batch rename and add metadata to whole groups of files at one time.

Renaming

Once images have been grouped into sequences, you can use the Batch rename command to add an abbreviation that indicates the subject of that sequence, such as "red dress cu." You can then Batch rename the entire sequence.

Adding metadata

You will want to add metadata such as copyright information and descriptive keywords. Once entered, metadata stays with the file as it is copied and manipulated. This way it is easier to prove copyright or find and collect files that belong to a particular group or category.

Ranking the images

You are able to rank images with a star rating. It then becomes possible to show only those images that have a minimum or better ranking.