Making Selects by using Flags in Lightroom

Once we imported our photos to our catalog, we need to quickly review each image and select our favorites. The trick is NOT to make this a time consuming task. One option is to use the Flagging system to temporarily select your favorite images. It’s important not to get hung up on an image. If you have to ask, “should I flag this?”, you took too long. Flag the image and move on to the next. This doesn’t mean you are going to process every selected image or delete the non selected images. It simply allows you to quickly scan your photos and select as many as you want. Once they are selected, make a collection called “Selects” and drag the images into this collection. After the collection is created, take your time and narrow down your selects again. This is a great opportunity to gather input from your client. Have them help you with this second stage. The final selects are images you plan to process so create a second collection called “Images to Process” and drag the images into this collection. The images are now in both collections. Once you process your image, create a third collection called “Final” and drag the edited image into this collect. This time, remove the image from the “Images to Process” collection. The goal is to not have images in the “Images to Process” collection.

First Round Selects

For our example, we will use images from a Senior Portrait shoot. Start by viewing your images in the Library’s Grid mode. Select the Library module, then choose Gridview (G) found at the bottom left of the thumbnails. Use the thumbnail slider (found at the bottom right of the thumbnails) to increase or decrease the size of the thumbnails for easy viewing.

Highlight the first image by clicking on it. Use the left or right arrow keys on your keyboard to maneuver between images. When you find an image you like, click the flag icon found at the top left of the thumbnail image or press P on the keyboard. To unflag an image click the flag icon again or press the tilde key (~) found on the top left of the keyboard below the ESC key.

Creating Collections

Working in the Collections Panel, click the + icon and select “Create a Collection Set”.

Name this set “Senior Portraits”. Leave the “Inside a Collection Set” checkbox blank and click Create.

Right click on the new Senior Portraits collection set and create a new Collection Set with your client’s name. For location, check “Inside a Collection Set” and choose “Senior Portraits”. Click Create.

You now have two collection sets; Senior Portraits and your client’s name. Click the arrow icon to see the tree structure you just created. From here, we will create 3 collections inside your client’s set; Selects, Images to Process and Final.

Right click on your client’s name and create a “Collection” (not collection sets) and name the new collection the date of the shoot plus “Select”. For example: 20131130 Select. For location, check “Inside a Collection Set” and choose “your client’s name”. Click Create. Repeat this for “Images to Process” and “Final”. Ensure each is saved inside the client’s name collection set under location.

If by chance one of the collections isn’t inside your collection set, simply click and drag it to your client’s collection set.

We are going to filter our selects and place them in the Select’s collection. Click on your client’s name in the Folder’s panel. Select the Attribute tab and filter based on Flag. Click Edit and from the dropdown menu choose “Select All”.

Click and drag the selected images to the client’s select collection. While the images are still selected, unflag the images by selecting the Flag icon. To unselect all images, click edit and from the dropdown menu choose “Select None”.

Second Round Selects

Working in the client’s Selects collections, narrow down your choices to images you want to process. These are the best of your best images. This is a good time to have the client choose the images with you. Use the same procedure we did in “First Round Selects” to Flag images you want to process. Flag these images and drag them to the client’s “Images to Process” collection. The images are now in two collections, Selects and Images to Process. At this point, we can clear our Flags by selecting all images — Click Edit and from the dropdown menu choose “Select All” — unflag the images by selecting the Flag icon.

*Feature image ©Vanelli

---

Vanelli is a photographer, educator and author based in Florida. Currently he shoots for Inside Lacrosse Magazine, teaches workshops, and writes for Photofocus. Click here for a list of Vanelli’s articles.

https://www.facebook.com/mrvanelli
https://twitter.com/vanelli

---

Filed under: Adobe, Opinion, Photography, Software, Technique & Tutorials Tagged: Adobe Lightroom, Collections, Flags, Lightroom Collections, Lightroom LR, Robert Vanelli, Selects, Vanelli