The down side is that I’ve often forgotten to format the memory card before taking shots on my next trip out. Luckily, an 8 gig card can fit oodles of shots taken with Canon’s 5D, but sorting through the new shots and the old shots still requires some effort. There are two possible courses of action:

• filter out the old shots from your current batch before importing them into Lightroom,
• or filter out the old photos via the camera’s software & interface.

We all know which one is easier on your fingers and on your time: although digital cameras are great at taking pictures, they’re not so good at managing them.

Luckily, Lightroom makes it painless to choose which photos to will import from your memory card (or other source) via the “Check All” and “Uncheck All” buttons in the import dialog. They’re pretty self-explanatory. However, there is also a more subtle—and finer-grained—way to quickly select which photos to import apart from toggling each individual checkbox: Lightroom also mimics the way your operating system’s file manager deals with selecting files:

• single-clicking a photo’s cell will “select” the photo (and clear your existing selection, if any),
• single-clicking a photo’s cell while holding down the alt (Mac) or control key (Windows) will add the photo to your selection,
• single-clicking while holding down the shift key will add/or remove the clicked photo and all of the photos between it and the previously-clicked cell,
• double-clicking any of the photos in the selection will toggle their checkboxes,

While it sounds somewhat complicated in the description above, the rules become second-nature after experimenting in the import dialog.