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The Power of X
Best workflow for getting rid of the useless:
Make sure Lightroom is in Full Screen mode. Go to Grid mode and, in the Command Bar, drag the Thumbnails slider until you get only about 6 thumbs filling the screen. Slowly move your cursor across thumbs and click on photos that obviously don’t make it or obviously weren’t meant to: You forgot to change ISO, you shot unintentionally and there’s nothing in the frame you’d take a picture of, somebody stuck their big finger in front of the lens, it’s too blurry to be anything but a bad abstract (keep the good ones). Each time you click, type X. You see Set As Rejected flash on the screen for a moment and a black flag with an X in it will appear in the upper left hand corner.
Once you’re through doing a set of X’s, press Cmnd/Ctrl + X to dim all the X’s. Then you’ll know not to waste time on them again.
Go back to the first non-X’d frame in the Grid and double click it. It will expand to full frame. Press the Tab key twice and all the columns and bars will go away…expanding the image to full screen. Now just press the right arrow key until you see an image you don’t want, then press X. If you change you mind as you’re going back and forth and want to skip the deletion, press U. When you’ve gone through the whole series in full-frame mode and pressed all the known X’s, press G to go back to Grid mode and press Cmnd/Ctrl + Delete/Backspace. All the rejected images will be deleted at once. When the dialog asks, tell it to remove them from your disk. After a few seconds you’ll have a lot fewer images to delete and two or three times as much hard drive space as if you hadn’t done this.
Now go back to Grid Mode (Cmnd/Ctrl + G) and, at the top of the Navigator panel, click 1:1. Now use the arrow key to page through each one to make sure that it’s as sharp as it needs to be in order to be sale able. The criteria for that is going to differ from subject to subject (e.g. landscapes and product shots have to be razor sharp, a pretty fair amount of blurring is acceptable in action and entertainment), but you’ll likely know best when it’s too much when you see a fully-enlarged portion of the image. When you do, punch X again. When you’re done, go back to Grid mode and gently press Cmnd/Ctrl + Delete/Backspace and click Delete from disk.
If you’re a good photographer, you’ve gotten rid of most of your shoot. Remember, a great photographer knows what to throw away (thanks, Cal Bernstein).
Except for those keywords that you should have put into this folder when you were importing, now’s the time to do your keywording,. You now have a lot less work to do ‘cause there are so many fewer images to keyword. Select each group of images that is a series of shots of the same subject and keyword those first because you can keyword them all at the same time. Then bring the Grid up to full frame again and press the Arrow keys to move through the images one at-a-time.
One more thing: If you’ve just now discovered this routine, put it on your list to use it on at least one folder every day. Before too long, you’ll be able to proudly show any image on your computer to anyone. That's because you'll also be in the habit of doing it as you download a new shoot. How’s that for a great gift to yourself?
I use a similar technique but what I do is start in Loupe mode (hit E), setup a filter to show flagged and unflagged photos only (File > Library Filters > Filter by Flag).
I then press right to move through images and hitting X not only marks an image for deletion but hides it and skips to the next image.
Thanks a lot for this useful key combination :)
I am sorry, but from where I am standing Adobe screwed up big.
In the first place, LR 2 is very slow on my MACPRO with 4 gigs, as slow as Aperture 1.5 was and was what made me switch from Aperture to Lightroom.
In the second place, PS roundtrip is not working right. LR2 sends the image to PS when I select edit in, but after I finish with the file in PS and close and save, the new file does not show up in LR 2. It is in the folder but not in the catalog. I either have to re-import the image or sync the folder. On either case, it is not stacked with the original.
What's up??
Is there a setting or something? or just a big screw up from Adobe? Why isn't Adobe addressing this issues in public?
David, how is that comment related to this post? Obviously there's an issue of some kind, though on my MacBookPro LR2 is at least as fast as Ap2, but you'll get a better answer over in Adobe's Lightroom forum.
Ken, use Caps lock and X will advance to the next picture. And are you sure about Ctrl/Cmd G - you just need G.
Gio,
I am trying everywhere and anywhere to find an answer. You are right, it has nothing to do with this post but everything to do with this site. After all, it is called "Inside Lightroom"!
As I said, although you can find at the Adobe Forum that there are several people... me among them... asking the same question. But Adobe is very silent about it as are its evangelist.
They keep touting the company line of how good LR 2 is but Here we have a fantastic piece of software that has become useless to many of us and it may have a simple answer but no one is talking. Why should I, at this stage, care about the power of X if LR 2 does not work?
Adobe flaunt that they do listen to people, but if they are listening they are very quite. These are not imaging problems. Just let us know that they are ware of it and are looking into it. But by their silence they are clearly saying they don't care.
OK, maybe I have not noticed your name posting there, but in the past couple of days alone you should have seen the product manager and at least 4 engineers participating in discussions and trying to get to the bottom of issues. It's quite a contrast to Apple's way of interacting in their forums (if their moderators let the post remain). As for "evangelists", they're on a losing game when they can't reproduce the problem you and some others may have. They'll just get dismissed as shills for having the temerity to say their system is working fine. But again, I can think of two threads over there where the alpha testers had experienced those problems and weren't afraid to say so. So while I don't know your specific issue, describing Adobe/evangelists' response as silence is stretching the truth.
You know what, I came here in the hope that someone would know what is going on and maybe find a solution. Just a public word of acknowledgment of the problem would have suffice.
But I didn't come to get in a pissing contest or argument about Apple or Adobe, or about LR or anything else. I didn't come to be lectured about Adobe goodness.
I came here in hope of a solution because I wasn't getting it form Adobe. Hec, I wasn't even getting a public acknowledgement of the problem. I was one of the person who generated a post there. I am also subscribed to several post and I haven't heard from any engineer or Adobe people.
But the fact remain, that every LR blog remain silent on the issue.
Whether it's lecturing you or not, at least you are now better informed. As I said, without seeing your post over there, describing Adobe's response as silence is untrue. As I've shown, they're acknowledging and dealing with problems, and doing so openly.
Every LR blog is silent on "the issue" because only a few people have it. That's certainly not denying you do, but all I can say is I don't have any problem at all with slowness on my less-powerful Mac (FWIW I shoot 500 a day 4-5 days a week so I would notice) and, as far as I can see, I can do everything I should be able to do. And the Edit in CS3 problem I did have on my PC was solved thanks to a suggestion in a thread on Adobe's forum, to which 2 Adobe engineers were openly posting. I didn't solve it by ambushing a random blog post.
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