# Transient nature of flags and ratings



## happygun (Jan 7, 2018)

Hi all,

was wondering if i was the only one to have concerns about using these as a core pillar to organise my pictures within lightroom. 

I use them to temporarily rate and organise, but have concerns about using them for long term organisation. This has raised its head again recently as i notice that i have about 300 pictures rated inadvertently as 1 star. To avoid / minimise this i have taken to moving the favourites from a shoot to a subfolder, and do not click 'do not show again' on the warning message. I also keyword my favourites as bestof2016 (or something similar). I see these as being much more permanent methods of organising than ratings / flags / colours.

Does anybody else have these worries and implement things to minimise this happening or am i a paranoid (or unskilled!) lightroom user?


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## clee01l (Jan 7, 2018)

The problem with ratings is that there is no definite demarcation between ★s.  Since the choice is subjective, I tend to use ratings as temporary markers during the current evaluation which is limited to the extent of my short term memory. Only 5★s with certain color labels have any permanence. More than one characteristic is then used as a determinant (★s  and label)
I use a Color Label Set to quickly indicate the processing workflow state.  The color borders are an easy visual clue.


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## PhilBurton (Jan 7, 2018)

clee01l said:


> The problem with ratings is that there is no definite demarcation between ★s.  Since the choice is subjective, I tend to use ratings as temporary markers during the current evaluation which is limited to the extent of my short term memory. Only 5★s with certain color labels have any permanence. More than one characteristic is then used as a determinant (★s  and label)
> I use a Color Label Set to quickly indicate the processing workflow state.  The color borders are an easy visual clue.


The only thing standard about colors is the number (five) and names.  I have seen applications that use more than five colors, but that is non-standard and reduces their value if your workflow involves more than one application (or you don't want your data "held hostage."

With stars, it's the same. One to five stars.  With both you define their use and meaning.

That all said, I don't see what is transient about stars.  By the way, if you use Lightroom collections you are locked in to Lightroom.

As much as I like to plan my "IT investments" of money and time strategically, I really don't have any information that would allow me to do so.  So I "lock myself" in to Lightroom and try to get the most value from it.

Phil Burton


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## Roelof Moorlag (Jan 7, 2018)

I'm using the system described by Peter Krogh in his 'DAM book for photographers' with stars AND Keywords. The stars describe only the quality of the photo's compared to my own 'quality system' (i decided in front what criteria i use).

The Keywords are descriptive.

So, when i want to find a photo about a certain subject i'm searching for the keyword first and (when there are a lot of results) i filter on star rating.


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## clee01l (Jan 7, 2018)

PhilBurton said:


> The only thing standard about colors is the number (five) and names....
> With stars, it's the same. One to five stars. With both you define their use and meaning.


 While you are limited to 5 colors in LR, the Color Label Set determines which color is currently associated with each label.   SO in truth it is the Label not the color.  The Color Label Set defines which you see.  To describe my workflow, 6 colors are all that I need.  And these labels are exposed on the tooltip in case I forget their meaning.   Not so with ★s.  Five ★s  means 5★s and nothing more.  What I define as 5★s is subjective and dependent upon the mood that I might be in for a particular day. 
A Label that says "Complete and Published"  when associated with the current Color Label Set lets me see at a glance which images are indeed "Complete and Published" because I have assigned that label to "Purple".
In addition to the 5 colors, there are 7 colors total.  Gray means "label undefined" and White means an "Other" label not in the current Color Label Set.  All are visually apparent in the Grid view.


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## rob211 (Jan 7, 2018)

I tend to view every bit of metadata that isn't standardized like IPTC and exif as kinda temporary, or at least workflow related. And the stars and labels and collections aren't that useful outside of Lr, as compared to keywords, captions, and all the other stuff. Even instructions and other less commonly used IPTC data.

And I find stars kinda limiting. I might wanna pick images and rate them based on different purposes, like what's best for BW conversion, for printing large, for posting at Instagram, or for entering in competitions. I find keywords much much more useful for that. So I might go through a batch giving stars in regard to say a monochrome photo entry, then filter by the best and add a keyword to the results. Then erase the stars and go through again for something to print.

Of course, Lr being Lr, another way to do this is to use the quick collection for the picks. But I like having a couple more choices than just in or out.


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## clee01l (Jan 7, 2018)

rob211 said:


> I tend to view every bit of metadata that isn't standardized like IPTC and exif as kinda temporary,


Labels and Ratings (★s) are standard EXIF metadata and have persistence.  Pick Flags only appear in the LR catalog file.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 7, 2018)

clee01l said:


> Labels and Ratings (★s) are standard EXIF metadata and have persistence.  Pick Flags only appear in the LR catalog file.


Star ratings, at least, have become part of the IPTC standard (as of 2017) and so become consistently visible across any application that implements the 2017 IPTC standard.
Previously star ratings properly belonged only the XMP standard...

Tony Jay


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## rob211 (Jan 8, 2018)

I knew star ratings were in IPTC (IIRC as numbers -1 to 5), but didn't know about labels. Where in IPTC do they fit in? I wasn't aware Lr could write the label text in IPTC, nor the color. So how do I do this so it's available outside Lr?


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## MarkNicholas (Jan 8, 2018)

I also use colour labels to define the stage of photo development for a particular photo and this works very well whilst in Classic for developing my RAW photos.

However, I have started using LRCC to edit my phone photos. However, the colour labels don't work in LRCC and so when I have edited a photo I am not able to change the colour label as I would in Classic. I am still working out the best strategy for keeping track of my phone photo edits in LRCC. The only solution I have at the moment is to apply a check mark which I can then see in Classic and apply the correct colour label. However, I don't find this an particularly elegant solution and ties up the check mark preventing its use for other things. I am considering using rating stars. However, I usually rate my photos before editing and then work downwards starting with the 5* etc. I may have to revisit my strategy for working in LRCC.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.


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## clee01l (Jan 8, 2018)

rob211 said:


> I knew star ratings were in IPTC (IIRC as numbers -1 to 5), but didn't know about labels. Where in IPTC do they fit in? I wasn't aware Lr could write the label text in IPTC, nor the color. So how do I do this so it's available outside Lr?


Everything you wanted to know about EXIF: ExifTool Tag Names
You can find both label and rating in the EXIF XMP section named "XMP xmp Tags":
XMP Tags


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## rob211 (Jan 8, 2018)

As far Lr CC goes, I have the same frustrations about metadata. It still has inadequate support in Lr CC. It's odd; Mylio does a better job of this with Lr metadata like labels; List of Lightroom Edits Supported by Mylio

You could try using keywords instead. Get John Beardsworth's excellent Search Replace Transfer plugin. With it, you can copy the text of the label you use (like Lr's default "Needs color correction") to the keywords, so that phrase appears there as well. But you'd need to do that, and write to file, before synching with Lr CC, unless things have changed. Then you could filter on it in Lr CC. It would be nice if CC allowed better management of hierarchical keywords. It's rather pathetic now, and I cannot understand why they don't implement it.



clee01l said:


> Everything you wanted to know about EXIF: ExifTool Tag Names
> You can find both label and rating in the EXIF XMP section named "XMP xmp Tags":
> XMP Tags


Yes, I know it gets into XMP, but not IPTC or exif. And as that reference shows, many color label schemes are proprietary to one software program or another. I don't think they're anywhere standardized, although some other applications like Mylio (I think). or Photo Mechanic can recognize them. Or exiftool. And even in PM you have to make sure the label text matches exactly, and that you're using the same set in each.


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## clee01l (Jan 8, 2018)

rob211 said:


> gets into XMP, but not IPTC or exif


EXIF is the all encompassing term for XMP & IPTC and several other file header structures.  It is flexible (perhaps too Flexible) to accommodate different structures.   Many apps support some but I'm not sure if there ia one App that supports all.  My preference is Jeffrey Freidl's online Image Metadata Viewer  Jeffrey Friedl's Image Metadata Viewer


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## rob211 (Jan 8, 2018)

clee01l said:


> EXIF is the all encompassing term for XMP & IPTC and several other file header structures.  It is flexible (perhaps too Flexible) to accommodate different structures.   Many apps support some but I'm not sure if there ia one App that supports all.  My preference is Jeffrey Freidl's online Image Metadata Viewer  Jeffrey Friedl's Image Metadata Viewer



Thanks, I hadn't ever heard that exif was an all encompassing term, or that IPTC or XMP are subsets of it at some point. I did know there was an attempt to sort out any overlap by the Metadata Working Group, so that manufacturers of cameras that wrote exif and software developers and plain old schmoes had guidance on what went where. I stumbled across it when trying to sort out metadata as part of a forensic dive into a bunch of really old digital photos before the current scheme was set up. You can find the MWG paper here: Download the specification (PDF: 1.7M). It's informative on why certain info goes where, and how an application would say sort out what to make of that stuff you see if you open say a sidecar in a text editor. It was essentially the rulebook for how all this should be written. It has a section, eg, for how to write the ratings we referred to above. The group was in 2010, so some stuff has changed (IIM is old, now there's IPTC core and extension eg).

My adventures there were also because of hierarchical keywords. If you read the MWG paper you'll see they handled it differently than it is now handled by Lr and other applications, which now use the "|" character to separate hierarchies instead of the MWG method, Hierarchical Keywords in Lightroom | Be Careful!. This | can be useful info if you write keywords using non-hierarchical compliant application, as Lr will use it to automatically create a hierarchy at import. Anyway, sorry to be too geeky here but just in case anyone wants to know.


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