# How to organize photos in Lightroom



## goproguy (Jan 24, 2014)

I was wondering how you guys organize pictures in Lightroom. I had issues when I tried figuring it out myself... I ended up with 10,000 pix in one file without flags, descriptions, or any other type of searchable content.:shock:              I was lucky and only had to spend 12 or 16 hours sorting them out. Needless to say I don't want to repeat history.


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## clee01l (Jan 24, 2014)

Welcome to the forum.  LR offers several "Date Named" folder schemes for importing your images. Any one of these are fine and don't waste time up front trying to organize your image in folders with descriptive names so that LR can organize them.  Lightroom does not care about folders and you should not either.  Folders are too inflexible to be used as a organization tool.  

The two key elements in LR's organization methods are Keywords and Collections. By assigning meaningful keywords and keyword phrases to each image either singly or in a group  you permit maximum flexibility to organize your images dynamically.   the you can create Collections or let LR define Smart collections based upon image criteria.  A photo can be assigned to several collections but it can only reside in one and only one folder. 

I use color labels to designate the processing state for every image:        Red = "To Be Worked",
        Yellow = "Work In Progress",
        Green = "Needs Further Review",
        Blue = "Not In a Published Collection - Complete",
        Purple = "In a Published Collection"
With these I can quickly see where my images are in my workflow. 

I never found a good reason to use rating stars, But others do to assign some sort of quality indicator. 

For me, an image is complete when it has at least two key words (What & Where), a Title and a Caption, and has been through the develop module which usually means a crop has been applied.   I have smart collections that gather these images in each of these processing states. 

The goal here is to never need to do an eyeball folder scan looking for a certain image. These certain images can or should be revealed by applying a filter on the filter bar or through a Smart Collection query. (i.e. "Give me all of the images that are published at Flickr and show Aunt Mabel on a raft trip down the Snake River between 2001 and 2008.")


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## Tony Jay (Jan 24, 2014)

Nice summary Cletus!
I will let the OP ask more specific questions before trying to add to what you have said.

Tony Jay


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## goproguy (Jan 24, 2014)

So, if keywords go in the keywording area, what are the title and caption areas for? What about the keyword list? Also, I am not very good at LR yet so should I have my pix organized with files and key words, or do you think that I should go through every picture and take it out of the file and totally relearn how to organize them?


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## clee01l (Jan 24, 2014)

goproguy said:


> So, if keywords go in the keywording area, what are the title and caption areas for? What about the keyword list? Also, I am not very good at LR yet so should I have my pix organized with files and key words, or do you think that I should go through every picture and take it out of the file and totally relearn how to organize them?


Titles are for Titles.  Captions are for Captions or longer Descriptions Take a look at this example from Flickr:




The Title is "The Watchman at Sunset".  The caption is "Location: From Canyon Junction Bridge, Zion National Park, Utah".  Keywords and keyword phrases for this image are:  The Watchman, Zion N.P., Utah, Rod Barbee Workshop, HDR,  Sunset, @4HCCcompetition, @AppleTV, @Flickr, @ GoogleTV, @ Projected, @PublishService, @Regular:Travel, @Selected, @Submitted.  The Keyword Phrases that begin with "@" are not for export and internal use keywords that facilitate the almost exclusive use of Smart Collections and Smart Publish Collections to automate my work flow. 

The Keywording panel is a multi purpose panel that permits you to enter keywords to be associated with an image; shows which keywords will export; and Keywords and containing keywords.  The Keyword List is hierarchical a listing of all keywords in the catalog and can be used to add keywords to the selected image(s), Shows which keywords are assigned to selected images and to add additional keywords to the catalog.  I use it exclusively in favor of other keywording options like the Keywording panel or the Painter icon.  This way I have a consistent standard set of keywords (no spurious spellings, no out of hierarchy mis-labelings). 
A hierarchy is faster because I only need to add "The Watchman" as a keyword and I automatically get  "Zion N.P." and Utah because all of these are in my "locale" hierarchy.  Also, Notice that "Zion N.P." is a keyword and the Description (for public consumption) spells out the full name.


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## goproguy (Jan 24, 2014)

So your saying to use the keyword list instead of the keywording panel. By the way I love that picture.


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## clee01l (Jan 24, 2014)

goproguy said:


> So your saying to use the keyword list instead of the keywording panel. By the way I love that picture.


That is how _*I*_ do it.  I also assign some keywords on import in the import panel or in a metadata preset.  
After import, LR provides three or four differ mechanisms to assign keywords to an image.  All of these can be effective, the choices are there because there are many different workflow styles,  I choose to maintain a fairly complete keyword list and _pick_ items from it. My typing skills are very poor and I make lots of typos. Clicking with a mouse is easier and you need the mouse for other things so typing with one hand become even more problematic.  Others may find the other keyword methods more suitable to them. You can probably explore all the methods and find the one that suits you best.  The important thing to recognize is what constitutes a keyword or keyword phrase. 

I hide my folder panel in LR.  With the Folder panel unavailable, I am forced to use the LR strengths to organize instead relying on eyeball scans of folder after folder looking for certain images.  With the folder panel hidden, think of a particular image in your catalog and ask yourself what characteristics does that image have than make it unique from the other images in the catalog.   Metadata recorded by the camera like Capture date,  Camera make & model and Lens used are already available.  Events (like the Rod Barbee Workshop) need to be assigned a keyword.  Features from places like "The Watchman" need to be keywords.  Temporal events like Sunrise and sunset can be important keywords.  If I asked you to produce an inventory of all of your images that were taken at sunset, could you do it?  With keywords, you can. 

In the Catalog panel, LR gives you two very important special collections.  The special collection called "All Photographs"  gives you access to every photo in your catalog. You can use the filterbar to filter the catalog on attributes, metadata fields and text in all of the searchable fields of the metadata or text in special fields of the metadata (like Title and Caption).  The other very useful special collection in the catalog panel is the "Previous Import" collection.  This is your most recent import and likely the one you need to devote your attention to so that keywords can be assigned along with Titles and Captions.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 24, 2014)

goproguy said:


> So, if keywords go in the keywording area, what are the title and caption areas for? What about the keyword list? Also, I am not very good at LR yet so should I have my pix organized with files and key words, or *do you think that I should go through every picture and take it out of the file and totally relearn how to organize them?*


I am assuming that by file you really mean folder?
What you do need is a simple reproducible, scalable folder system in which to put your image files.
The simplest way is just to use date-based folders.

Folders are not a good organisational tool. One may have a folder for images of family and another folder for images of pets.
But what about images that have both family members and pets?
Into which folder does that image get placed?
Putting it into both folders is a recipe for disaster.
Duplicating images into different folders is bad news with a small image collection and a complete disaster with a large image collection.

However, if images are appropriately keyworded then, using either smart collections or the search filter then it is a very simple matter to find the right images in a *second*!
Think about how long it would take you to troll through an image collection in the hundreds of thousands, folder by folder, looking for images of Aunt Maude taken over twenty years.
Now consider the situation if Aunt Maude asks you for an image of her taken with Bonzo the dog. How long would it take to find those images by digging around in folders? If the images are keyworded searches like this take a second or two in Lightroom.
Much more complicated searches are possible and Lightroom will handle them with similar speed and panache.

BTW, if you are aware of this already I apologise for stating the bleeding obvious.
Perhaps the best contemporary resource dealing with workflow that I am aware of is Seth Resnick's "Workflow, not Workslow in Lightroom."
The beauty of this book is that it outlines the rationale for a lot of different approaches to organising one's workflow in Lightroom.
The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are outlined.
The upshot is that one wants to be making logical choices based on knowledge rather than ignorance and chance.
I thoroughly recommend this book.

In the meantime please keep the questions coming - we will do our best to help.

Tony Jay


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## clee01l (Jan 24, 2014)

goproguy said:


> ...do you think that I should go through every picture and take it out of the file and totally relearn how to organize them?


 Sorry, i missed that part of your reply. Tony has covered it though.   To this I will add that I said earlier _"__Lightroom does not care about folders and you should not either._"  If you have already imported these images, don't worry about where they are or what kind of folder structure they might be in on the HD.  Just concern your self with making good keywording decisions and assign appropriate keywords to each important photo in your catalog.

You can even create a smart collection that will group all images that have no keywords
{Keywords}{does not contain}{a e i o u}  Assumes that any keyword will contain at least one vowel.  Oncw you assign any key word to an image in this smart collection that image will be removed from the collection.  So if you want to assign more than one keyword to your images, you should assign the resulting images from the Smart Collection to a static (regular) collection and work the static collection.


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## goproguy (Jan 25, 2014)

How do I get LR to assign keywords to all selected pics? I select them by single clicking on the first pic of the set, then holding the shift key and going to the end of the set of pics I want to select and single clicking on it. Is this the correct way to select multiple pics? I have my pics organized in the folders by what state, then by the contents, so essentially they are organized the same way as keywording but, I can't search them so I will start the long and tedious process of assigning them all (over 10,000 pictures and 167 gb) keywords.  BTW, when I say files, I mean folders... I will try to remember to say folders instead.


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## goproguy (Jan 25, 2014)

Can you take me through the steps of creating a smart collection?


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## clee01l (Jan 25, 2014)

goproguy said:


> How do I get LR to assign keywords to all selected pics? I select them by single clicking on the first pic of the set, then holding the shift key and going to the end of the set of pics I want to select and single clicking on it. Is this the correct way to select multiple pics? I have my pics organized in the folders by what state, then by the contents, so essentially they are organized the same way as keywording but, I can't search them so I will start the long and tedious process of assigning them all (over 10,000 pictures and 167 gb) keywords.  BTW, when I say files, I mean folders... I will try to remember to say folders instead.


FWIW, That manila pocket that goes in a file cabinet is called a file folder  the sheets of paper in side the manila file folder are the files.  So. files are stored in file folders which are stored in file cabinets  So you have cabinets of files and folders of files. The smallest item is file. Incorrectly we shortened the manila file folder to file instead of folder.  File is an adjective modifying folder as manila is an adjective modifying folder. 
You have the right idea about selecting.  LR has the concept of selected and 'most' selected.  If you select a group of images, one will be a whiter white than the others.  This one is the 'most' selected.   If you want to assign a keyword to all of these selected images from an existing list in the keyword panel, you move the cursor down the left edge of te Keyword list panel and a check box will appear under the cursor.  When you have highlighted the  keyword that you want to add to the selected images, click in the checkbox and the check will appear indicating that the keyword has been assigned to those selected images. Repeat with all of the other keywords that you want to assign to this set of selected images or select a different set of images and repeat.  If you don't have a keyword in your keyword list, click on the + on the keyword list panel or right click anywhere in the keyword list panel to choose {Create Keyword Tag} and a dialog will pop up to add a new keyword. you can even assign this new keyword to the selected images by checking the appropriate box in the "Create Keyword Tag" dialog.


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## goproguy (Jan 25, 2014)

OK, thanks for answering.  I love the feature that lets me assign keywords to pictures as LR imports them.


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## Jimmsp (Jan 25, 2014)

goproguy said:


> .... so I will start the long and tedious process of assigning them all (over 10,000 pictures and 167 gb) keywords.  ....


I went through something like this not too long ago as I was adding older photos to the catalog.
I did have then rated with stars, so I just started with the best ones first, and worked my way down the rating scale.
Every so often I keyword a few more of the poorer ones that were still keepers.


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## clee01l (Jan 25, 2014)

goproguy said:


> Can you take me through the steps of creating a smart collection?


Smart Collections are a series of one or more criteria.  A criteria has a subject, a verb and (most of the time) a predicate.  They will be stylized as {subject}{verb}{predicate} with curly brackets in this topic reply



In the Collection panel header, click on the (+) located on the right of the Collection panel heading
Choose [Create Smart Collection} in the context menu that appears.
In the "Name" field, assign a meaningful name for your Smart Collection. The collections will sort automatically according to the alphanumeric sorting rules for your operating system.  If you want a special sort order you need to anticipate the sorting rules when naming.  Names that begin with numerals sort before alphas. But remember 10 will sort before 2 but sorts after 02
If you choose to group your collections in to set you need to create the collection sets first and select one in the "Location" section of the dialog.
Match field choices are "all" or "any".  "All" means every criteria rule must be true before the image is selected. "Any" means that when the first true criteria rule is encountered the image will get selected.
Match {any} can trip you up, so I'll skip that in this introduction. The default is Match {All}.  So we can start there.
Each line in the criteria section becomes a rule. {subject}{verb}{predicate} For Match {All}, the first rule that evaluates false ends the possibility for an image to be included  in the Smart Collection
{subject} a dropdown list of permitted choices.  It is a hierarchical list.  So, any item with a right pointing triangle can be expanded.
The {verb} choices are determined by the {subject}chosen.
{Predicates} are usually a text box to be filled in, not required, or multiple listing depending upon the {verb} selected
A first example:  "Give me all of the images that have no keywords"  becomes {subject}{verb}{predicate}  = {keywords}{does not contain}{a e i o u}
{Keywords} is the metadata field to be examined. (All keywords are stored in the metadata in a single field separated by commas.  So "Boise, Idaho" becomes two keywords  Keyword Phrases can have spaces like _Snake River _*or*_ Boise Idaho._
{Verbs} are a construction that needs to evaluate unambiguously as TRUE or FALSE.  These are often limited to Contains, Doesn't Contain, Contains All, Starts with, Ends with
{Predicate} can contain multiple values separated by spaces.  The Space between character strings effectively inserts an OR between the character strings.  For this reason if we want to eliminate images with keywords (assuming all keywords will contain a vowel) we just supply the vowels: {a e i o u} gets interpreted as {a OR e OR i OR o OR u}

Additional criteria lines get interpreted as AND when Match is {ALL} or as OR when Match is {Any}
A second example: "Give me all of the images that have no keywords and have a Red label"  becomes a two line Criteria
{keywords}{does not contain}{a e i o u}
{Label}{is}{red}​There is almost no limit to the level of complexity for Smart Collection Criteria  but you probably need to absorb this introduction before lesson 2


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## clee01l (Jan 25, 2014)

Jimmsp said:


> I went through something like this not too long ago as I was adding older photos to the catalog.
> I did have then rated with stars, so I just started with the best ones first, and worked my way down the rating scale.
> Every so often I keyword a few more of the poorer ones that were still keepers.


I started LR with an inventory of ~15000 images and poorly applied, poorly chosen keywords.  At some point I created a  special keyword @2Bworked to designate those images that were needing keyword updates or corrections  Now, 4 years later, I still have 1034 images with that keyword assigned.  I've worked these 15000 down beginning with the most important so these 1034 represent images of low importance.  In the intervening 4 years I have added about 20,000 images per year and trimmed my total inventory to a little less than 27,000.


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## goproguy (Jan 25, 2014)

WOW! That's a lot of pictures. How do you pick out the ones that you don't want to keep? I have problems getting rid of pictures 'cause I travel with my parents and don't know if I will ever get to go back to those places again.


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## goproguy (Jan 25, 2014)

Does LR 5 have the ability to do composites? What about the adjustment brush and spot removal features, do they have different shapes for those? In short is it really worth $150 to get LR 5?


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## camner (Jan 25, 2014)

goproguy said:


> Does LR 5 have the ability to do composites?


Not directly in LR.  Composites have to be sent to an external editor such as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or any other external editor capable of handling composites.


> What about the adjustment brush and spot removal features, do they have different shapes for those?


The adjustment brush doesn't really have a fixed "shape."  It's a brush that one paints with...it can be made smaller or larger, and one can control other aspects (attributes) as well.  The spot removal feature can be made smaller or larger, and the location of where the tool takes the info to clone or heal from can be moved.


> In short is it really worth $150 to get LR 5?


Tony Jay and Cletus are far more experienced and knowledgable than I (and can therefore give you an more nuanced answer), but as a relative newcomer to LR (about a year), my answer today would be an unequivocal "yes" (even a less equivocal "hell, YES!").  As one's photo collection grows in size, it becomes more and more obvious that trying to keep track of where one's pix are just by folder organization in the operating system is inadequate to the task. "Which year was it that we took that trip to San Francisco and got that fabulous sunset over the water shot?  Was that the 2003 trip to SF or the 2007 trip?"

There were many moments early on when I said to myself "The learning curve for LR is pretty steep...I wonder at what point will I decide it is definitely worth the effort..."  I'd say I didn't get to "yes" until several months went by, and I didn't get to "hell, YES!" for several more months.  But I'm there now.

As for the $150, I decided to sign up for the $9.99/month subscription plan that gives me access to both LR and Photoshop.  I don't think I'll use PS for lots of my images (but will for merging panoramas, for sure), but given that LR seems to get updated every year or so with a new version, $120/year for both seems like a great deal to me.  (That particular price may not be available any more...I'm not sure)


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## clee01l (Jan 25, 2014)

goproguy said:


> Does LR 5 have the ability to do composites? What about the adjustment brush and spot removal features, do they have different shapes for those? In short is it really worth $150 to get LR 5?


First of all, Upgrading to LR5 (5.3) will cost only $79 if you already own a license to an earlier version.  There are some features that make the upgrade practical IF they are features that you need and use.  Lightroom releases a new version about every 12-15 months, so LR 6 might be showing up in about 6 months or so. 
 LR does not do composites and for that you still need an external editor.  LR does not do layers but will preserve them if the underlying file format supports layers.   The Adjustment brush is a feathered radius that can paint a small or broad area.  Spot removal is a circular radius  that can be varied in size and in V5 can be used to define a blob similar to the adjustment brush. none are available in shapes like you might find in Photoshop.



> That's a lot of pictures. How do you pick out the ones that you don't want to keep?


I don;'t have trouble picking out the ones to keep but i do have great difficulty deciding which ones to throw away.  I've learned to discipline my self.  I cull on import, I cull again after post processing and I cull a third time after about 3 months when I move images from my primary drive to an archive drive (inside LR of course).  After import are the easiest. These are the OOF under/over exposed shots that are not salvageable.  After post processing some images end up being more "sow's ear" than "Silk Purse"  Other may represent 10-15 of virtually the same image.  i need to only keep one.  After 3-4 months I revisit completed images and find those that I might have been in love with when I shot them might not hold the same glow now that some time has intervened between passion and reality.   but you need to be rigorous about culling.  I still have too many images that have not been fully processed and don't enter into the culling process though they are of so low importance that they probably would get deleted are a good review.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 25, 2014)

My culling process is similar to Cletus'.
Obvious technical failures are deleted on import like hopelessly out of focus images or mistakes like tripping and accidently triggering the shutter.
Several months later I will review the surviving images and decide whether their aesthetic merit warrants saving or not.
This is a much more reflective and drawn out process and will include creative cropping and/or extensive develop editing.
Sometimes some of those images go on to become winners but some just don't work aesthetically.
A year or more later I review images again and some will again be culled because they don't work.
Time is important when making aesthetic/artistic decisions about images so don't be in a hurry to delete images for these reasons early on.
Leave early deletions for the technical failures.

Tony Jay


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 25, 2014)

clee01l said:


> In the "Name" field, assign a meaningful name for your Smart Collection. The collections will sort automatically according to the alphanumeric sorting rules for your operating system.  If you want a special sort order you need to anticipate the sorting rules when naming.  Names that begin with numerals sort before alphas. But remember 10 will sort before 2 but sorts after


I noticed something a while back, which I meant to comment on, but it slipped my mind. 

Something has changed, at least in the Windows environment, in relation to how sequence numbers are displayed. It used to be, as Cletus points out, that 10 will sort after 02, but before 2. IOW, to get a correctly sorted numerical sequence it was necessary to use leading zeroes on the single digit numbers. But apparently not any longer, as these two screenshots show.

First, a screenshot from Windows Explorer:




And now one from within Lightroom:



Would be interested in knowing if that's now the same under OSX (or has always been that way).

BTW, one other note - see the bottom entry in the Smart Collections screenshot. That "Without Keywords" is one of the standard smart collections provided by Lightroom, so unless the user has deleted it there's no need to create a new one using the "a e i o u" trick.


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## Tony Jay (Jan 25, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> Would be interested in knowing if that's now the same under OSX (or has always been that way).



In OS X, currently at least, the ordering behaves as expected.

Tony Jay


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 25, 2014)

Sorry Tony, not sure what you mean by "as expected".

1,10,11,2,3,4? 

Or 1,2,3,4,10,11?


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## Tony Jay (Jan 25, 2014)

Jim Wilde said:


> 1,2,3,4,10,11?



Tony Jay


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## goproguy (Jan 24, 2014)

I was wondering how you guys organize pictures in Lightroom. I had issues when I tried figuring it out myself... I ended up with 10,000 pix in one file without flags, descriptions, or any other type of searchable content.:shock:              I was lucky and only had to spend 12 or 16 hours sorting them out. Needless to say I don't want to repeat history.


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## LouieSherwin (Jan 25, 2014)

Jim, Tony,

I recently did some poking around on the "alpha-numeric" sorting issue on Mac OS. I believe what you are seeing is that maybe that Windows is now applying the same extensions to  the Unicode Consortium recommended sorting order that Apple is doing. Below is a snippet from the File System Programming Guide that describes the implementation.

This seems to describe exactly what you're seeing. For Mac OS I notice that all punctuation sorts ahead of both numbers and letters. This is useful if you want some item to always appear at the top. There are only a couple of characters that will sort after the letter "z". The greek characters mu (Option-m µ), pi (option-p π) and omega (option-z Ω) These are useful to force entries to always be last in a list.

All of these work in Lightroom lists as well as Finder. I'm not sure when this changed it used to be as Cletus described. I like the new method much better since I don't have to constantly pad my numbers with zeros to have them sort numerically.

-louie



> Because the Finder is the user’s main access to the file system in OS X, it helps to understand a little about how the Finder presents and works with files.
> 
> 
> *Filename Sorting Rules*
> ...


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## goproguy (Aug 11, 2015)

Thank you guys for your help with my question. I am sorry it has taken a year and a half for me to respond. Anyway, I have used your guy's method and it works well. Thanks again.


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## Ian.B (Aug 12, 2015)

I was having a bit of a first read through the thread wondering how the OP got on sorting out the system/photos and at the end I find Goproguy [op] has posted   'thanks....all sorted" [] (new forum needs a thumbs up smilie 



goproguy said                                             _
"WOW! That's a lot of pictures. How do you pick out the ones that you  don't want to keep? I have problems getting rid of pictures 'cause I  travel with my parents and don't know if I will ever get to go back to  those places again"_



Yep; can be hard at times; once you have pick a better or best one or two the others are not so important IMO. I read recently it's easier to delete files after the emotions have settled somewhat. I find that what works for me as I can delete a lot of files a lot easier weeks or months after taking the photos. And often with the thought "_what was I thinking?_" 

We also do seem to keep  a lot of _"just case"_ files; and we take far too many _"just in case"_ photos which does make it so much harder to pick the better/best


_"just in case"_ of what? That's what I ask myself. Why do we keep 2nd or 3rd or 4th rated files? :crazy: Professionals only show their _BEST _photos


Just remember to keep using your system goproguy and keep it up dated to  the type photos you taking at the time

I'm sure those who helped you through out the thread will appreciate your last post :nod:.


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