best way to deal with large backlog of unprocessed photos

[PhilBurton]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic 7.5

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I started using Lightroom seriously about 7-8 years after I got a DSLR, and I still have a backlog of thousands of unprocessed photos. As in, not even mported into Lightroom, let alone culled, keyworded, edited, etc.

Any suggestions for how to deal woith this backlog? Should I import everything, and then do LIBRARY and DEVELOP work, or import one date/subject at a time, do all processing and then move on to the next date/subject? Or something else?

Phil Burton

 

[BarrySchwartz]

Here's my workflow: I load up everything in their original format, at 1:1, with no preset except my personal metadata (copyright, name, contact information, etc). Once they're loaded in, only in the Library module, I hit the "F" key, so the images fill up the screen, and go through and select all the obviously bad ones. Once I've done that, I remove them (not delete, in case I make a mistake). Once that's done, I do it again on the ones that are left - I find the repetition makes me think a bit more clearly about what I like and don't like. With the remaining images, I go through them a third time, zoomed in to check for focus (that's why I import at 1:1), and remove the ones not in focus. If the remaining photos need to be re-grouped, say, for subject, or whatever kind of grouping they require, I put them into a Collection, move them around, rename, and add keywords. Then I export as DNGs. I re-import at a standard size preview, not 1:1 (because I've already checked for focus and the 1:1 previews can really add up if you need the storage space). When I re-import, that's when I use my presets; that way, whenever I get around to working on the images, they are ready to go.

I've plowed through thousands of photos in a day this way, and while there are several steps to the process, you can move it right along.

 

[tspear]

Read the following.
Workflow smart collections – John Beardsworth

My workflow is based on his. I can post the changes I made if curious.

The key is the dumb collection called "Current Work". Back when I was still organizing old photos and I made the jump to smart collection based workflow, I needed to switch between old and recent. The solution was to have two dumb collections. One with the old images and one with recent work. Which ever I want to work on I rename to "current work" and use the smart workflow. Really the only thing I wish I had done was break up the old stuff into smaller units of work instead of a single monster.

Tim

Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk

 

[Replytoken]

Welcome to the club! While my backlog is not as old as yours, I am still quite a bit behind. While I am sometimes a bit behind, health issues have caused a huge backlog of needing culling. I would like to believe that I can actually catch up, and have tried and am trying several approaches. First, I try to find music I enjoy listening to so I have a bit of motivation that is not too distracting. Next, I try to cull specific shoots if possible. Finally, when possible, and this is the hardest step, set up a time each day to cull, even if it is just for 20-30 minutes (a la Pomodoro technique). If you can break down the culling, then you will eventually reach the end, albeit it may take some time. My issues is that I am not ruthless enough, and as storage is cheap, I often just keep many variations of the same subject, but not before comparing them to try and find the shots that are not as sharp.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

I've organized my photos file folder with 2 hierarchy. One starts with the folder "To be edited" and the second one starts with the folder "Edited photos".
Below these folders, the folder tree is exctly the same (<year>\<date>).
My inport preset put all the files in the "To be edited" hierachy. Once I've finished edited/develop photos in a folder, I move it to the "Edited photos" hierarchy.
I've also a folder "pre-LR" in "To be edited" where I've put all my files taken before I use LR, which need be be organised/edited. When I have some time, I go thru these, organised and edit them thme put them in the "Edited photos" hierarchy.
Hence I know exactly what my backlog is.

 

[Dan Marchant]

Any suggestions for how to deal woith this backlog? Should I import everything, and then do LIBRARY and DEVELOP work, or import one date/subject at a time, do all processing and then move on to the next date/subject? Or something else?

We can't answer this because it isn't a Lightroom question, it's a Phil Burton question. You haven't done the work, you need to get motivated to do it so how is Phil Burton best motivated to work? If you dump them all into LR will you see that mass of images as a challenge to be defeated or a mountain that can never be climbed? If the latter then it would probably be better to import smaller "hills" that can be climbed. Also look at scheduling the work. Set aside a regular time and create a schedule that you can tick off as you go along. Doing that can make us feel good and motivates us to keep doing it.

 

[Dan Marchant]

I've organized my photos file folder with 2 hierarchy. One starts with the folder "To be edited" and the second one starts with the folder "Edited photos".
Below these folders, the folder tree is exctly the same (<year>\<date>).
My inport preset put all the files in the "To be edited" hierachy. Once I've finished edited/develop photos in a folder, I move it to the "Edited photos" hierarchy.
I've also a folder "pre-LR" in "To be edited" where I've put all my files taken before I use LR, which need be be organised/edited. When I have some time, I go thru these, organised and edit them thme put them in the "Edited photos" hierarchy.
Hence I know exactly what my backlog is.

Seems like a huge waste of effort which could be far more easily accomplished using a smart collection.....

Import into one hierarchy but edit your import preset to keyword every file automatically with "To Do".
Create a Smart collection that automatically adds any image with "To Do". Voila! You know know exactly what you backlog is.

Once you have sorted/culled/keyworded/rated/edited a job just delete the "To Do" keyword and they vanish from the collection without any need to copy them move them anywhere.

 

[PhilBurton]

Seems like a huge waste of effort which could be far more easily accomplished using a smart collection.....

Import into one hierarchy but edit your import preset to keyword every file automatically with "To Do".
Create a Smart collection that automatically adds any image with "To Do". Voila! You know know exactly what you backlog is.

Once you have sorted/culled/keyworded/rated/edited a job just delete the "To Do" keyword and they vanish from the collection without any need to copy them move them anywhere.

Dan,

Are you advocating that I import everything right away? Once that is done, do all my other processing by working in a "TO DO" smart collection?

 

[PhilBurton]

Here's my workflow: I load up everything in their original format, at 1:1, with no preset except my personal metadata (copyright, name, contact information, etc). Once they're loaded in, only in the Library module, I hit the "F" key, so the images fill up the screen, and go through and select all the obviously bad ones. Once I've done that, I remove them (not delete, in case I make a mistake). Once that's done, I do it again on the ones that are left - I find the repetition makes me think a bit more clearly about what I like and don't like. With the remaining images, I go through them a third time, zoomed in to check for focus (that's why I import at 1:1), and remove the ones not in focus. If the remaining photos need to be re-grouped, say, for subject, or whatever kind of grouping they require, I put them into a Collection, move them around, rename, and add keywords. Then I export as DNGs. I re-import at a standard size preview, not 1:1 (because I've already checked for focus and the 1:1 previews can really add up if you need the storage space). When I re-import, that's when I use my presets; that way, whenever I get around to working on the images, they are ready to go.

I've plowed through thousands of photos in a day this way, and while there are several steps to the process, you can move it right along.

Barry,

I have a workflow with smart collection folders, and that approach works for me. Maybe it's the way I think, but I would like to do almost no processing if I am going to import everything right away. Or else, I import just one event or subject or day's shoot, and process that to the point of doing disk publishing (right now), and eventually doing printing.

 

[PhilBurton]

Read the following.
Workflow smart collections – John Beardsworth

My workflow is based on his. I can post the changes I made if curious.

The key is the dumb collection called "Current Work". Back when I was still organizing old photos and I made the jump to smart collection based workflow, I needed to switch between old and recent. The solution was to have two dumb collections. One with the old images and one with recent work. Which ever I want to work on I rename to "current work" and use the smart workflow. Really the only thing I wish I had done was break up the old stuff into smaller units of work instead of a single monster.

Tim

Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk

Tim,

I think that John's Workflow Smart Collections is one of the most valuable third-party contributions anyone has made to improve the overall Lightroom workflow. I have used his approach, but modified it extensively. (Some day, I might even make my own Smart Collections available to anyone via )DropBox. I have also written out a workflow doc that is keyed to my smart collections, and I would also make that available. But not right now.

Phil Burton

 

[PhilBurton]

We can't answer this because it isn't a Lightroom question, it's a Phil Burton question. You haven't done the work, you need to get motivated to do it so how is Phil Burton best motivated to work? If you dump them all into LR will you see that mass of images as a challenge to be defeated or a mountain that can never be climbed? If the latter then it would probably be better to import smaller "hills" that can be climbed. Also look at scheduling the work. Set aside a regular time and create a schedule that you can tick off as you go along. Doing that can make us feel good and motivates us to keep doing it.

Dan,

Ultimately you are right. It's how I approach Lightroom. But I'm also interested in how other people have approached this problem, because I have learned a lot about using Lightroom from other people in this forum.

Phil

 

[Replytoken]

Dan,

Are you advocating that I import everything right away? Once that is done, do all my other processing by working in a "TO DO" smart collection?

I think that Dan was responding to Philippe's workflow in his response.

--Ken

 

[Replytoken]

Dan,

Ultimately you are right. It's how I approach Lightroom. But I'm also interested in how other people have approached this problem, because I have learned a lot about using Lightroom from other people in this forum.

Phil

I think that Dan has hit on the heart of the matter, and if is any consolation, you are certainly not alone in a backlog of culling and processing. It weighs on me a lot, but then again, I am not earning revenue from my work, and I am behind in a lot of areas of life due to health issues, so I try to keep it in perspective. I think that doing small amount on a frequent basis is one way to get there as you sometimes get in a groove and want to keep on working. and, you build up a habit and might just stick with it until you have reached your goal. But, as Dan mentioned, only you know how to best motivate yourself. Personally, I find that just trying to sit my butt down and starting is the best, but often the hardest method of tackling projects we would rather avoid.

All the best,

--Ken

 

[Jimmsp]

Any suggestions for how to deal woith this backlog? Should I import everything, and then do LIBRARY and DEVELOP work, or import one date/subject at a time, do all processing and then move on to the next date/subject? Or something else?

Some good suggestions above.
I would follow a "simple" approach when I tackled a large number of files that needed keywording.

First - I would import them all, and during import do a "auto" on the tone. Auto has improved a lot, and will give you a very good 1st cut on the photos, and allow you to cull and rate easier.
Second - Follow John's Workflow Smart Collections . I did & do on large photo shoots. It will really help you here.
Third - think about solving this problem in a series on manageable steps. Start with one year at a time. I found that when I started with the the current year, and worked backwards in time, things got easier. You have probably become a better photographer over time, so your later shots, as a whole, are probably better than your earlier ones. Once you move backwards in time, it will be easier to cull and rate.
Fourth view this as fun.
Fifth - have fun.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

Yes, Dan was responding to me. My only work is, once I've finished to edit (sorting, keywording, developing) is to move the folder to the "Phtot edited" hierarchy. I wouldn't call that a huge waste of effort !
I understand the use of dynamic collection for that purpose, but I don't find it to fit well with the way I work. I prefer to keep backlog per subject/shooting which is exactly what my import preset does. Then I can work on a subject, and as long as I've not finished with all the photos of the shooting, I keep the whole subject as "to be done".
Once I've finished the subject, I'll no longer access the photos thru the folder, I will access them thru the collections (dynamic or static) instead.

 

[tspear]

Phil,

Here is how I tackled a twelve year backlog. Note: I started all this before I bought Apple Aperture and then later switched to Lr.

Using Windows explorer I created folders by year, then events within the year. This was just a rough sort of the images. No culling or editing.

About this time I got Apple Aperature. I finished the rough sort in Aperature. I then tried to edit the images, it was a disaster since I had no organizational method and was rather hit/miss. However I did manage to use Aperature to eliminate a lot of duplicates and bad images (think out of focus, bad light...) This was roughly 100k images. Of which there were about 25k descent ones.

I then decided I better approach this in some methodical manner, so I started researching approaches. And came up with a hugely complicated solution in Aperature. Apple announced the end of Aperature. So before I could start I jumped to Lr.

At this point I had folders of images with some organization. Year, event, and then some captions on images, a random stars....

Once in Lr, i imported everything. Removed all stars, colors and flags. I also had a pretty simple methodical approach. In a notepad I kept track of the folder and the image I last worked on for a specific step.
I then fixed the GPS data, going through the files until it was all done. I then applied auto tune. And went through the images, I basically defined a few rules. 1 star I like it, 2 star it was my favorite for that scene. Rule was no more than one photo could get two stars for a scene. Second rule, no more than 5 seconds spent on an image. When done, I filtered by one plus stars and looked for visual duplicates, and also ones I wanted to switch.

Now I had a descent flow, even if using folders and notepad to track stuff. This is when I switched to John's smart workflow. I put everything historical which at that point was up to roughly fifteen years in a single collection.

I then started a new current work collection, and managed my current images making changes to the flow till I was happy. I was on Lr six at this point and facial tagging was going to add more steps to my flow.

Once I had my flow down, I would every evening for the last thirty minutes before heading to bed switch back to the archive collection by renaming the dumb collections. Now I am a little OCD. So I worked on all the images till done with the first step in flow.... then the second step....This way I nibbled at the problem. And the smart flows allowed me to track and visually see the progress which kept me going.

When done, I deleted all 0 star images which had been processed and kept about 6k inages.

Like the saying goes. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Tim

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[Dan Marchant]

Ultimately you are right. It's how I approach Lightroom. But I'm also interested in how other people have approached this problem, because I have learned a lot about using Lightroom from other people in this forum.

here is my workflow....

Initial cull
Insert card in reader and hit Import in Lightroom. On the Import screen I hit E (loupe view) to display the first image (almost) full screen. Use the Left/Right Arrow keys to scan quickly through the images. If something is a total failure (OOF, black screen, image of my foot...) I hit X to deselect it. (If you accidentally hit X in error you can press P to reselect)

Don't try to decide which images are best. This process is only for eliminating the obvious no-hopers. When you have scanned through once hit the Import button to import the surviving images.

Focus on the Stars, not the understudies
Once the images have imported do a quick second scan. Don't stress over the images or compare pairs of images (that comes later). Scan quickly through, marking images as follows...
X - the handful of rubbish you missed on the initial cull.
1 star - OK image.
2 stars - might be great with a bit of cropping/editing.
3 stars - an obvious stand out shot.

OK now you have done that you can go back and review all the images again and stress over which OK image is slightly less meh than some other OK image... except don't.

Instead use LRs filter bar to only show the 3 star images. Chances are that you have more than enough stand out images so just go ahead and edit those. If you really, really need more images then filter to include the 2 star images and edit a few of those. Don't look at the 1 star images* ... Trust me... no one need to look through 200 OK photos of your holiday/baby/Local Football team.

* I keep the 1 star images because your skill/eye may develop over time. Images that were only 1 star when you looked at them before may be a 2 or 3 at a later date when your skills/eye have improved. When I started taking images I didn't really understand/appreciate black and white. Later I realised that some images that did not work at all in colour worked really well in B&W.

 

[msmack]

You didn't say whether these images were on a hard or external drive or cards. If on drive I would Import one Folder at a time. If on Card I would Import the entire card and then in LR move into different folders. I would then cull the folder in LR using F for full screen, x for reject. If I have two or three very similar images I keep only one. Then, I would cull again. I might add stars if that was my system. I would keyword the shoot, i.e. Boston Zoo. At a later time I can break down the keywords by animals if I chose to do so. At least I have a main keyword.

I think I might do a little developing in the Folder for a change in pace. You will get a charge to keep going forward if you see you have some really good possibilities in that Folder. I find my students get tired and bored when doing the organization part and want to play with their images. Of course, if you have the stomach for it you could import and cull without Developing.

I would not attempt to Import everything at one time. It is just moving from one overwhelming issue to another. Work in smaller pieces.

 

[MarkNicholas]

1st step get is to get all the photos neatly filed on your hard drive / external drive. 2nd step just import everything into LR. 3rd step apply the easy metadata / keywords such as Country. City etc. 4th step keep going

 

[five.photos]

Maybe you wanna listen to Jeff Harmon's Photo Taco Podcast episode "Culling Like a Pro": Photo Taco – Culling Like a Pro

This helped me to find my own workflow which is based on Jeff's input, adjusted to my liking, and currently looks like this:

1. Import all photos
2. Copy photos to cull into a "Working On" collection (I do about 100-300 per day)
3. Correct capture date if necessary
4. Review camera / creator
5. Review and add locations
6. Review and add face names
7. Merge HDR's & Pano's and stack them inside the collection
8. Expand all stacks, flag all photos as picks (pick = culled), collapse all stacks
9. Reject bad photos (X) or set 1 Star to the ones to keep with filmstrip and loupe (reject about 1/3)
10. Flag photos to develop with 2/3 Stars
11. Apply Auto Settings to all 1 Star photos
12. Edit 2 and 3 Stars photos manually
13. Go through all 1-3 Stars photos again and change stars if necessary
14. Go through 2 and 3 Stars photos and flag the best with 4 Stars
15. Go through 4 Stars photos and flag the very best with 5 Stars
16. Delete rejected photos
17. Write Metadata to XML
18. Remove photos from "Working On

I have a smart collection which filters out all photos of my library that don't have a pick flag. The content in that smart collection is my backlog and I move 100-300 photos each day from there to go through the process described above. I still have about 30,000 photos in my backlog, so I should be done in about 100-300 days

This is what the stars mean to me
0 Stars: Stack originals & videos
1 Stars: Archive (auto developed)
2 Stars: People & Memories (developed)
3 Stars: Landscape picks (developed)
4 Stars: Outstanding Photos
5 Stars: Portfolio Photos

 

[PhilBurton]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I really appreciate all of these comments. And I've downloaded this thread as a PDF for future reference, while I re-read the comments in detail.

I'm leaning towards:

1. Defining a minimal set of keywords, in a hierarchy, including enough workflow keywords to manage this entire process. See my new thread Library module - Keyword Hierarchy tools?
2. Setting up an initial set of Smart Collections based on overall categories, such as "travel" or "family," etc.
3. Initial Keywording, so that all photos are are assigned to one or more of those overall categories.
4. Blaze through those 100+ GB of unimported photos. (And make sure I don't import duplicates!!)

Phil

 

[MarkNicholas]

Thank you everyone for your replies. I really appreciate all of these comments. And I've downloaded this thread as a PDF for future reference, while I re-read the comments in detail.

I'm leaning towards:
1. Defining a minimal set of keywords, in a hierarchy, including enough workflow keywords to manage this entire process. See my new thread Library module - Keyword Hierarchy tools?
Phil

I never set out with a particular keyword strategy, other than to apply keywords as appropriate. During the process of applying keywords to 50,000+ photos the keywords kind of came to define themselves. I now have almost 2000 keywords and now add fewer add fewer keywords. The structure that emerged has the following high level Parents :-
>Bridges
>Celebrations (Birthdays, Anniversaries, weddings etc. )
>Countries (followed by States, Cities etc.)
>Events (Parades, Music gigs etc.)
>Other (there are always things that don't fit anywhere)
>People (Friends, Family, colleagues etc.)
>Places (Restaurants, Hotels, beaches etc)
>Transportation (Cars, Bikes, Boats, Trains, etc.)
>Views (Landscapes, sunsets, mountains etc.)
>Wildlife & Animals (Cows, Flowers, birds etc.)

 

[tspear]

I split my prospective keyword list into three groups.
1. Process related, e.g. culled, no people (part of my facial recognition flow).
2. Questions I received, e.g. do you have an image of X?
3. Images I am interested in.

For 2, it was a case if thinking hiw do I find image X based on what others have asked? E.g. kids asked for a pic of mom in Disney. Or a trip or...

For 3. I went to large thumbnails and just scanned the images and said which catch my eye. Which do I want to see again? From there it was about creating keywords that would allow me to find those images.

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