Lightroom mobile – reviewing & rating photos

When you tap on a photo in Grid view, which we discussed last week, you’re taken to the Detail view. The Detail view displays one photo at a time. There are four different Detail views – Rate & Review, Info, Edit and Activity – and you switch between them using the pop-up at the top of the screen. We’ll explore Rate & Review mode in this post, and come back to the other views in the following posts.

But first, why bother to rate your photos? Firstly, it helps you find your best photos again in future. And secondly, there’s no point spending time editing photos that aren’t worth keeping! Here are the tips and tricks you’ll need for the Rate & Review mode:

In Rate & Review mode, you can:

• View photos.
• View a histogram.
• View basic EXIF metadata such as the camera make/model, lens make/model, focal length, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, capture date/time and more.
• Zoom in to check the details. When zooming, look out for the difference between a smart preview and full resolution original. Smart previews (e.g. photos synced from the desktop) are only 2560px along their longest edge, so the zoom isn’t a true 1:1 or 100% zoom. Originals (e.g. photos added on Lightroom mobile or Lightroom Web) can do a true 1:1 zoom.
• Assign flags using the flag buttons or by swiping up/down the right half of the screen.
• Assign star ratings using the star buttons or by swiping up/down the left half of the screen.
• Copy/move photos into other collections.
• Remove photos from the cloud (but they stay in the desktop catalog if they’ve already downloaded to the desktop).
• Share individual photos or save them to the camera roll.

There isn’t an auto-advance option like there is on the desktop, but if you set the Grid filter to show only unflagged photos, when you pick or a reject a photo it will immediately disappear and display the next photo. The same applies to filtering by star ratings.

Next week, we move on to adding metadata to your photos.

If you’re keen to start editing in the meantime, you can download the full set of infographics right now. They’re yours to download absolutely FREE when you sign up for my monthly Lightroom newsletter using the form below. (Don’t worry, I won’t share your email address with anyone else. You can read previous issues of the newsletter here.)