- Preparing for this lesson
- Iterative culling: My workflow
- What is a collection?
- Adding star ratings and color labels
- Adding keywords
- Review questions
- Review answers
Adding star ratings and color labels
Rating your images is pretty simple. Pressing the numbers 1–5 will add one to five stars to any images you have selected. To remove any of the star ratings, just select the image and press the number 0.
In addition to pressing 1–5 for star ratings, pressing the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 on your keyboard will add the red, yellow, green, and blue colors labels, respectively. There is one color left—purple—that can only be accessed through the Photo > Set Color Label menu. To remove the color from an individual picture, just select the photo and press the number for the associated color again, and the color is gone.
Now that you know how to add star ratings and colors to your pictures, let’s talk about how best to use them. Once your pick and rejected flags have been assigned, you can use star ratings to rank your pictures in a “good, better, best” scenario.
The star rating system also can be useful for marking images for specific tasks or categories. Your portfolio shots can have five stars, while images that go into a slideshow can be your four-star shots. Or, in a wedding shoot, images of the groom’s family can have three stars, while images of the bride’s family can be your two-star shots.
I like to use colors for files that I am going to work on in Photoshop, files that are ready for printing, and final edits of files. Any red-labeled images in my catalog are images that need some work in Photoshop. The green-labeled images are ready for printing. Purple-labeled images are final copies of images that need no additional editing. I use purple for final images, as it’s the only color that I cannot accidentally select with a number key. The colors also make it very easy to spot images that need to be worked on while in Grid view.