Goals 2020: Lightroom Cleanup Notes

One of my goals for a long time has been to cleanup my photos in Lightroom.  I mentioned several years ago what I am doing to keep track of progress.  The method hasn't really changed that much.

I don't use the colour labels at all so I went to Metadata, Color Label Sets and picked custom.  Then picked one with a number short cut to rename.  I renamed the green label as I couldn't bear to look at a screen with too much red or yellow.  I set the name to be the actions I want to take and a reminder of how to remove the label when I'm finished.  Labels are a toggle.  Press 8 adds the label and pressing it a second time removes it.

Then I went to All Photographs under Catalog and clicked on a photo and pressed Ctrl-A to select every photo in my catalog.  Once they were all selected, I pressed the number 8 which assigned my review photo label to all my photos.

If I need a reminder of what my label means, clicking on the little green icon below the photo brings up a small window that shows the current label meanings. 

Next up was to create a filter set that allows me to quickly filter what I still need to work on.  In the grid view, I use the library filters to set up a view that filters by Label, date, camera and keyword.  Once I had figured out what filters work for me, I saved the filter setup as Cleanup by clicking on the Custom Filter in the top right of the grid and saved my setup. I start by filtering the ones with my green label. Then I pick a month.

I tend to work one month at a time.  I reject with an X any photo I want to delete and update keywords, ratings and edits.  At the moment, edits and moving photos is tricky as I'm working with my non-dominant hand so I've setup a couple of keywords @testedit and @movetocorrectfolder to return to when I can use both hands.

Some months have a lot of photos - generally a day out with some friends to take pictures or a trip.  In that case, I'll open the month and select a single day to work on because looking at 946 photos (in the example below) is overwhelming.  I may also filter by camera especially for trips or keywords

Once I've completed the review of the month (or day), I make sure I'm back to grid mode and press Ctrl-Backspace.  this show me all the photos I've rejected and I delete them both from Lightroom and my harddrive.  Once that's done, Ctrl-A to select all the remaining photos that are done and press 8 to remove my green label. 

Slowly I'm getting rid of the junk and tidying up the rest.  I've been making some good progress this week since quilting is currently out.  Perhaps by the time the cast comes off I'll be past the halfway mark. 

Since I take photos faster than I clean Lightroom, I have a metadata preset that I assign on import which includes setting the label to my green value "Review Photos Label, edit, keyword.  Press 8 to clear label"  I'm not always good at tidying on import so this helps keep track of the growing list of photos.  Ideally I'll get to the point where only the current import has this label