Last week I wrote a post about 3 (and a half) reasons to use Flags Instead of Ratings in Lightroom. Then I asked whether or not you were flaggers or raters. I was pretty surprised at how many comments came up (over 100). So, first of all – thank you. As I’ve said before, it’s the community here that makes a site like this possible, and I’m always grateful that you spend some of your valuable time here.
Since there were so many comments, I figured most of you wouldn’t (or couldn’t) have the time to read through all of them. But there was a lot of really interesting thoughts on the topic, so I didn’t want them to go to waste. They even got me thinking about different ways to do things. Now, I couldn’t’ go through and recap all of them, but here’s a quick recap some things I found interesting.
*First off, I found that a majority of people use both. Flags at first but then most people resorted to the star rating system to refine their picks. I have to admit. After thinking about it, I’ve done the same before. I’ll usually do my flagging first, but sometimes I 5-star the absolute best from that group.
*One thing I didn’t point out about flags is that they’re specific to the folder or collection in which you flag them. Meaning, if you created a collection and then flagged some photos, they wouldn’t be flagged back in your original folder. It’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It’s just something you should be aware of when flagging so it doesn’t catch you by surprise. For me, flagging photos is how I get them into a collection so it’s not a big deal. But definitely something to keep in mind.
*Flag status doesn’t get stored in metadata. So they couldn’t be read by programs outside of Lightroom. Again, not a huge deal-breaker for me personally. I don’t have a need for other programs to recognize my flags. And I’d never approach using LR with the thought that maybe one day I wouldn’t be using it. It’s kinda like getting married, expecting that one day you’d get divorced
That said, a reader (Christian) pointed out that some website scripts would read stars and I could definitely see a value in that if you had your photos tied in with websites and portfolios, etc
*Mike McCarthy had an interesting comment:
<em>“1 Crap, 2 Possible Keeper, 3 Definite Keeper
Once I go through a shoot this way, I delete the 1
More...
