This Sounds Crazy, But It'll Make You A WAY BETTER Photographer

[@DavidSchamis]

I really hope Adobe adds the ablity to see the focal point in Lr. I'm sure that's easier said than done but it's really helpful when going through a large group of photos.

[@yomismo1945]

Hi Brian, I hope you get better soon. I went through that, too, and I still have some of the coughing. On the other hand, I was one crazy bursting dude, got tired of it, and now I rarely do it. My biggest problem was all the photos one has to look at to select the best ones, because the uncertainty that there could be a better one. that tired me out. After that phase, deleting all the remaining ones feels like torture. I couldn't stand the uncertainty anymore. lol

[@Lindsay.Martin]

Brian, This was a very informative video as usual! I rarely use burst mode for my photography. However, I do take multiple images when doing long exposure or capturing symmetrical images of buildings particularly cathedral doors and interiors. I also use the "Group Into Stack" feature in LR desktop to organize these photo shoots. My hope is that Adobe extends this functionality to LR mobile and web! I have you to thank for developing a culling workflow after seeing one of your earlier videos when you discussed the subject. BTW...my daughter mentioned just this past weekend that my new grandson will inherit 380TB of digital "stuff" from his family! I working on cutting that number down. 😎

[@alanplatt888]

Wow 2 days late for me ;-) I went out with a nature group, set my camera to Pre Capture and enjoyed the walk. 1375 raw files later, I was mesmerized by the task of culling. Cut a long story short, I've just copied your tutorial..........absolutely nailed it. It's easy when you know how. Thank you. Amazing. Best Lightroom tip for 25 so far ;-).

[@brianmatiash]

Woohoo! That’s so great to hear, Alan! Thanks so much for sharing that, and I hope you have an amazing 2025. Sounds like it’s already off on the right foot!

[@alanplatt888]

@@brianmatiash Another brick in the wall. Lightroom/Lightroom Web, making more sense for me.

[@ZOly62]

Thank you, Matijas, because these days I’ve been thinking about how meaningless it is to have or store dozens of the same images, and that’s why your video aligns perfectly with my thoughts. What I will definitely do since new cameras allow such high burst rates is reduce the number of images in the shooting burst mode. And that's one way to save your precious time. Great advices and video. 👌

[@albertphillips447]

Brian, recently I’ve been using burst mode more often, and seeing images piling up in my library, I think this is going to be an important part of my workflow, thanks.

[@shoregrl20]

Thank you for this, perfect timing as culling photos holistically is a 2025 to-do item! Speaking of legacy, I truly hope that Adobe can eventually have our cloud backups mirror our album & folder organization so my kids can find their pics easily, I can’t see them going thru all the dates, but they can see their name and bam, there they are! I hope that makes sense! Thx for all the content Brian!

[@ytpoolmy]

Great example of a workflow I was just using last night. You reinforced a few things I was thinking off and added a few new tweaks to my process. Thanks

[@dsorx]

That was a great video Brian and I will probably rewatch it. I shoot at the same locations you do and follow a lot of the same workflow principles. Just wait until you have been to these places a few dozen times and you try to cull the photos. You get a great bird photo and then realize that you already have 10 of the same photo already! As if culling wasn't challenging enough, you have to consider what photos are already in your collection and decide if the new one is better than what you already have. I guess it's a good problem to have. I mostly use Photo Mechanic for culling just because it's screaming fast compared to Lightroom on my older computer. I have to admit I almost died when you deleted the whole local folder at the end.

[@mikebartow9415]

Thanks! I have a Nikon Z9 and I hook my monitor directly via HDMI cable to the camera and will view delete some images initially. I will then import the images to Lightroom. You mentioned Green Cay Preserve. When I go to Florida, about 3-4 times a year, I go there. I assume you know about Wakodahatchee Preserve. about 5 minutes away. There is a great collection of breeding Wood Storks in January-March. It gets very crowded there . The birds seem more people tolerant and will come quite close. You might want to try Peaceful Waters in Wellington. It’s not as big but there are quite a few Purple Martin birdhouses there. Also, there are 3 otters present. If you are lucky you can get some good photos or a playful video. Thanks again and keep it up.

[@warfty]

Thanks Brian, some useful tips there. On a related issue, I use an iPad for my workflow when travelling, and try to keep up a daily routine of backups of images from camera card to SSD, and a daily initial cull and upload of best images. My issue is that importing into Lightroom mobile from card (CFX-B) or direct from camera (using Nikon Z8) allows pinch zooming the image icon in order to choose the best image, but that if I try to import from the SSD file structure (if, for eg, I missed a day culling from the camera and the card was already deleted for the next day's shoot), then there seems no option to zoom the image icons to see which image is best. The add photos from files option only gives at best a very small icon, which is mostly obscured by a large circle check box, or a list view with a tiny icon. Totally useless for seeing which image of a burst is in focus or best composition! Am I missing something here? Thanks as always for your great vids!!

[@TC_Conner]

This was super helpful Brian, especially since I'm very new (started one year ago this month) to bird photography too. From what you showed here, I should be using burst mode on my R5. I think I've not been using it because of the intimidation of having to go through and cull hundreds of images. But if I use your culling method shown here, it would absolutely erase my intimidation. As for what's left "after I'm gone," well, my two oldest sons are already arguing over who gets my Martin and Fender guitars so perhaps I'll just let he family argue over who has to go through all my photography stuff. Lol! Hope you're feeling better! See ya around!

[@brianmatiash]

HA! There's a meme that I'd attach here which would be perfect for the situation with your sons. 🤣

[@LarryFasnacht]

2025 will mark the year that I’ve been tracking photos in my Lightroom classic catalog for 20 years. I’ve developed a culling process that I think might be faster. Keep in mind that I am using classic and I’ll tell you why. 1. Ingest the photos in Lightroom classic and I specify a folder much as you do; year month day. 2. Look at each photo and if I’m not going to keep it, I just hit the right arrow key. If it’s something I think I might wanna work on. I hit the number four which automatically advance to the next photo so for your 725 photos I’ll be hitting the right arrow key or the number four key 725 times. 3. I set the filter to only show me four star photos. I work on these four star photos and if they come out nice they get five stars if they’re not as nice as I thought they get a three. 4. Once I’m finished with the edits, I filter for everything under three stars much as you have done I select all and delete them. 5. From the five star photos, if I wish to share them, I create a collection in Lightroom classic and link them to that collection. Ultimately, I wind up with similar organization to what you have with one big exception. When I change or re-edit a photo in Lightroom classic it automatically updates with the edits in the collection and on the synced photos with Lightroom. Versus your method, where only photos that are synced with Lightroom will see the edits. Over 20 years of shooting and using Lightroom, I’m tracking 280,000 images. It’s about 6 TB and these are just the keepers. There’s no way I’m gonna use Lightroom web to hold that many photos. You speak about your hiers going through your photos. What happens if your Lightroom subscription lapses and now they’ve got nothing. Well that would ease their task of going through your photos. It would mean you’ve lost everything. If I have copies of them stored on my hard drive, they would still be able to access them, even though my Lightroom subscription had lapsed. And frankly, until just recently, Lightroom sync has not been reliable enough, where I really trust it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve erased my entire library and started over.

[@juliodumbobk]

your last comment is the real reason I don't use adobe cloud systmem. I use a very similar culling method to yours and DAS storage system ( QNAP 2 HDs of 10T each, one mirrors the other) plus an iDrive back up.

[@HenrikThomasen]

Great video😊

[@supercrazpianomanaic]

I really needed this video. Thanks!

[@kilofox]

Happy New Year Brian. I do much the same .... I utilize the Hazel app (Mac) to automatically ingest files from my card reader to my temp drive for culling, Hazel even automatically creates sub directories based on the file date. I simply insert the card into the reader and Hazel does the rest. Highly recommended.

[@brianmatiash]

Thanks for that suggestion! I'm a big fan of learning how photographers manage their libraries.

[@peterosborne9802]

This is just what I have been looking for, previously/last year being a olympus OM user i would use olympus workspace to edit and cull my images then save to laptop then into external hard drive then over to lightroom. Back to laptop delet the file empty bin. Back to lightroom ( nearly uploaded by now) get another coffee wait and see what needs editing further. This seems alot simpler.

[@satur9]

Thank you, very useful information, I always struggle with selecting photos, this is a great help 🙂

[@allenmeador5296]

Thank you Brian, this is just what I needed. You presented this work flow so well! One question, do you do video? If so how do you work that into this work flow?

[@davidligon6088]

Questions: 1) How long did it take you to pick the images you wanted out of the 700+? 2) I always zoom in on the images I pick to make sure they are tack sharp. Do you assume they are sharp if they look like it full screen? Maybe your eyes are better than mine, but I don’t find this the case on a 14” screen. 3) I wish this culling process could be done on the road, on an iPad without a computer. Do you know of a way? Thank you so much for this video. I don’t use the cloud, but have been contemplating a way to cut back on my keepers. I will definitely incorporate this workflow.

[@malikdhadhalinux]

Hi Great video. I'm interested in moving all my images from local to Lightroom CC. But in the Adobe Website, I only get maximum 1TB storage options, how do I get more?

[@GG-ko9gg]

Brilliant this is exactly the info I needed at this moment. Do you read minds?😂😂

[@brianmatiash]

I want to say yes, but we both know that I'd be lying through my teeth 🤣🤣🤣

[@DavidSchamis]

30TB of cloud storage - I'm so jealous!

[@branchau]

In my view culling before syncing to the cloud is wise; not keeping a local copy of those that are synched to the cloud is unwise.

This is great, but I’m still waiting an auto culling tool in Lightroom. This already exists on iPhone using AI. For example it could have a clear select blurry images and another one helping with composition 😊

[@brianmatiash]

This is something that we are working on!

@@brianmatiashplease make it also for Lrc!