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Lokitoz
Participating Frequently
October 25, 2022
Question

iPad Lightroom photo rating system rejects/stars

  • October 25, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 475 views

New to this whole way of managing your photos.

Trying to develop a work flow.

Having difficulties understand the behaviour of cataloging on the iPad.

I got the $10/mo package deal.

 

I connect my memory card reader to the iPad to start the process.

 

It is bad enough that I can not vet the images before I actually import them, I have import the whole thing.

Once everything is inside the lightroom catalog, immediately without asking me, it tried to upload all those photos to the cloud, yet another process that I have to wait for before I could even get to see or work on the images... I stopped that real quick, so it is not synching, not sure how I managed that, but it is not synching anymore.

 

First round through the photos, I reject eveything that looks out of focus or just plain bad. If it is something I want for sake keeping I rate it 3 stars, if it is something that I want to edit, I rate it 4 starts, and out of all the edited photos, the ones that are impressive enought to be shared online I rate them 5 starts.

 

Here is the real issue where my question is...

 

That reject feature is not that straight foward and it doesn't seem to be available on the develop/editing mode.

 

It keeps deactivating and I have to keep activating it, which is a pain.

 

It shouldn't matter if I am browing thumbnails or if I am editing a photo, if I decide to reject it and see it gone from the list, I should be able to do just that without any extra steps.

 

So, I activate the star rating option, and I can rate the images and reject them, but as soon as I click any of the editing tools, that rating function deactivates, and if am half way through an edit, and decide this is not an image that I want to persuit any longer, I have to reactivate the rating module so that I can reject the image so that it no longer shows on my list of thumbnails at the bottom.

 

Is there a way to keep that star rating module active so it is always listening to see if I want to reject an image, am I missing something here, a check box that I didn't check or something.

 

From the looks of it, you have to do all your rating and rejecting all at once before you are tempted to edit anything, and once you done with the ratings, then you can go into editing, but if at any point while you are editing, you decide that an image is no longer a 5 star and you want to down great it to a 3 start, the rating module is no longer readily available, you can not swipe up or down anymore.

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Timothy.Spear
Timothy.Spear
Inspiring
October 25, 2022

A few items. I do not have any Apple devices, so there might be some specific items I cannot answer.

I use an Android phone and Windows computers.

A number of comments in no speific order:

  1. I have not tested recently, however even deleted images have to go through the sync process.
  2. Sync runs basically in time order. You make a change to image #123, then upload and image then make a change to image #123 again. All three events are sent to the server in the same order.
  3. On my older phone, it was not fast enough to import/copy and start culling/editing. My current phone handles doing both at the same time just fine.
  4. There is a difference between reject and delete. Reject is just a flag, you need to actgively delete the image. There are multiple ways to handle deleting an image, you can check the help for the methods on an iPad. Note: On windows, the backspce key removes the image from the actuve album, but the delete key delets the image and removes it from all albums.
  5. By default, all images are kept for 60 days after you delete incase you need to recover the image.
  6. I am not following your star/flagging comments

 

Tim

L
LokitozAuthor
Participating Frequently
October 25, 2022

No worries, work flow is a matter of taste, and everybody sees it differently.

 

1. You have to come into the wild dark side of Apple eco system. It used to be that people would avoid Apple just because of how expensive they were, but today, Android and Windows devices are as expensive as any apple device, so that excuse is no longer valid, I am currently using the most inexpensive iPad from 2020, $280 at Walmart, and it is a beauty for editing photos with lightroom, and it has a color acurate display which most android phones and tablets don't have. So if you serious about your photography, then you need to become more familiar with anything Apple. Apple/Adobe just goes together, it always has.

 

2. I am quite familiar with the difference between flagging vs deleting in Lightroom, but since you are not following me I will try to explain myself better.

 

What is flagging ? Is a quick way to go through a lot of images and reject what you don't like or want so that you can delete later, so in term it is like deleting, it is th pre amp of its final fate, the trash can. I think Adobe copied the flag feature from Tinder, the master of swiping left or right to either like something or reject it.

 

The name of the game is speed, and bulk processing. To cut the time that it would take to go through each image, hit the delete key, hit the tab key to confirm that you actually want to delete the file, 4 different keys strocks to delete one image.

 

With a memory card that has 100 images, that would take  200 key strokes to delete half the images on the card.

 

Instead, the workflow that lightroom wants you to follow is the following.

 

Go take all the pictures you want, fill up the memory card with 1000 images.

 

Come back to your computer, and don't even look at whats inside the card, just transfer and import all 1000 images, the good ones and the bad ones, import them into the lightroom database.

 

Once you have all the images in the database, lightroom will allow you to do process #1, view the images thumb nails in the lightroom browser module, and look at each image and decide if you want to flag it for deletion (reject) of if the image is a keeper.

 

At this same time you can also rate how much you like that image from 1 to 5 stars.

 

Once you have gone throught the 1000 image, flag them (reject/keep same as Tinder swipe right/left) and give them star rating.

 

At this point you can filter all your reject images and delete them all at once in a bulk fasion.

 

Once you got rid of all the trash, now you can concentrate on the good images that might need some adjustments.

 

Only now, you are able to go back to image #1, and open that image on the editor module and start edting all images from there.

 

Here is my dilemma with that...

 

If at some point while you are in the editor module, editing an image, and you have changed your mind, you no longer want to keep that image, now you want to reject it, well, you can't do that while you editing. 

 

You have stop what you are doing, go tap the little star icon to get you back into the metadata module, where you can re rate or re flag the image, and to me that doesn't make any sense. If I have an image open in the editor, I am currently trying to work the image, and I decide that it is not worth my efforts, right and then I should be able to reject the image and move on to the next image in the queue.

 

That is all, I hope you got it this time. 

 

From what I have gather, that is not going to happen because while you editing an image, they don't want you swiping on that image up or down to flag it, if you really want to flag that image, you will have to stop your editing, get out from that mode, and go into the rating module to be able to re flag re rate an image.

 

I love lightroom, I just don't agree with many of the process that Adobe has enforced into lightroom.

 

For example, I should be able to inspect, reject and delete all the images while they are on the memory card before I import.

 

Once I have norrowed down all the images I want to keep, I should be able to import them locally and not be forced to upload all my image to an Adobe hard drive in order for me to enjoy all the features of lightroom.

 

So all I do is try to find walk around these issues and ask questions, part of the process of mastering this wonderful software that I like so much. blink blink...

Timothy.Spear
Timothy.Spear
Inspiring
October 25, 2022

I used to have a lot of Apple. Then the developers thought they knew better than me and how I work. So I ditched Apple and never looked back. Google's rather invasive data collection may make me rethink Apple. But that is about the only item.

As for Andriod, I rarely edit on there. I mostly use the phone to upload images via a card reader when hiking, taking a few phone pics, and by far the most common thing for me is to search and share images/albums, often creating the albums on the fly. So for these tasks, color accuracy is not a priority.

When I retire, I might consider a tablet. However, until then, I need a laptop and desktop, so I prefer to use them.

 

In terms of process, not going to comment on the Tinder comparison. 😄

Adobe always, both Classic and Lr have both had you load the images into the system before you can rate/process them. This has to do with a design philosphy in which they have an actual database behind the scenes and are not simply using files.

So, if you want to flip through and delete the images first, you will need other software to do so. I know Photo Mechanic and Adobe Bridge are popular choices for this on the laptop/desktop.

The switching between the metadata view and the edit view is due to the limitations of the mobile platform. It becomes very difficult to impossible to handle all the screen size variations and possible complications to make a flow unique for larger sizes of tablets. At some point, Adobe may do so. But I do not think this is a priority for them. What you are asking for is actually possible in LrD in Mac or Windows using keyboard shortcuts. I do it all the time.

 

At this point, I think you are using the wrong tool for the job. For what you want to do, you should be running the full LrD on a Mac or Windows machine (I used Lr on a Surface tablet, it works great), there just is a very limited set of gestures and available input points on an mobile device.

 

Tim

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