[tps_title]Cull Your Images Before You Edit[/tps_title]

Culling your images means picking your favorite ones.  But here’s the key: Don’t waste your time deleting images. This is one of the most common mistakes that newbies make.  It drains so much of their time and creativity.  Photo storage is cheap, and all those photo enthusiasts who suggest you delete bad images to save space don’t understand how much time (your most valuable asset) they waste when they delete images or when they use some multi-rating system of 1-5 stars or even worse, they delete images on their camera while they take photos or right after.

Trust me on this process, and you’ll be so much happier.  Pick your favorites by giving them a single star. (Lightroom users press the “1” key to give an image a single star).  Me Ra often does this step, and her secret is to go fast.  She doesn’t let herself get caught into some analysis of each individual photo because then it takes her three times as longer.  She also knows that she’s emotionally attached to the photos if she shot them, so the faster she picks her favorites the better.  Once you’ve single-starred your favorite images, the beautiful part comes.  You can now choose a filter in Lightroom so you only seeing the “1” star images.

Now you’re ready for the good stuff, editing your photos.  And you got to this stage at least 4x’s faster than all the other organization methods and advice out there.  (Yes, we’ve timed it.  🙂