Subtitles of the Movie

With the advent of digital photography, it's very common for people to take a lot of shots since you're not longer paying per image as you used to have to do with film. Well, overall that's a very good thing and certainly helps ensure that you get the shot you're after. It's all too easy to find yourself drowning in a sea of digital files. It's absolutely essential that you organize and edit your files. I prefer to do a two-step process where I go through my images the first time and reject the terrible ones and yes, even pros have some awful shots. And mark the ones I'm excited about with one or three stars. And after a few days or even a week or two, I go back through the files and rate them more carefully. I delete more and expand the rating system to use from one to five stars. I find that on the initial edit, I'm often reacting to what I hope to see in the pictures based on my emotions and memories when I took the shots versus seeing more objectively what's really there, for better or worse. After a bit of time has passed, I find that I've overlooked some great shots and perhaps was a little too excited about some shots that may not be technically perfect. Then I want to mark off some of the files with a color label that shows that I want to use them for a certain purpose, whether for my website, a slideshow to illustrate an article, use it for a demonstration, make a print, competition, et cetera. Bridge makes it easy to edit this way. To begin, in Bridge Preferences, I make sure that I've unchecked the requirement to use a modifier key when I apply labels and ratings. As I go through my images, I can use the Up and Down Arrow Keys to progress through the images. To check any area for critical sharpness, I press the Control or Command Key and click on the Preview. That brings up the Loop Tool. Remember that you can set preferences to require the modifier key, the Control or Command Key, or not. I find that requiring it saves me from accidentally bringing up the Loop Tool when I don't want it. This part points to the area that is being magnified and you can click and drag it wherever you'd like. When you're done with the magnifying tool, click again in the black area and it will disappear. Sometimes you may want to compare two or more images. Select both images by Control or Command clicking on both of them and then you can set a Loop Tool on each one. Now, in this case I'm comparing two different people, but often you would have two similar images. Then if I hold down the Control or Command Keys and click and drag on one of them, both of the Loop Tools will move in unison. To see your images without any distractions full screen, click on the Spacebar and to see the other image that you are looking at, use the Arrow Key. When you want to return to the regular view, press the Spacebar again. To assign a rating of between one and five stars, simply press the one through five keys. You'll see the stars appear over here underneath the thumbnails. Right now I'm using my number keys but I could also click right here on the little dots and to remove them I can type the number zero or click to the left of the dots. When you want to delete an image, begin first by pressing Alt or Option plus Delete. That will label it as a reject. If you simply hit the Delete Key on an image, which I'll do on this one, you'll see this dialog appear that gives you the option to actually delete the file or to reject it. You can set it up so that every time you just hit the Delete Key, you're rejecting the image and opt to not see this dialog again. The point of actually rejecting the image rather than deleting it is that this gives you the opportunity to reject your images more aggressively and then go through the images that you've rejected to make sure that you actually want to delete them. If you change your mind on one, just change its rating and it disappeared from view because right now I'm viewing just the rejected images. With the image that's left, if you actually want to delete it, then you hit Command Delete or Control Delete on a PC and that will delete the image. To immediately delete an image rather than reject it, you can always press Control or Command plus Delete or use the Trashcan Icon. I'm going to unfilter it so I see all my images again. To apply a color label, you're going to press the keys six through nine; six brings up the red, seven yellow, eight green and nine blue. It's a good idea to develop your own system of what these colors mean to you and then be consistent with it. Taking the time to delete bad images and rate and label the rest will make it a lot easier when you want to select an image.