Now I mentioned in an earlier video how I've got all my images sorted according to their writing. So you can see down here on the toolbar, I've sorted according to writing. So my highest rated images flow to the top and allow us to the bottom. So that begs the question, how do we apply these writings. So you can see I'll use the writing star system here. And I'm just going to jump into my Prague folder, because my Prague images have no writing at all.

So I've got them set up so we can demonstrate the process of writing. So if I find an image that I particularly liked the look of here and I wish to give it a rating star, I can go up to my photo menu and I can say photo and set rating. And you can see I have an option of one to five stars. Now, just while I'm in this menu, there's actually three different writing systems. There's the flag system, the rising stars are the color labels. So all three of them have a, I guess similar sort of purpose in just kind of categorizing your images.

I personally use the writing star system for everything. So I'd like to show you that first. And then I will mention a little about the others as well. So with set writing, I can choose one to five stars, I generally like to start with one or two at the most I've the image is half decent, it gets one, if it's a little bit better than that it gets two, so I might just give this image two stars. Now you can see that the keyboard shortcut, if I just pop back in there, photo set writing, the keyboard shortcut is actually just the corresponding number. So if I want to press two stars, I number two, three stars number three, and so forth.

So moving through these images, I might think, Okay, well, I might just you look good. You can have one star that can have two stars. I like to look at that. And maybe that looks like a two star as well. Maybe that one can have one star. So I'm just pressing the number now as you can see, and that looks like a two star there.

While I can also do as I mouse over the slide, you can see these various little sort of symbols appear, these little arrows actually enable me to rotate the image if I wanted to, if it hasn't imported correctly, these little dots also represent stars. So I can say you can have one star. In fact, I think you can have two stars. So two stars for the standout images, one for the half decent, and we start to work like that. So getting one star, maybe one star for that one. And maybe one style for that one, and maybe two stars for that one and maybe two stars for that one, and that one, and the lovely dancing building here should get two stars.

And I like this silhouette effect. Actually, I prefer that one you can have two stars and maybe two there, and maybe one there and one there. So once I've gone through all my images and applied my stars, we like this one too. And here's the dancing building in landscape. I think we'll take that as well. Why I've awarded some stars, I can go to my toolbar here and my sort menu and I can say, sort by writing.

And now, my highest rated images come to the top. So the order I shut these images is no longer relevant. It's the how many stars they've got that controls the order that they display. So that's a wonderful system to ensure as you accumulate, you know, vast quantities of images, hundreds and thousands and 10s of thousands of images that you can very quickly and easily separate your chosen shots from your, let's say, less chosen shots just using the rising stars. Now, I mentioned there's also the flag system, we can use the flagging system and a lot of people find that a little bit easier. Basically, the way that works is every image has to be one of three states and I'll just go photo and set flag and you can see here, every image by default is unflagged.

And I can alter that state into Two ways I can either make it flagged by pressing the letter P, or I can make it rejected by pressing the letter X. So let's say I wanted to go through and find some, some problematic shots here. Let's say that like that one, I'm going to press X, and that one's going to become rejected. So it gets the black flag up in the top corner. And maybe I'll, that one, and I'll say that's a peak, I like that one. And that gets a white flag in the top corner.

Now notice the image that I rejected is now grayed out. So if I just grab a few more images and x them out, I can x you. And I can maybe I guess this is already an edited group of images. So there's not going to be a lot that I would want to delete. But I will just for the exercise, go ahead and set my reject mode for a few more of these images. Let's say we want to reject that one as well.

And we've got our reject. So now if I wanted to. So basically once an image has been rejected, it is one step away from being completely deleted, it gets grayed out. And then I can simply go, command, delete, to delete, and it says these. That'd be Ctrl Delete on Windows, here are the five images I have rejected and given a black flag and they are ready to be completely deleted. Now, as I personally don't delete anything, so I don't I don't use the flagging system, I don't like the idea of deleting anything because you never know when you may, you may want to come back and access even elements within the image, maybe not the whole image, maybe just a certain section.

So this menu says I can delete from disk so the preview and the negative is gone. Or I can just remove from Lightroom. So that removes the preview out of Lightroom. But the file stays on my computer. I'm going to do neither right now, I'm going to say I don't want to do that. I'm going to go Command A to select all, and I'm going to go photo and I'm going to say set flag and I'm going to say unflagged so now everything is unflagged To begin, so that's the flagging system.

So I guess if you've shot, you know, hundreds and hundreds of images, and you want to go through very quickly on the day, and just pick out the best ones, that's certainly a quick way to do it going p or x, p or x. But my preferred system is the stars, I'm really in that big hurry to, to isolate my best images. So I'm happy to award one or two stars. And then over time, I might like to just look at my two star images, and maybe think Well, I think I can take you up to three stars just now. And I think I can take you up to three stars, and I think you're worthy of three stars. And maybe you too, and we're starting to get and I like this one too.

So there's a nice little kind of, I guess, hierarchy slowly evolving of my images using the rising stars. The other one is the color labels. Actually, I mentioned that didn't I have to touch on that as well. You can also create a system that doesn't interfere with your stars. And that's the calculator So let's say I wanted to emac few images for a certain project. But I didn't want to interfere with my star rating system.

Let's say I want to do a little series of buildings, I might like this one here. And I can go photo set color label. And I've got choices of red, yellow, green, blue, or purple. Let's, let's say red. And now this image is identified as this red image. And maybe I want to do this one as well for my buildings exhibition.

So I'm going to go photo and I'm going to go set writing and again, sorry, set color label. And you can see the keyboard shortcut is actually the numbers continue after the stars, so 123454 stars and then 67894 colors, and purple doesn't get a keyboard shortcut as it is because it would need to be 10, which is not a very efficient keyboard shortcut is it because you need two keys, so you can be read and maybe you can be read. So I'm just going to press six to make you read because I love That building. And maybe I like this building here. And maybe I like these buildings here. So now I've just given an extra layer of, of, I guess identification to these images marked red, so I can isolate them should I so choose.

So that's three different ways we can write and rank our images using flags using stars or using color labels. And I'm certainly a big fan of the stars. I find that the most, the most kind of versatile and useful system