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How do you use star ratings?


dan_south

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<p>It's not easy to rate one's work objectively, but there are advantages to be gained from making the effort. If we want to feature our best photos (for clients, for a website or a photo book, for instance), we need to be able to select the best shots from a larger population. The rating process can also help us to identify our own strengths and weaknesses.</p>

 

<p>Photo editing and organizing software titles usually provide a "rate by stars" feature. The number of stars indicates a level of quality. Typically, a five-star rating is considered the best, but one could flip the ratings system and mark with best work with a single star if they wanted to. (Canon users might like this inverted system, since Canon's best cameras are marked with the number 1.)</p>

<p>As for what each level of stars means, there are different options. But before we discuss applying stars to photos, let's compare for reference the way that a movie critic might use the star system to rate upcoming films.</p>

<p><strong>The Movie Critic's Rating System</strong><br>

* - <em>A really bad film. Don't waste your money.</em><br>

** - <em>Disappointing. If you must watch it, wait until it comes on TV for free.</em><br>

*** - <em>A good, solid film, but nothing special.</em><br>

**** - <em>A very good film with minimal flaws. Highly recommended.</em><br>

***** - <em>An outstanding film. A contender for Best Picture. A must see.</em></p>

<p>There are good movies and great movies. There are movies that are somewhat disappointing and others that are laughably bad. The Movie Critic's Rating System has to cover all of these bases.</p>

<p>But when it comes to our own photos, do we need to mark the bad ones with a star? How about just not rate them at all? Does this rating system make sense for a photographer who is sorting through their work?</p>

<p><strong>Photo Rating System Number 1 (From Bad to Great)</strong><br>

* - <em>A bad photograph. I regret that I took it.</em><br>

** - <em>A disappointing photo. I could have done better.</em><br>

*** - <em>A good, solid photo, but nothing special.</em><br>

**** - <em>A very good photo with few if any flaws.</em><br>

***** - <em>My best work. I'll show it proudly.</em></p>

<p>I'm sure that lots of people use this method to good effect, but personally, I find that it doesn't offer enough gradation. Why would I bother to tag a bad photo with a star or a disappointing shot with two stars. It's a waste of stars. Just leave them unrated. Further, if ALL of my good photos get four- or five-star ratings, how would I identify my very best work? I've already run out of stars.</p>

<p>Here is the rating system that I have adopted for my own work. It provides several levels of "good" within the five-star range.</p>

<p><strong>Photo Rating System Number 2 (From Good to Better to Outstanding)</strong><br>

* - <em>Good. A better than average photo. An image that caught my eye upon initial review and shows potential that I might want to explore in the future.</em><br>

** - <em>Better. A solid image with no perceivable flaws. Work that I would feature proudly on my website. (This is the level where viewers start to say "Wow!")</em><br>

*** - <em>Exceptional. Beyond technical competence. An image that is emotionally stirring or represents special conditions or circumstances that could not be easily repeated.</em><br>

**** - <em>Outstanding. Perhaps the best image in an entire collection.</em><br>

***** - <em>Rare. Among my personal best. The type of image that we don't make many of over the course of a year.</em></p>

<p>This is the system that works for me. It offers the opportunity to classify my work with varying levels of "good" so I can differentiate the rare gems when they come along. instead of wasting stars on mistakes and disappointments. Mundane or flawed images don't get any stars. If an image has even one star it means that I thought highly of it enough to separate it from the pack. Most of the images that I display publicly are ** or ***, because four- and five-star ratings are reserved for rare and exceptional work. </p>

<p>What system do you use? Do you use stars at all, or do you use another rating system (colors, flags, keywords)? What is the rationale behind your system, and how well does it work for you?</p>

 

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<p>Interesting post Dan. I have only recently starting using rating stars in ACR. After a shoot, I go through and assign three stars to those shots that are worth keeping. From those, I assign five stars to the best shots. I don't bother with any other number of stars, as the difference between three and five is easy to see and understand for me. I usually delete any shots without stars. I also usually only process five stars images, but keep the three star ones for future reference.</p>
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<p>I default everything in a new image dump to 3 stars. As I quickly blast through them while doing triage, some get deleted immediately, and those that likely WILL be deleted but which may be worth judicial reprieve get a single star. The "very unlikely to be used, but maybe I'll keep it for editorial/context use or in case someone in it turns out to be famous" ... two stars. Fours are "show as part of the collection, it's a keeper" and fives are the rare ones that transcend the project at hand, and merit a presence in the wider portfolio.<br /><br />In this scheme, everything starts out as a 3, but nothing ends up that way. To be sure I've handled every image, I filter for 3's at the end of the process, and should find none.<br /><br />We all have our ways!</p>
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<p>Interesting discussion Dan. I use three stars, and only a few get to three stars. Many of those I don't delete hang around with one star (many of these are documentary in nature - "I was here, with so-and-so, on this day"); and some percentage stays at two because there's something about them that takes away what I consider to be the best I might do. I have trouble discerning more gradations than that, and it's a good start to decide what I'm going to use for videos and shows, and to include in prints for people.</p>

<p>One question - do you ever get photos that move up or down your scale, as some of mine do? Recently I moved a couple from two to three stars because they've grown on me over the past year; and downgraded several as being more ordinary than I first considered.</p>

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<p>Ditto, very interesting. Since I've been using Lightroom for several months I've wondered how others are using the stars and other ranking doodads.</p>

<p>I tend to leave everything untagged/unstarred by default. I'll quickly sort through the new photos and assign 4 or 5 stars the best that I plan to edit immediately. Later I'll try to decide which can be deleted, but I seldom get around to assigning 3 or fewer stars to any photo. </p>

<p>And I'm reluctant to delete anything until I've had plenty of time to mull over the possibilities. I like "flawed" photos and don't automatically dismiss a photo just because it's blurred, underexposure, etc.</p>

<p>In fact, earlier this year I grossly overexposed a photo and normally would have deleted it. There were no details in the highlights of the in-camera JPEG. But on a whim I decided to try editing the raw file. Darned if it didn't turn out to be one of my favorite photos from that session. Even though it was more than 2 stops overexposed, and possibly worse, the end result was a lovely high key couples portrait that I'd have missed if I'd jumped to conclusions and deleted it. The notion of a romantic, "lifestyle" type high key portrait was so foreign to my personal aesthetics that I didn't immediately recognize the potential of that "flawed" photo.</p>

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<p>I start by deleting photos that I don't want for any reason at all. Some of these are the third or fourth variation picks for which the first and second variations are clearly the best. Then I assign two stars for "maybe," three stars for "keeper," four stars for photos that need to be stitched or blended with other photos, and five stars for those that I think are excellent (very few get an initial 5 stars). It's really more of a guide for further processing than it is for ranking photos for me.</p>
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<p>I use the second system quoted in the OP; so basically anything with a star is already above my average. 3 to 5 star rated photos are rare, plus I tend to re-evaluate every now and then which usually means some 5 stars shift to 4, and some 2/3 stars shift to 4/5 - to catch those photos that 'grow on you'.<br>

For workflow purposes (delete/edit/export small/export large and things like that) I use the numbers instead. My 'workflow' (Nikon ViewNX2/CaptureNX2) works well for this, somehow in these programs filtering for the numbers works easier than working with the star ratings.</p>

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<p>This is how I *use* my star rated images.</p>

<p>Personal images:<br>

* to *****: Kept for photo merge, collage, etc.<br>

* to ***: These stand alone images will be for my eyes only.<br>

****: Candidates for small web jpegs, donations and publications with credit given.<br>

*****: Candidates for large prints, large jpeg submissions or client samples with copyright on them.</p>

<p>Clients' images:<br>

* to *****: They want everything.<br>

*** to *****: They want my selections.</p>

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>> One question - do you ever get photos that move up or down your scale, as some of mine do? <<

 

That happens frequently. I often assign stars before I begin processing the files and then reassess the ratings afterward. For instance, I

might have two shots, each rated at three stars initially. After processing, I might find that I like one image better, so I'll bump the other one down to two stars. If the one that I like seems particularly special, I might elevate to a four-star rating.

 

It's interesting to read about the different ways that people use star ratings. It's a flexible system, and I can follow the logic in each case. Lots of great ideas to ponder!

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<p>I too will downgrade an image if I find after beginning processing that it isn't worth five stars after all. I do this because if I decide to have a day where I go back over older shoots (looking for any missed shots that I wanted to process but ran out of time or whatever) I don't get confused and say to myself, now why didn't I fully process that one? As you can't get rid of a star once you've put it there (as far as I know anyway) I downgrade it to one star.</p>
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