Rating, filtering, and finding the keepers more quickly

All right. Let's get to work putting into practice the shortcuts we learned in the previous movie. Here we can see in Adobe Bridge I've selected the folder Family. Inside of this folder, I have some pictures that I captured of my sister and her family. And in this folder we have some photographs which are good, some photographs which aren't any good at all. And this is typical in most photographic work flows. And what we need to do is we need to learn how we can quickly separate the wheat from the chaff or the keepers from those photographs which aren't very good.

One easy way to do that is to add star or label ratings to our pictures. So, here with this photograph I don't think its very good so I'll press Cmd+1 on the Mac or Ctrl+1 on Windows in order to add a one-star rating. Then press your arrow key. The right arrow key to move forward. Left arrow key to move backwards, until you find another photograph. I like this image a little bit better, so here I'll press Cmd+3 on a Mac, or Ctrl+3 on Windows. Then I'll just press my right arrow key and keep going through the photographs. And as you start to review your images, you really have to have that eye, you have to evaluate your pictures and try to look for something which is interesting to you. I like this here, so I'll press Cmd+3 on a Mac, Ctrl+3 on Windows, same thing with this photograph.

And with this one I'll press Cmd or Ctrl+2, it isn't very good. Now you can also jump around in your photographs as well. Press the up arrow key in order to move up. Or press the down arrow key in order to move down. This brings me to a fun photograph. My sister and brother in-law, they have a great sense of humor. I know that they'll like these photographs. So, here I'm going to use my arrow keys to move forward through them. And I'll also move back just to evaluate the difference between these photographs. When you find an image which is good like this one here, I know that they'll love this, I'll add a rating.

Press Cmd on Mac, Ctrl on Windows and then four in order to add that four star rating. Now, if ever you want to remove the star rating, just press Cmd on Mac, Ctrl on Windows and then zero. And that will remove the stars altogether. To change the star rating, press Cmd or Ctrl, and then type a number on the keyboard. Alright, well what about those situations where you might want to add a quote sticky note, or a label to your photographs? You can do that by pressing Cmd on Mac, Ctrl on Windows, and then six through nine. Here, if I press Cmd or Ctrl+6, you can see I add a red label.

To remove that label, press the same shortcut key, Cmd or Ctrl+6 again. And here you can see that you can use that shortcut key to add or remove that label. Well, let's leave that on there. And then I want to navigate to a few other photographs. Here I have an image which I gave 4 stars to. I'll press Cmd or Ctrl+6 on that one. And also on this one here. And I've added this red label just because I know that my sister will love these photographs and I want to email them to her. Or you might add a label so that you can send those images to your client, or send them to the printer.

Or whatever it is. All right. Well, so far we have some different criteria, right? We have some stars. We have some labels. Well, after you've gone through all of your photographs the next step of course is to filter and find the images which are really good. Now we can do this a few different ways yet here what I want to do is highlight the sort shortcut, which I mentioned in the previous movie. So, if we press Cmd or Ctrl+4 to add a star rating, all that we need to do is to press Cmd+Option+4 on a Mac, Ctrl+Alt+4 on Windows.

And that will then allow us to filter or view all of our images which have a 4 star rating or higher. Now, here you can see I have this small set of photographs and, in a sense, this is kind of nice because I can see the photographs, which I like best out of the set. Now, if ever you want to go back because you're not quite certain about this view and you want to turn off this filtering option, we'll just push the shortcut key again. On a Mac press Cmd+Option+4, on Windows, that's Ctrl+Alt+4. We can also do this with our labels as well. If we just want to see the images which have a certain label rating, we'll press Cmd+Option+6 for the red label, because that's all I have here. That's Ctrl+Alt+6 on Windows, and that will then show us the images with that label rating.

Now, you can also do the same thing by working with your filter panel. Here we can click on these check boxes in order to view boxes based on certain criteria as you can see, showing up here in the Content panel. And while this is handy, what I recommend you do is you learn those shortcuts because those can really help to speed up your overall workflow. Now, what do you do if you forget the shortcuts. Well, you can always look them up by navigating to the label Pull down menu. Here first let me select an image and then go to the label Pull down menu, so that the menu isn't grayed out. Notice that it's showing me the shortcut in order to add the star rating and also the shortcut in order to add the labels.

Well, after I've reviewed those, I also want to refine that shortcut for filtering. We can find that by clicking on this star Pull down menu. Here it will list that shortcut which we used. Which allowed us to filter our images based on certain criteria. On a Mac, that was Option+Cmd 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. On Windows, that'll be Ctrl+Alt, and then the respective number. So, in this way, you can always access that information if ever you forget the shortcuts. Yet, what I recommend you do, is in order to get good with Adobe Bridge.

Is it you write those shortcuts down and you start to use them, because what I've found in my own workflow, is that this is one of those steps where it really helps to be able to work more quickly. Because I capture a ton of photographs and allot of those photographs aren't any good at all. And I need every technique that I can use in order to be able to find those photographs which are the best.