Abinoone
Well-known member
No I don‘t use Bridge, but I just tried it based on your recommendation and like it! Might be exactly what I’m looking for - thanks!
Reviewing & culling RAW files without Lightroom
- Thread starter Abinoone
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You already have an excellent program to review, classify and do initial editing with Photoshop's sub program Bridge. I upload photos to Bridge then evaluate and eliminate the bad shots; assign key words and folders for storage. Bridge can do some editing and from there you can go to Photo Raw for more editing and then to Photoshop itself for final processing.
You can also add a lot of information in a photo's metadata including making a template for the information that you want on every photo and Bridge's Photo Downloader can automatically add it to the photos downloaded.
I primarily use LR, and once in a very long while delve into PS very briefly, always returning to do most of my work in LR. That's because I can do 99.9% (more, actually) of what I want to do with my images in LR. Maybe I would get better results if I used PS, but I am most often pleased with my results using LR. It could be that using any of these other tools would speed up your workflow and decrease the time you spend editing your photos. Like Dan, I don't think that you should discount LR as an option in your search, unless you have another reason for not using LR.
It does take time to download, review and process a lot of files in LR. But how would that be any different when doing the same process with any other digital imaging software product?
SNEDDERS6666
Active member
Ralph can you tell me what set up on your iPad you have and the spec of your iPad, please? I have wanted to do this for some time but could not work out back ups and the like.
John Navitsky
Well-known member
one thing i'll mention. when i'm grading (culling) images often i'll have a sequence and i'm zoomed into 100% to really scrutinize the focus and i'm skeptical that the jpg preview will allow me that level of detail.
in those situations i may be picking the best of the sequence, and i suspect the jpg will give me enough there, but also i may decide the quality isn't there and i don't think i'd want to decide that without seeing the 1:1.
i understand some photographers can make these decisions with the jpg preview. but i think it's worth considering how well you can really decide without seeing the 1:1
example
here's a sequence i'm looking at
i liked the first couple, but they're a focus miss (focus on the body, not the head)
closer, but if this was the best one, i'd be on the fence about using it
ok, i'm happy with this one
in this example, i think i could rule out the first one with the preview. but if the second one was the best image, i'm less clear i could make a go, no-go decision based on the preview
in those situations i may be picking the best of the sequence, and i suspect the jpg will give me enough there, but also i may decide the quality isn't there and i don't think i'd want to decide that without seeing the 1:1.
i understand some photographers can make these decisions with the jpg preview. but i think it's worth considering how well you can really decide without seeing the 1:1
example
here's a sequence i'm looking at
i liked the first couple, but they're a focus miss (focus on the body, not the head)
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closer, but if this was the best one, i'd be on the fence about using it
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ok, i'm happy with this one
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in this example, i think i could rule out the first one with the preview. but if the second one was the best image, i'm less clear i could make a go, no-go decision based on the preview
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Not A Speck Of Cereal
Well-known member
Fast Raw Viewer is nice, especially since it's actually rendering the RAW. Lately I've been going back to Faststone, though I don't always like it's color handling (seems to be using the JPG engine settings), the fuller-sized image is good enough for culling. If I need more critical review though, I'll still use Fast Raw Viewer.
It doesn't make sense to me to cull in LR. The time you spent importing, entering the images in the database (catalog) with all import presets running on each image and then LR running Preview creation on all images, just for you to come along and nuke a sizeable portion of them, is inefficient.
Chris
It doesn't make sense to me to cull in LR. The time you spent importing, entering the images in the database (catalog) with all import presets running on each image and then LR running Preview creation on all images, just for you to come along and nuke a sizeable portion of them, is inefficient.
Chris
I used Bridge for years (and still use it) and find it adequate. HOWEVER, when dealing with thousands of images, it was just WAY too slow! It was taking forever to go from one image to the next . That forced me to try Photo Mechanic.
I'll continue to use Bridge for small batches of files. But coming home from a major shoot (i.e. Africa, etc) I use PM immediately to whittle the burst sequences down to size.
FWIW.....I use PM @ 100% a lot when judging an action sequence to find the best one or few shots. Final selection generally happens later in Bridge when I'm deciding which one to process.
I'll continue to use Bridge for small batches of files. But coming home from a major shoot (i.e. Africa, etc) I use PM immediately to whittle the burst sequences down to size.
FWIW.....I use PM @ 100% a lot when judging an action sequence to find the best one or few shots. Final selection generally happens later in Bridge when I'm deciding which one to process.
For Fasttone, go to the setting menu and the Raw tab, then there is a menu where you can choose the imbedded preview (fastest) or half size raw or full size raw (slowest).
Kumarsnaveen
Member
Agree faststone being underrated. It was blazing fast. Used faststone on my windows laptop to view NEF files.
Faststone doesn't support IOS. Once I moved to MAC, switched to NX studio.
Calson
Well-known member
What I like about FastRawViewer is that I can have 4 images at 1/4 screen size viewable at the same time. Much easier to decide with a burst of images to review, which one to keep and which ones to delete. It is the only viewer I have found that allows me to do this.
FWIW....Bridge allows one to select multiple images and then use a separate loupe on each to view a portion of each image up to 100%. I use this feature a lot when trying to find the sharpest eye in several very similar images. I often select 4 images and view the eye at 100% at the same time on all 4 images.
Image culling is different for each photographer and may differ from situation to situation. Shooting video now as well as stills at 20fps you can use up lots of storage space quickly. In many situations I prefer that the unnecessary stills and videos not ever get to my primary storage drives because they will make it to my backup drives pretty quickly. It is easy to delete from storage but not as easy to delete from backup.
I prefer Photo Mechanic for my sports jobs. I may shoot 4000+ images in a day and I need to reduce to maybe 400 to review and process in Lightroom. Not all of these images will be used but I will keep enough images to cover the event. I open a contact sheet in PM from the card, rate the keepers 3+, then ingest to my storage drive based on ratings greater than 3. The ingest process copies the files and the ratings into a folder on my storage drive. I then import and edit in LR with my initial rating from PM showing in LR.
Photo Mechanic has a lot of features that I don’t take advantage of, but it saves me time. It reads the Z9 HE files fine, and I don’t spend much time on each image. I don’t care if I am seeing the RAW image or the imbedded JPEG I just don’t want to wait for a preview. The time it takes to scroll through 4000 images is my primary concern. I am in and out of Photo Mechanic as quickly as possible.
In other shooting situations my culling process may be much different, I may just remove the out of focus or obviously unusable images in PM and then import the images into LR to study more carefully. I may cull more images once imported into LR but I keep more images for a longer period of time and my culling process may take a lot longer.
I think FastRaw Viewer would work for this process as well.
I prefer Photo Mechanic for my sports jobs. I may shoot 4000+ images in a day and I need to reduce to maybe 400 to review and process in Lightroom. Not all of these images will be used but I will keep enough images to cover the event. I open a contact sheet in PM from the card, rate the keepers 3+, then ingest to my storage drive based on ratings greater than 3. The ingest process copies the files and the ratings into a folder on my storage drive. I then import and edit in LR with my initial rating from PM showing in LR.
Photo Mechanic has a lot of features that I don’t take advantage of, but it saves me time. It reads the Z9 HE files fine, and I don’t spend much time on each image. I don’t care if I am seeing the RAW image or the imbedded JPEG I just don’t want to wait for a preview. The time it takes to scroll through 4000 images is my primary concern. I am in and out of Photo Mechanic as quickly as possible.
In other shooting situations my culling process may be much different, I may just remove the out of focus or obviously unusable images in PM and then import the images into LR to study more carefully. I may cull more images once imported into LR but I keep more images for a longer period of time and my culling process may take a lot longer.
I think FastRaw Viewer would work for this process as well.
BreezeBrowser, XView and now Fast Raw Viewer also offer up to 4 images for comparison at once as well.
--Ken
I also use this. fastRawViewer is another option.
I use it by viewing images full screen (on a mac you tap the spacebar and scroll thru) and mark images I don't want - eg with a 1 star. I either delete them then or exclude them from the second culling session, depending on how many images I have. It really does everything I want. As for speed - for me (at this point) it is adequate. Getting rid of the obvious bad images is fast enough in the first or second round. It is part of the Adobe Photoshop package - gets updated with the rest - and costs nothing extra. I am not saying there isn't anything better, but I really do enjoy using it. Customized to my liking - it works seamlessly for me.
Well done for trying it. If you find something else - you will at least be able to compare the two programs.
vulpess
Active member
Another vote for Faststone from me. I always do the first culling in there to get rid of the obviously out of focus images and then load the rest into Lightroom.
However, I do agree with @John Navitsky. When there are images that are quite close, I do not trust the jpeg preview enough. In those cases, I'll load both of them into LR and go from there.
However, I do agree with @John Navitsky. When there are images that are quite close, I do not trust the jpeg preview enough. In those cases, I'll load both of them into LR and go from there.
alecdann
Member
If you used Lightroom, you could easily cull photos using the reject flag and auto-advance. To narrow a selection of similar shots, Lightroom also has a survey tool to let you eliminate variants. Once done with culling you could create collections (like playlists) of photos based on manual selection, keywords, ratings or any other metadata -- without creating duplicates. The tools you are familiar with from Camera Raw are all in Lightroom so no learning curve there.
agrumpyoldsod
Well-known member
True -- I do not take a laptop into the field - if I did I would transfer files from cards onto it and deal with them then.
On rare occasions I use snapbridge to transfer one file or another to look at the focus or similar to help me ensure I captured the planned shot.
Most often I do what I recommend - leave the cards in your camera until full and review and initially rate images in camera -- ONLY delete obvious misses. Leave all the rest until you have off loaded them onto a laptop/computer
I am currently in the Maasai Mara for 20 days; 17 game drives over the first 9 days in I have taken 10,300 lossless RAW images (and some long, for me, 8K video sequences) - that is 1,144 a day - normally 3/4 are taken in the morning game drive and the final 1/3rd in the late afternoon game drive.
Lots of down time in the Safari Vehicle while we wait for our subjects - reviewing and rating is simple and easy to do across my 3 cameras while we wait. Offloading takes only a few minutes (CF Express Type B and fast cards) using a Delkin Devices card reader and fast T4 cable.
I only import into LRC with Minimal Previews built. Later I build 1:1 previews for the images that survive my review and cull process once on the laptop -- my preference is to delete few shots in the field.
Z9 is why I got Photo Mechanic 6
How do you do that in bridge?
Here is my take.
Lightroom classic with my brain are not on the same wavelength. That’s out.
I bought Fast Raw, No like. It didn’t click with me. Same with Photo Mechanic which I own too.
My brain clicked with Adobe Bridge.
Here is why.
I can easily rate them, then copy over to another drive/folder. Then I can open a bunch of photos in Adobe Camera RAW which is almost as good as develop in lightroom. (Almost, because ACR doesn’t have another circle and a handle to adjust the feather of a mask)
If a photo needs more attention, I can open it in photoshop right from ACR.
This is all fine for daily sessions.
After a trip with 8+ thousands of images, Bridge is the worts tool.
Light room classic would do a much better job if I let it import while I go do something else. But after I’m done rating my images in LRC and I open them in Bridge, Bridge would not recognize or read those ratings. I have to begin from scratch.
Nikon NX Studio is buggy. It would freeze so often, and lag after each slider adjustment.
Lightroom classic with my brain are not on the same wavelength. That’s out.
I bought Fast Raw, No like. It didn’t click with me. Same with Photo Mechanic which I own too.
My brain clicked with Adobe Bridge.
Here is why.
I can easily rate them, then copy over to another drive/folder. Then I can open a bunch of photos in Adobe Camera RAW which is almost as good as develop in lightroom. (Almost, because ACR doesn’t have another circle and a handle to adjust the feather of a mask)
If a photo needs more attention, I can open it in photoshop right from ACR.
This is all fine for daily sessions.
After a trip with 8+ thousands of images, Bridge is the worts tool.
Light room classic would do a much better job if I let it import while I go do something else. But after I’m done rating my images in LRC and I open them in Bridge, Bridge would not recognize or read those ratings. I have to begin from scratch.
Nikon NX Studio is buggy. It would freeze so often, and lag after each slider adjustment.
Photomechanic.
Don't confuse your lack of familiarity with the product with a lack of capability. My guess is you had filtering set to only show rated images and it would work with a simple change.
It may be difficult to use - because it is designed for people who who need its capabilities and there is some expected learning curve. There are some very good YouTube tutorials available.
Photo Mechanic uses the same full size preview that is embedded in the NEF file. It's a full size JPEG with compression. It's more than adequate for image review. It is capable of a 100% view - or even a 200% view without issues.
Here are two typical images at 200% - a screen shot of the images with the default Standard Picture Control.
This was with the Z7ii, 400mm f/4.5 at about 16 feet - just outside minimum focus distance.
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This is with the Z7ii, 400 f/4.5 and 1.4 TC at a distance of around 500 yards. I didn't know whether this would be sharp at 1/100 sec.
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