Culling down your photos should be the first step in your editing process.
A lot of my favorite tips for Lightroom are tiny adjustments to your workflow that don’t feel like they’re doing a whole lot to speed up your editing process, but when you add those half-seconds together over a few hundred or thousand photos, it results in quite a bit of saved time.
Today’s tip is primarily aimed at speeding up your culling or rating process. The first thing I do after I import photos into Lightroom is start selecting my favorites by adding a flag (I tap ‘P’ to quickly flag a photo), but you can tap any number, 1-9 to quickly add a star rating (1-5) or color rating (6-9) if you’d prefer that rating system over a flag.
Instead of having to arrow over to the next photo after giving it a rating, making every photo a two keystroke operation, I use the Auto Advance option in Lightroom to automatically move on to the next photo once it’s rated.
You will find the option to turn on Auto Advance under the Photo menu, but it can only be turned on while in the Library module. If you’re having trouble finding the option, it may be that you are in Develop module rather than Library mode, so make note that you must be in Library module for the option to appear.
I’d love to hear how you like to rate your photos in Lightroom! Are you a star, color, or flag user? You can reach out to me here anytime!
