Tips for when to delete

[mpancha]

I was reading an post on the DPS website that showed up on my RSS feed called "don't delete your digital photography mistakes too quickly" (http://digital-photography-school.co...#comment-41800)

The article makes sense, you can't really tell a good or bad picture on a 2 inch screen, and you might appreciate a photo more later on when you view it down the road.

My problem I guess you could call it is if I don't delete them quickly, I end up importing them into my library. It would make sense to sit down then or the next day and go through and delete bad photos, however the problem I end up with is I don't have the time to sit down until I've already accumulated a couple hundred shots.

What I do now is I'll take several shots of a subject, and once I've satisfied myself, I'll scan through and clear any obviously poor shots, and keep a few which I later choose 1 or 2 from when I'm back at my desktop. Generally Ill end up with no more than 20 shots from a single "photo walk". The article I read today though did make me pause and think I could be doing this better, and could quite well delete a gem without realizing it.

What advice do you have on how to manage clearing out photos, or I suppose archiving photos (and finding them again later)?

[Nicole]

I delete once I've imported them and once I've had a chance to look at them on the screen, but it's either right away when I download the card or the next day if I'm too tired. Honestly I should delete more . But I go through in Lightroom and delete the obviously over/underexposed shots and the ones that are massively out of focus. Then I go through and select the actual keepers. It's the ones in between the definitely delete shots and the keepers that I need to be a little more liberal with the delete key with.

[wulf]

I'd hold on a bit. I quite often find that "mistakes" (like an overexposed shot when I'm homing in on "correct" settings with one of my manual lenses) will give a fresh way of seeing the subject so I agree with the article.

What software are you using to manage the images on your computer? My main machine is a Mac and I find iPhoto capable enough for my needs. It takes less time to delete from there than from the camera and I've got a way of retrieving deleted shots until I empty the trash once in a while. I can select and drop a whole group of shots and also use the tools to compare the details of several similar shots, zooming in and out to find the best version.

Wulf

[Jim Bryant]

The only time I delete anything from the camera if it is sooooooooo out of focus. I never get underexposed or overexposed images. And if you believe that, I got some land I want to sell ya Besides, while I'm in the process of dumping in camera images, I'm most likely missing something. That why I have a crap load of 4 gig cards.

[Saralonde]

I delete obvious bad shots in camera, download the rest and delete those that really don't make the cut. To cut down on the rest, I'll look at two similar shots side by side, comparing them on the qualities that are important to me in that session, chose the "better" one and delete the other.

I have kept some "imperfect" shots like the one in the blog for sentimental reasons, but otherwise I'm trying to be a bit more picky about what I save.

[rediguana]

I don't delete them in camera for the same reason. Better to grab another card or two instead

When I get them back to a computer, I generally have at least two iterative passes through photos to decide whether to delete.

1. Delete the obviously bad ones - blurred etc.
2. Next time round try a 60 sec fix, e.g. correcting tone, exposure, cropping, straightening. If still no good then I'll delete it.

[retronesphoto]

For me, I take my pictures, then look through them in my camera, then copy the ones I want into my computer. I don't delete the pictures one by one, i simply just format the card after.

Sometimes, I just import all my pictures into my "My Pictures" folder, and delete it from there.

I take multiple (around 5) shots of the same image so I always can choose one of the pictures I really like out of the five, the rest are deleted.

[retronesphoto]

And yea, like rediguana said, delete the ones that are blurred or the images that are not worth fixing. I shoot in both RAW/JPEG and if the JPEG is not to my liking, i delete both the JPEG and the RAW.