What are you doing with not used images?

[sinus]

Hi all

I am curious, what are other people do with images, what are never used?
I mean, during an event, portraits, sill lifes, also family pictues and so on, usually you do never use all pics, some are not sharp, or not good in the exposure and so on.
And some are tecnical fine, but simply boring or, even more, you have enough good images.

Say, you make a portrait, you do 100 images, all are good, but finally you works only with 25 photos.

What with the others?
Do you delete it immediately?
Do you delete them after 1 or 3 years?
Or do you hold all in your DB?

I tend to hold all pics, except very bad images.
Or if I have really enough good images, then I delete also some, what even basically are fine.

What are you thinking about this?
How do you deal with this?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[Mario]

I delete recklessly.

[sinus]

I delete recklessly.

  (First I had to check up the vocabulary for this relentless word  )

[unterwasserfoto_at]

[german]
Hallo

Mein Workflow schaut so aus dass ich die Bilder alle in AdobeBridge sichte. Hier werden gute Bilder mit dem Lable "rot" gekennzeichnet. Bilder welche unscharf sind lösche ich.
Dann bin ich ca bei den 25% Bildern wie du beschrieben hast. Hier werden dann die besten bearbeitet. Diese werden dann in eine parallele Ordnerstruktur kopiert für die weitere Verwendung. So ist schon mal diese Struktur schlank.
Ich gestehe dass ich die "RAW-Daten" fast alle aufgehoben habe. Ab und zu werden grosse Kundenaufträge gelöscht. Hier aber nur jene die nicht selektiert wurden.

Ein nicht allzuleichtes Thema

[sinus]

[german]
Ein nicht allzuleichtes Thema

Da gebe ich Dir 100%-ig recht!
So wie Du es machst, ist auch nicht schlecht.

[mastodon]

DELETE, you have no time to search or brows over images that are nearly the same.
I don't delete images that are not good, but documents some event, that has nor other pics.

[BanjoTom]

DELETE!  But though that's my workflow philosophy, I don't always delete as relentlessly and completely as I probably should! 

[JohnZeman]

The bad ones I'll delete.
The questionable ones I'll remove from IMatch and my computer and store them in another location because more than once I have had a need to see one or more of those questionable images later on.

[herman]

I delete the absolute duds (out of focus, grossly overexposed).

The images I want to print or e-publish are processed.

The remainder staying on my disks and in the IMatch catalogue.

Comparable to silver halide film processing, my workflow has hardly changed since those oldskool days.

Sometimes I may return to the non-printed images because there is some information on it or because one of them fits a purpose now that was not there when I processed the images the first time.

Storage is cheap nowadays......

[Mees Dekker]

I do exactly the same as Herman. Only the images that are technically unusable, are deleted. All the others are assigned to categories, etc etc. even before culling and editing. In this way, I can find any image on my disks very easily. Storage is cheap these days, indeed.

Only the best 25% or so, will get a rating and will be edited (when necessary).

All images will remain in my DB and quite often I find myself browsing through these old images. And I can find them very easily since every image is assigned to at least 4 or 5 categories.

[Jingo]

I have begun to delete.. mercilessly now!  With 30fps cameras - I tend to take hundreds of similar images... I only need 1 or 2 of these!  Compare 8-10, choose 1.. compare next 8-10, choose 1...  Yes - space is cheap.. but I don't want to ever have to go through hundreds of images that are so similar and close to each other... I only want to do it once and move along.

[unterwasserfoto_at]

[German]
Das ist alles nicht ganz leicht. Erst vor kurzem habe ich Bilder benötigt welche 20 Jahre alt sind. Die Bilder welche ich damals ausgewählt habe, wollte ich für den heutigen Zweck nicht merh und war froh andere Bilder vorzufinden.

Auch ist es schön einen gewissen Verlauf wieder zu erkennen

Die Technik bleibt nicht stehen. Ein RAW-Konverter damals und heute. Die heutigen sind viel Leistungsstärker und holen aus NIO-Bildern wahre Wunder hervor.

Auch ist mein Stand heute viel besser. Ich kann zB aus zwei drei Bildern ein perfektes Bild zaubern.

Ein generelles Löschen würde ich nicht zustimmen. Aber bei der ersten Selection viel restrektiver einzelne Bilder Löschen. Ein tip den ich einst bekommen habe, die Bilder erst einige Tage später begutachten. So hat man die Emotionen weg die beim Shooting vorhanden waren und man wählt anders aus.

Eine Studie unsere Fotografen Innung hat ergeben dass folgende Themen den professionellen Fotografen ausmachen.
* drei bis fünf Bilder selekieren
* Bilder über Jahre archivieren und wiederfinden (besonders auf Personen bezogen)

Bei meiner Ausbildung zum Fotografen zu analogen Zeiten, ging man beim Erstellen eines Bildes auch viel genauer vor. Es dauerte oft bis zu 30 Minuten bevor man abdrückte. Und man hat sich auch überlegt ein weiteres male abzudrücken. Klar ein Bild kostete bis zu 40Ös das sind ca €4 Vielleicht sollte man das auch überlegen wenn man ein HighEnd Ding mit über 30MB in der Hand hält.
Überlegt selber, betrachtet das Handy. Jeder schiesst unendliche Bilder. So dass der Speicher überquillt aber keiner findet ein Bild welches vor 6 Monaten erstellt worden ist auf Grund der Menge.

Also mein Tip:
überlegter Fotografieren.
restrektiver selektieren und löschen bei der ersten Durchsicht.
erste Durchsicht Tage später (wenn möglich)
Nur bearbeitet Bilder und wichtige Bilder (Personsn zum Wiederfinden) in die Datenbank einfügen.

Nun hoffe ich dass ich keinen verwirrt habe.
Bin gerne für konstruktive Diskussionen und Fragen bereit.

Gruß Tom

[DigPeter]

Delete and be damned.

[Whaler]

I think it depends on what you value in the photograph.
When I first started photography, I consumed myself with learning how to take great pictures and I would quite liberally toss out pictures that were less than perfect. When digital came around it was easy to shoot hundreds of photos, delete most of them and spend hours in Photoshop creating a few print worthy photos of what ever I kept.
After a few years of this I realized that when I was looking through my photographs, I wasn't searching for the ratings, or the edits. When I was looking through my photos I was looking for people, places, and times in my life.

Here's what I discovered -
If I were to ask you to recite to me the lyrics of a song you hadn't heard in 10 or 15 years. There's a chance you might recall the chorus, possibly the first verse. There's a very good chance you wouldn't be able to remember very much or any of it at all. However, once the music starts, the lyrics pour out of you like you wrote the song!

That's what photographs do for me. I can't remember what year I graduated. I need help remembering my anniversary. When I see a photograph I took, I can remember dozens of variables not captured in the pixels I'm viewing. I will remember all kinds of details of what I was doing at that time, or how I was feeling, the events surrounding that moment. Photographs are the catalyst to my memory like music is to lyrics.

So now I'm much more reluctant to delete my photos. I wish I kept alot more than I have.
It's why DAM is so important to me, I need help finding those memories because my brains not getting any better.

[Mario]

A perfect explanation of why adding titles, descriptions and keywords is so important. Because these allow you to find your files later easily.

The industry is working on technologies to automatically identify the contents of photos and the people in these photos.

See Computer Vision in IMatch for more info.

Problem many users have (including myself) with that is that these technologies require you to send your files to a 3rd party, where computers analyze your files and to whatever else.
There are great privacy concerns and in the EU it is even illegal to send photos from your family and friends to the US cloud companies without an explicit consent.

I'm always keeping my eyes open for making these technologies available in IMatch, without the need to upload your files to companies like Google or Amazon.
I'm making progress in that area as well. But too early to talk about it.

[Jingo]

That's what photographs do for me. I can't remember what year I graduated. I need help remembering my anniversary. When I see a photograph I took, I can remember dozens of variables not captured in the pixels I'm viewing. I will remember all kinds of details of what I was doing at that time, or how I was feeling, the events surrounding that moment. Photographs are the catalyst to my memory like music is to lyrics.

So now I'm much more reluctant to delete my photos. I wish I kept alot more than I have.
It's why DAM is so important to me, I need help finding those memories because my brains not getting any better.

I don't believe anyone is saying to delete photographs randomly... but my philosophy has changed to certainly say - delete photographs that don't "make the cut" so long as you have another one that is similar AND I don't need 300 photos of an event when a subset of that will highlight the event just as well. 

For example - in the distant past, I kept everything... so, if I do a search on "2007" AND "pumpkin patch" - I'll get 200 photos of kids in the field with pumpkins...  30 of them are my kid holding a pumpkin.. smiling, not smiling, blinking, pumpkin high, pumpkin low, etc.  Some photos are great.. most are not.  If I do the same search in "2014" - I'll get just 10 photos... all of them I would consider great - in focus, nice coloring, adjusted for exposure and (most importantly) reminding me of a time in my life with my family.  These 10 photos are just as great as the 200 from 2007.. but much easier to review, manage and share with family.

Another example - I took a trip to Alaska and went on a whale watching trip.  Really great "up close and personal" in Juneau with a respected naturalist.  I must have come away with over 600 photos... ~430 photos of whale tails barely above the water, ~150 photos of whale spray and the hump.. and 20 photos of the whale in full breach.  While some of the tail and hump photos are keepers... the majority are not.. mash the shutter and let the camera take 30 fps.... when I show friends and family images of the trip... I include 10 or so of the hump/tail photos.. and 3 of the breach... guess which ones elicite the oohs and ahhs...  While I kept those 550 or so duplicate photos in the past - if I were to take a similar trip now, I would delete the majority and only keep the winners.

[sinus]

That's what photographs do for me. I can't remember what year I graduated. I need help remembering my anniversary. When I see a photograph I took, I can remember dozens of variables not captured in the pixels I'm viewing. I will remember all kinds of details of what I was doing at that time, or how I was feeling, the events surrounding that moment. Photographs are the catalyst to my memory like music is to lyrics.

So now I'm much more reluctant to delete my photos. I wish I kept alot more than I have.
It's why DAM is so important to me, I need help finding those memories because my brains not getting any better.

For example - in the distant past, I kept everything... so, if I do a search on "2007" AND "pumpkin patch" - I'll get 200 photos of kids in the field with pumpkins...  30 of them are my kid holding a pumpkin.. smiling, not smiling, blinking, pumpkin high, pumpkin low, etc.  Some photos are great.. most are not.  If I do the same search in "2014" - I'll get just 10 photos... all of them I would consider great - in focus, nice coloring, adjusted for exposure and (most importantly) reminding me of a time in my life with my family.  These 10 photos are just as great as the 200 from 2007.. but much easier to review, manage and share with family.

BTW, that is why I love stacking ... and the power of IMatch.
I have e.g. in a month 3000 images. It's boring and makes my eyes crazy to see all 3000 of them (of course not all at once).
But it's super-relaxing when I stack up every event.
Then I have instead of 3000 pictures only 20 - 40 at once for each month.
And when you, Andy, talked about a "pumpkin patch", I'm sure if you see ONE picture of it (as a placeholder, the top-stack), you immediately know what kind of event it was, whether private or business.
That's why I find the stacking stuff so exciting.

Well, whether I have 100'000 or 200'000 pictures in IMatch is not soooo a big difference for me. IMatch manages it quite simply. If it gets too slow for me (so far not, I am at 270'000 files), then I either buy a faster computer or I store "unimportant" stuff in another DB, for example everything before 2005.

You sort out bad pictures by deleting them. That's ok.
But IMatch gives us the possibility to keep them instead of deleting them. And with the various collections and categories etc to condemn them from "the field of vision". If you still need them again, easy to get them back.
If they are deleted, well, then it's a bit more difficult.   

I probably make a mixture of everything, I delete some very bad pictures, but I keep many.
I mean, I can delete pictures in 10 years if I'm sure I don't want to do anything with them anymore.
A few years ago, for example, I could very well use pictures that weren't good, but at least    ... the man in the pictures died and the relatives were very happy that I still had them.
Or I need bad pictures every now and then to copy a detail from it and use it in another picture (even blurred ones, like recently a blurred branch with apples, I could use it super in the foreground).

If you have a good workflow, you can really do a lot of things clever with IMatch.
For example, I immediately see which image I delivered from an event, which I used privately or which I didn't use at all.

It used to be hard for me to throw away slides. Well, it's also hard for me to delete digital images unless, as written, they're really bad.
In doubt for the defendant :-) ... such pictures keep then with me (still) the life.

[mstief]

I choose the good ones. (view & copy with fastpictureviewer)
To choose is easier for me than delete.

Then I import only these selection imatch.

[Jingo]

That's what photographs do for me. I can't remember what year I graduated. I need help remembering my anniversary. When I see a photograph I took, I can remember dozens of variables not captured in the pixels I'm viewing. I will remember all kinds of details of what I was doing at that time, or how I was feeling, the events surrounding that moment. Photographs are the catalyst to my memory like music is to lyrics.

So now I'm much more reluctant to delete my photos. I wish I kept alot more than I have.
It's why DAM is so important to me, I need help finding those memories because my brains not getting any better.

For example - in the distant past, I kept everything... so, if I do a search on "2007" AND "pumpkin patch" - I'll get 200 photos of kids in the field with pumpkins...  30 of them are my kid holding a pumpkin.. smiling, not smiling, blinking, pumpkin high, pumpkin low, etc.  Some photos are great.. most are not.  If I do the same search in "2014" - I'll get just 10 photos... all of them I would consider great - in focus, nice coloring, adjusted for exposure and (most importantly) reminding me of a time in my life with my family.  These 10 photos are just as great as the 200 from 2007.. but much easier to review, manage and share with family.

BTW, that is why I love stacking ... and the power of IMatch.
I have e.g. in a month 3000 images. It's boring and makes my eyes crazy to see all 3000 of them (of course not all at once).
But it's super-relaxing when I stack up every event.
Then I have instead of 3000 pictures only 20 - 40 at once for each month.
And when you, Andy, talked about a "pumpkin patch", I'm sure if you see ONE picture of it (as a placeholder, the top-stack), you immediately know what kind of event it was, whether private or business.
That's why I find the stacking stuff so exciting.

Thx Markus - I should take a look at stacking more than I have...

[Carlo Didier]

I think the first question to ask is whether you are a professional photographer dealing with images taken for clients or an amateur who takes his photography hobby very serious,
or whether the images are taken in a private, leisure context, like holidays.

I'm not a pro and my pictures are split into two main blocks which derive from the above. One with family photos (holidays, etc) which are meant as memories, and another with photos I took for my photography hobby where I want to capture images which are more thought through and which I consider as art in the widest sense.

The family photos are kept all except the really completely unusable ones (totally unsharp, completely wrong exposure, etc).

But as to the other images, I am much more selective and keep less of them (only what I consider the best ones).

[ubacher]

My policy on deleting: All technically flawed images get deleted. All images I keep carry at least one category.
If I have an image without category I consider the image "lost".
Over the years I developed my category trees thoughtfully. Now I have a filter preset which shows me any images which do not have
a category from at least one of certain category trees. 

In the past year I had several occasions where I had to find a particular image and I was always able to find the image - sure, sometimes it
was under a different category then I assumed and, at times, I had to look through several hundred images. Still, I was, each time, pleasantly
surprised (and proud) of my success.

small aside:
I have a "Delete Candidate" category which I use for images which I think I will need only for a while.
I use it mostly for documentation which will become obsolete/useless in a while.