How To work with Pick and Reject in Lightroom?

Question

I'm new in Lightroom and looking for Pick/Reject Workflows strategies. Actually I'm following the Workflow suggested at the lighroomlab.com (Using Pick and Reject Flags in Lightroom) which roughly says:

• Mark as Pick all the Pictures that deserves to have a second look on it
• Delete all Pictures not flagged as Pick
• Go through the pictures again and mark the one not wanted as Rejected
• Delete the Rejected

What are other good alternatives to this Workflow?

Answer

I usually work by rejecting, in several passes.

First eliminate ones that are out of focus and other technical problems. I keep an eye on the rest to get an idea of what the better shots are, but I don't make any picks yet. I might get rid of 20% in the first pass.

Second pass, having had a quick look at all the images, I eliminate another 20-30% that are obviously not going to make the cut.

Depending on how many images are left, I may do further passes eliminating the worst images, or I may change tack and start picking out the best ones. Sometimes it's pretty obvious, sometimes not. Really depends a lot on how many images I start with and how many I need to "keep".

The workflow you mention asks you to "pick" the ones you want a second look at. That is perfectly valid, and I sometimes do that. But I take a lot of shots usually, and my keeper rate is probably not that high, so for me, eliminating the bad ones first usually works best.

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