…to delete those “not so good” photos!

With digital cameras, people have the freedom to take a lot more photos.  In the past, you thought about the cost of developing the film or that you might not have enough memory card space.  Now with digital cameras & memory cards are large and inexpensive, you have the freedom to click away as much as you want!  The consequence of this is the amount of photos that can accumulate very quickly.

In this example:

Delete the first photo,

 

and keep the second photo!

I want to give you the power to delete some of those pictures!    Here are a few reasons why:

• Having a lot of photos makes it harder to find the good one in the group.
• Digital photos are quite large so those “not so good” photos are taking disk space.   Disk space is fairly inexpensive but remember you also should backup these photos using some method.  So really it takes twice the disk space.  One for the original and the second for the backup.

So here are some suggestions:

• As soon as you upload your photos to your computer and can view them in full-screen.    Look through them and delete the duplicate ones that are blurry, cut-off, or just plain “I won’t ever do anything with this picture.” 
• If you have a photo that it is the only one of that subject and it falls in the above category, I would probably keep the photo.  There are a few digital techniques that can help improve the photo.  It probably won’t ever be one of those wonderful pictures.
• After you upload the photos, give them a rating in ACDSee.  From  “The DAM Book:  Digital Assignment Management for Photographers” by Peter Krogh he states “By rating images for quality when you first edit them, or any other time you look through them, you keep great photographs from “slipping off the light table.”  Give a rating of 1 or 5 to the best picture in a set of duplicates.  (In ACDSee, 1 is blue and leads me to want to put things with 1 being best.   But if you think of rating as stars, then 5 stars is the best.  Totally up to you!)  A rating will allow you to quickly find that picture again.   Feel free to rank other photos with different ratings if you wish.  Maybe a 2 if its not so good but its the only one you have of that subject. 

Still scared of deleting those photos?  Well, then mark them with a delete tag (certain rating or a category called “delete”.”)  Then after you have worked with your photos.  Select the photos with this tag and then delete them.

I highly recommend you delete those “not so good” photos you take so that you save disk space and time looking through those photos.