I'm not sure I *ever* have images I truly don't care about at all. I'm always *for* keeping them or *against* keeping them, at least. My System ------- I use stars and flags in Lightroom: - **Reject**: Photos I will be deleting as soon as I complete the current pass, if I'm at home. I defer deletion when I am working away from home on a laptop. I wait until I have merged the on-the-road library with my main home library *and backed that up* before I delete anything from the laptop. [Two is one, one is none.](http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/08/04/two-is-one-and-one-is-none-how-redundancies-increase-your-antifragility/)<sup>1</sup> - ★: Photos which are "bad" in some way, but which I have to keep for some reason. They may be unattractive, out of focus, under/overexposed, purely documentary, etc. An example of documentary photos are those of tourist attraction signs. They go with a set of photos taken at that place and serve only to document the shoot. Such photos are rarely worth showing to others in their own right. In a sense, they are just a kind of metadata, the sort we had before GPS tagging. - ★★: Technically acceptable photos which are nevertheless unattractive. An example of such photos are my home inventory pictures, and a lot of family and snapshot work. Such photos have inherent value for me, but I likely won't ever show them to anyone else. - ★★★: Good photos. The meat-and-potatoes of my library. This is probably as close as I get to "don't care." These photos are in focus, well-composed, and attractive enough to avoid dropping to a ★★ rating. Yet, I tend to avoid showing them to others unless I find myself without higher-rated photos of the same subject, so I rarely spend much time working on them. At most, I might crop them, straighten a horizon line, remove dust spots, and apply a global adjustment with <kbd>Ctrl/⌘-Shift-V</kbd>. I sometimes use ★★★ photos in slideshows as narrative glue. I prefer to find a ★★★★+ photo to serve the same purpose if I can, of course, but sometimes I have to fall back to a ★★★ photo. This is my threshold for off-site backup. Except for home inventory and family photos, I don't bother to include ★★ photos in off-site backups, and I don't back-up ★ photos off-site at all. The idea being, if my house is hit by a meteor, I won't drop any tears over losing such low-rated photos. I'm willing to keep them around as long as it's "free," but I'm not going to pay off-site storage fees to maintain their existence through a disaster. The "middle" photo of an HDR set is usually ★★★, since there has to be enough beauty present to be worth attempting an HDR. Yet, there must be room for improvement for the same reason: if the middle shot is ★★★★★ in its own right, why bother with HDR? The under- and over-exposed shots in the set get rated ★ or ★★. If the HDR conversion improves the shot, it gets rated one or two stars above the middle shot. If the experiment fails, I toss everything but the normally-exposed "middle" shot. - ★★★★: Great photos. These are photos that make me happy enough that I'm willing to show them to others without reservation. Such photos appear in web galleries, slideshows, etc. - ★★★★★: Perfect photos. These photos are beautiful, well-lit, properly composed, and usually technically flawless. Occasionally a photo's uncommon beauty will allow me to accept it into this rare set despite small technical flaws. The higher the rating, the more redundant backups I have.<sup>2</sup> In my system, every photo gets a rating or gets rejected. The only photos that are unrated are those I've imported but haven't yet bothered to make a decision about. I have a Smart Collection that warns me about such photos, reminding me that I have to do something about them. If you find yourself with months-old unrated photos, either give them a token rating (★) or give them the boot. You clearly don't care enough about them to do anything else. My Workflow ------- I call my workflow for getting photos into this scheme THE CHAINSAW. Think of a [chainsaw ice sculptor](http://images.google.com/search?&tbm=isch&q=chainsaw+ice+sculpture): he starts with a big block of unformed material and his job is to rapidly cut away everything he doesn't want. In Lightroom, go to the Filter Bar and click Attribute. Clear any settings that may be here already, then click the middle of the three flags (unflagged) and set the Rating part to "equals no stars." Then save it as a Custom Filter, calling it THE CHAINSAW. I put it in all caps because I use it on every import, so I want to be able to pick it out of the list instantly. Plus, chainsaws are dramatic. (Feel free to pronounce the name in your [WWF announcer voice](http://images.google.com/search?&tbm=isch&q=wwf+announcer&oq=wwf+announcer).) In a folder of unprocessed photos, turn off all the distractions. Lightroom 5 greatly simplified this, in that <kbd>F</kbd> will do this for you.<sup>3</sup> All you should see is the first "undecided" photo in this folder, full-screen. Activate THE CHAINSAW (tthbbitrrrrrrr!), then put your fingers on the <kbd>1</kbd>-<kbd>4</kbd> keys and your thumb on the <kbd>X</kbd> key. I don't bother dedicating a finger to the <kbd>5</kbd> key since ★★★★★ photos are so rare; stretching from the <kbd>4</kbd> key is easy. Then, taking at most a few seconds per photo, rip through the set, giving them an initial rating or rejection. Trust your expertise and go with your initial "flash" impression. If you find yourself dithering, it's probably a ★★★ photo; rate it and move on. When all the photos are rated or rejected, delete the rejected photos: <kbd>Ctrl/⌘-Backspace</kbd>.<sup>4</sup> Turn THE CHAINSAW off with <kbd>Ctrl/⌘-L</kbd>, then press <kbd>F</kbd> to leave no-distractions mode. Then go back and start working on the ★★★+ photos. If there are a lot of them, do the ★★★★★ photos first, then ★★★★. Spend time on ★★★ photos only if you still have time left or find yourself needing a filler of some kind. Some photos may increase by a star or two after being edited. This should not worry you. Your initial flash impression *was* correct. That we deleted the trash without attempting to rescue anything first is also not a problem. We can't expect more than a few stars of improvement, which isn't enough to bring a zero-star photo up to the level where we would really care to spend time on it in the first place. You'll find people who will tell you to keep absolutely everything, just in case, but I believe these people are packrats. Yes, technically there is a bit of ore there in the [tailings pile](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailings), but it's not worth the time and effort it takes to refine it. Excepting those that are part of an HDR set, ★ and ★★ photos never get any more attention at this stage. I typically put off HDR experiments until after I've gotten through the ★★★★+ photos at least. Finally, I run my various Publish Services for on- and off-site backups, empty the Trash/Recycle Bin, and erase my memory cards. I may also schedule an on-exit catalog backup via Catalog Settings at this point. --------- **Footnotes** 1. I don't erase my filled memory cards on the road for the same reason. 1. I don't literally have 5 levels of redundant backups. I just mean that there are more copies of my ★★★★★ photos floating around than copies of my ★★★ photos. 1. In Lightroom and earlier, <kbd>F</kbd> had a much more limited function. The equivalent in those older versions is <kbd>Ctrl/⌘-Shift-F</kbd>, <kbd>E</kbd>, <kbd>T</kbd>, <kbd>L</kbd>. 1. Defer as above if your backup methods are not available where you are working.