How To Choose Images To Save
Chloe is fast becoming the most photographed baby in the universe. Seriously, we took well over 1,000 pictures of Chloe this month. Can there be too many pictures?? Hmmm, there inlies the problem. It’s the joy and the curse of digital. We’re certainly not going to print anything near 1,000 pictures. In fact, it’ll probably be more like 20. So how do you choose from the zillions of pictures that may or may not be keepers?
I’m on the biased side, but except for the shots with her eyes closed or the super blurry ones, I think Chloe looks cute in every single picture. So I don’t want to delete anything that I might want to look at later. But there is a point at which you have to thin out the batch and keep only the ones that resonate with you.
Here’s what I do to purge through my images:
1) I delete in camera. If the shot is way off in framing, unattractively blurry, or is a grossly unflattering picture, I delete it in camera.
2) When I upload my pictures to the computer, I do a quick and dirty first round of deletions. If my first instinct is “eh,” then out it goes.
3) After looking at the images as a batch, I go through them once more and compare similar pictures. If one looks better than the next, then bye bye inferior one.
4) Now I choose certain images for editing in Photoshop. Many images can be improved with a little tweaking. It depends on my mood whether I want to do a lot of Photoshop work or just leave them as they are.
5) Looking at my picture viewer on the computer, I next choose the shots to upload to Flickr. This limits things considerably since it can take a long time to upload and that forces me to be more discriminating in my choices.
6) Finally, I choose the pictures I’ve uploaded to Flickr that I like best for printing. Using their convenient Target pick-up option, I can place my order and by the time I’ve gotten Chloe dressed and out the door, they’re ready and waiting for me at the photo counter.
It sounds like a great process, but there is a flaw. After doing all this, I still have 500 pictures in my Chloe 15 months folder. Hmmm, maybe I need to be more ruthless…
Responses and Conversations
Great tips. I agree - I find it SO HARD to delete any photos of Sophia. Because really, what if I want to see a photo of her looking right and then the exact same photo of her looking left someday??! LOL. But yes, I get that photo overload feeling sometimes when I don’t even know which ones to print because I love them all!
Comment by Amy Frazier on January 15th, 2007 at 8:54 am
HA!, exactly. I also think about what if I move someday and I really want to wax nostalgic about how much I loved her messy bookcase or say, “remember when we used to have that couch?” It can get maddening. But I think I’m getting ready to do a big purge - to go though all of my folders and be RUTHLESS! There’s something so satisfying about cleaning out the clutter.
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