Totally amazing … For wildlife photographers or guys who shoot pix with 20-30 frames/second . Well done 👍

Matt, thanks for sharing. I typically do something similar on large photo shoots but I like to look at each shot so I use the technique where I turn Caps Lock on and then press the X or P keys to Reject or Pick the photo in question. The Caps Lock On causes the photo to advance to next picture after your press the X or P and you can cover a lot of ground pretty fast. The other thing I do on import is to turn on what I call my Auto Preset. I created a Preset that invokes the auto setting from the Basic panel because in most cases when I preview an image I want to see some adjustments and the Auto setting is usually good enough to start with. I get why you may bulk reject large blocks of pictures but one of the advantages of shooting with a high MP camera like the A7RIV is you can easily crop those shots looking for those subjects that are worth saving as long as they are sharp...cropping can make them full frame. One thing you did not talk about is what to do with all those unnecessary sidecar files after you finish editing... Another technique I like to use is to create high resolution preview files during the import because after I finish editing my Lightroom preference is set to delete the preview files after a short period of time so I don't have to worry about freeing up disk space but at least have the previews handy during the speedy editing process. Creating the preview files during import lengthens the import but that is just processor time.

Thanks for sharing your way of working, Matt - very useful information as always 👍 BTW, for having access to high resolution previews, but not needing to spend any extra time to create them, there is a small but very effective tip. Unless you are writing only RAW files during shooting, you can import the JPGs as sidecar files and use these as preview. For this - uncheck "Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos" in Preferences | General tab - uncheck "Replace embedded previews with standard preview during idle time" in in Preferences | General tab - set Build Previews to "Embedded & Sidecar" in Import Dialog, File Handling (as mentioned in your video) This will take a JPG file as preview for the corresponding RAW file, with no extra processing effort. Time to import 100 images on my system: 20sec, before I can start culling and even pixel peep at 100% if required. If you don't want to keep the JPGs, you can delete them from your HDD later and resync the folder in LR. I am sure this is no news for you, but it is not known to some people and a reason why use additional SW like eg PhotoMechanic as a culling step prior to importing in LR, because "LR is just too slow".

Thank you, Matt. That is helpful and I will try to incorporate your technique into my workflow. It looks like you had a really fun time and your images are impressive.

Thank you, Matt, I always learn something by watching your videos. I really appreciate your hard work.

Fabulous tutorial and perfect timing! I photographed a surfing competition yesterday and have almost 2000 pics to go through and was feeling daunted. Not now - thank you so much!

It's all changed over the last few years. Thanks for bringing us up to speed, Matt.

Some excellent tips for speeding up photo selection.

Always the BEST tutorials Matt. Thanks. pairing down is always a chore for me even with these tips by you and others. Im just SLOOOOW for culling and editinbg my images. One of my negatives. :)

Thanks Matt! Great help to keep things organized. BTW, I love the Sky Replacement in Photoshop. Definitely makes a difference in many of my photos.

Great video, an area often over looked ! I have great trouble rejecting photos, always holding out for some ounce of goodness in a pile of turds ! Normally wade through and come out on top though ! Thanks again for your process seems way better than mine 👍🤔👌

Thanks Matt, lots of info, just the right length. Wish you would explain the next step you would do to preserve the edition collection. Thanks again

Matt I remember that soaring Eagle shot! I will be getting ALL of my LR tips from you from now on. Replaced my sky and love the result. Thanks!

Great tips Matt! Love the repeatable thought process. Similar to voluminous wildlife photos, I had many continuous photo bursts of waves crashing from a trip to Hawaii that I needed a more effective way for processing thousands of photos. Filtering out the rejects quickly and creating a target collection for the ones you want to investigate further and edit is brilliant to keep you focused. Thanks!

Been using LR for years but I learned some things from this tutorial!! Given that, I subscribed and look forward to learning more. Thanks, Matt!

Thanks Matt, great job.

Great tips Matt, that I will add to my process of editing. It is hard to delete some photos that you worked hard to get and hope to fix someday. But this makes a lot of sense. Question: Is that a group of storage discs behind you on your right. Maybe you could do a short video of what you use for storing all you images and how you have your office set up. Thank for all your videos.

Wow! Thanks, Matt. I am not a wildlife photog but your tips have given me great methods to cull the images that I do make. Thank you, thank you, thank you. ~Daniel

So Matt, I don’t quite understand ... you create a collection set that you add your selects to. Then, after you’ve identified all tour rejects you select all the unflagged images and drag them into that collection. Why use the ‘B’ button to put some images into that collection but not others when at the end you’re going to add them anyway. Couldn’t you simply skip the ‘B’ button part of the process and just add all the non-rejected images to a collection at the end? What am I missing?

Again, a great tip, really needed. Just a note: you pare down photos, not pair down... (sorry, the nerd in me took over for a moment).

tyvm for helpful vid, tips and Sky Packs!

What a great method.

Very helpful!! Thanks so much. Matt

Another approach is to do the initial scan before LR. I use PhotoMechanic and there may be other tools as well. That way I only need import the subset of photos that pass this initial scan with the result being a MUCH smaller library that keeps LR running even faster.

When you saved your favorites to collections - do you edit in collections or development module - how do you insure that your favorites are still in the Lightroom catalog. When you imported where did you put all your eagles?

So seems I will not be needing Photomechanic anymore.... Nice to know as when I get the A1 I will be culling thru tons of images from swim meets.... Thanks...

I find the issue with culling the photos down is being honest with what you want to keep or reject.

Thanks for the video, this ought to make culling images more efficient. Also, most importantly...what was in the glass?

Thanks Matt. Very helpful!

Thanks so much, MK! Nice etched glass, there. Grateful for the speed-up-my-workflow tips. Do you then delete the collection when you're done w your edits?

I have a simple question - why waste time marking rejects? If you just save the keepers in the quick collection, you save even more time.

Good process thanks . . .

Very helpful!! Thanks so mcuh.

Hi Matt, great tuto. do you use star rating and color labels ? sometimes i use so many things to identify they were processed, printed,... that it takes too much time and colors are a little too subtle in filmstrip to clarly see them. what is the number of images in your catalog today ? what is the limit at which you would create s econd one to have more speed... ? do you always import 1500 photos like that ? I read many people use photo mechanic frontend and then import best ones. in my case, like you, i often need to switch to develop to see that the image is not so bad. with photomechanic, without a quick "auto exposure" i would discard these photos too dark,... How do you backup the photoshop exports ? i don't use incremental backup but manually backup each week. very often i come back to old images and edit with photoshop, luminar,... and they are mixed with images i backuped already so they won't be backup. i didn't find a way to generate the tif from lightroom which woud be saved in a separate "export folder" while coming back in library on side of original nef.

Matt when you save a series of photos that are all similar into the collection how do you then go through the series and decide which one to keep. That is what slow's down my process. I have a tremor so I shoot in burst mode a lot hoping for a sharp shot so I get lots of similar photos. Is there a way to quickly determine the sharpest one? BTW, your videos are great!

Matt, after you load your LR images as xmp/sidecar, do you eventually convert into Smart Previews, if not, why not and if so, what size/type? Thanks in advance.

I just got back from a surf shoot and I’ve been googling best way to cull and BOOM! - you come out with this video. Thanks Matt. One question: if you delete the rejects, do they delete from the catalog or delete from hard drive or both???

Excellent! As a sports photographer maybe I can use this method to not need to use photomechanic for culling. BTW, what focus mode do you use with the bird photography...wide, wide tracking etc? Thx!

Thanks Matt!!! This was great!!! I shoot a lot of eagles in the Pacific Northwest, and this helps a ton!!! What was in that glass? haha

Culling photos is definitely another discipline that has gotten easier for me over the years. I just make sure I have enough backups so that if I do some crazy bulk delete that I can at least recover from it. :p I don't use Lightroom but the process is similar for culling.

Hi Matt: Thanks for creating and sharing this video. This process makes a lot of sense, but have you ever considered using Photo Mechanics for this culling process? Regards, Keith

Does embedded & side car create a large file ? I thought minimal created a smaller file? The reason being, it's faster to get your images into LR

Thank you Matt! Very interesting! Good tips! But I noticed that you work with JPG format, RAW. I guess RAW format processed a bit slower.

And I thought having 25-50 photos of something was a lot! 😂

Why don‘t use PhotoMechanics, which can handle the culling process 200% faster than lightroom? Its an essential tool for me. After culling in Photomechanics, i just import the keepers in Lightroom, which also slims down my Lightroom Library....

Thanks....

can you please give us some advises for shooting birds like that (aperture, AF type, iso) ? i recently switched from d750 to Z6ii so not as good as sony for AF unfortunately.

Please explain what you were doing when you cropped to see the resolution?

If you delete from a collection, the file stays on your disk. Do you just let them build up, or do you purge them?

I live in Tampa too. Do you give workshops here?

But do you actually delete photos that you don't want, say for example, underexposed or blurry images?

Not sure why but I have requested your free skies pack a couple of times but nothing shows up in my email?

Now do a tutorial with 50K+ shots of concerts to sort out 🤣🤣😂😂

watch a 17 min video on how to "Go Through 1500 Photos in 15 Minutes!". I do like most of your content though. This one was 'ok' for me. keep up the good work.

Better method: Photo Mechanic; just my 2 cents