Quick tip: How Lightroom Survey Mode helps you choose your best images in a flash
Jan 6, 2017
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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When you need to select the best images to edit and send to the client, it can be quite a boring task. When you get home from a photo shoot and have hundreds of images to choose from, it really takes up a lot of your time. This is when Lightroom’s Survey Mode comes to the rescue. In this video, Scott Kelby shows you one way of using Survey Mode to quickly choose your best images and move on to editing.
When you import the images, select those you from which you’ll choose the best one. Press “N”, or go to View > Survey Mode. After this, only the selected photos will appear on the screen.
You can look at all of them together and play a game called “which one of these I hate the most”. In other words, you can eliminate your least favorite photos from the batch. When you place the cursor over the photo, a black “X” will appear in the bottom right corner. Click it to remove the least favorite photos one by one. Note that this action will not remove the photos from the collection or the hard disk, but only from the batch in the Survey Mode.
When you are left with the photo you like best, you can go back to the Grid Mode by pressing “G”, or Loupe Mode by pressing “E”. The final photo will be selected for editing, while the others will still remain in the collection.
So there you have it. There are some other ways of using the Survey Mode, and if you work by eliminating the least favorite photos first, you will likely find this one most useful.
[How Lightroom’s Survey Mode Makes Finding Your Best Image Easier via Lightroom Killer Tips]
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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2 responses to “Quick tip: How Lightroom Survey Mode helps you choose your best images in a flash”
The review mode it Bridge is about the best thing I’ve seen for this – cover flow style. Select some, ctrl-B and you’re in business.
I just use the Library in Grid mode and assign/unassign stars to narrow it down. Now I have a permanent sort too.