Using Aperture's star rating system

Question

Forum member mrhooper posted [something in another thread|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13357908#13357908] which caught my eye. I didn't have time to respond, and now that thread is marked answered -- and my reply is slightly off-topic -- so I started this new thread in the hopes of learning how better to use the star rankings in Aperture.
Below is +what I do.+ I'm very curious to find out what you do -- or to hear any suggestions for making what I do more sensible.
Here is (part of) mrhooper's comment.
So we are now bringing over everything into Aperture and then rating images on a 1, 2, 4, 5 basis. Come on, if its a 3 make a decision. Everything else is a 9, and then the rejects are deleted. And then the trash is emptied and they are out of the library.
So we bring in the raw and then quickly rate, and I can't image a 400 shoot taking much more than 5 minutes rate.
Go through once for 1, then for 2, by then the 4 is obvious and the 5 we just love anyway. 9 everything else.
Fwiw (always an auspicious start to an Internet posting), I TOTALLY agree re: the wasted gamut of the seven-level rating system (that's rejected-unrated-1-2-3-4-5).
Here's what I've settled on:
• If I look at a picture, I rate it. Reject or save-and-decide-later. That's "9" and "1". So "unrated" is meaningful to me. It doesn't mean "less than rated", and, importantly, it doesn't mean "not-rejected"; it means, literally, not-yet-rated. (The problem solved here occurs when I am part way through tossing rejects from a Project and I am interrupted.)
Immediately after import, I add a Project description, assign a Place, and Stack images taken in burst mode or with any range of exposure settings. When I rate images in a Project, the first thing I do is go through these Stacks and select the most usable image from these minor variations (I need to do this before comparing un-like images in the Project). Within any Stack, I might have rejects ("9") and saves (1-star); the "pick" of the Stack gets a 2-star rating (1-star is already in use).
• 1- and 2-star ratings +have the same value to me as images.+ The only difference is that 2-star images came from Stacks. (Those Stacks may contain 1-star images which for any number of reasons I want to retain even though they are not a Stack pick and will likely never be promoted nor processed nor printed nor published).
Now I can go through my Project and make my picks. I mark images to be developed in RED (I use the 8 color labels to track image development). All of these also get upgraded to 3- or 4-stars.
• 3-star means "keep". The general idea is that in a few years time I will likely want to do some major weeding in my Aperture orchard. Any 1- or 2-star images will then be unceremoniously deleted. 3-star images will be kept.
• 4-star means good enough for publication. One of the best of the Project.
After I develop the images in a Project, I will re-assign the star rankings. During development, some images will be promoted.
• 5-star means not only good enough to be published as one of the best of the Project (and I mean that at whatever level one works -- from emailed to friends to printed for sale), but good enough to be included in some other sampling of my work. (I keep an Album for my Portfolio. The images in the Album are selected from my 5-star images.
Note that in my use, +star ratings are Project specific+. There is no value-equivalence between the star ratings -- and I consciously try to avoid comparisons across Projects. (If I've done a shoot, I need to know which are the usable/salable shots in that shoot -- I don't need to know how they rank in my life's work.) All of the 4-star images in one Project may be of less comparative value to me than the only 4-star image in another Project.
So in my system, "Reject", "3-star", and "4-star" are the only ratings which are necessary. They correspond to the all important distinctions mrhooper indicated:
- throw-out
- keep but don't use
- use.
The other star ratings could -- and from a tidy database standard, should -- be replaced by a metadatum that is not part of the rating gamut.
The orchard floor is yours ...
Message was edited by: Kirby Krieger

Answer 1

Hi Kirby,
Thanks for opening this up, as I suspect most of us have gone through the "let's see that's a 1 or no... probably a 2, perhaps I can clean up the backgound and then it would be 3. " etc etc.
We settled on a similar process where you suggest it is a project by project rating, not our life's work.
So we skip 3, play with 4 and 5, that should be obvious.
1 and 2, they are going to be deleted at some stage in the future, unless it is some rare thing, and that doesn't happen every shoot.
In Jan this year looked at the 2008 year 1, 2 and deleted most of them. Hey, we hadn't used them, touched them, improved them or even thought about them. Goodbye.
Some memorabilia, sentimental value ones got to stay.
When we look for the best, then 5 is the go. Maybe a review of 4's but only if we are struggling in 5s
Which by the way we tend to be fairly generous with I suppose.
Checked a shot of 60 images early in the week, 15 are in the 4 and 5, 8 are 5.
We also use the wonderful color system. Now this sorts out a lot of things for later smart albums.
Here are a few Green-teaching. Red-for web site pages, Blue - the crown jewels, the ones we both love. Purple- spec shots for photo library etc.
Yep, sometimes a shot might be two or more colors, but it is not stopping us at the moment.
We do shoot burst, but don't stack. If its a 4 I want to be able to see it. We create albums in the project Star 4, Star 5, so there they are in a hurry. Yep, know it is easy to do that in the search box, and can use Ctlr1-5, but the clever is later when we can be really specific in search for albums with Star 5, or what ever.
Just to finish off, the 4 and 5 get keywords, lots of them. From event, to person, to specific lighting, to species, or building type or.....
want a pic of a 1937 Ford- in Blue, at the Last Cafe, in Spring, in the sunshine, front lit, side view?
That is what Aperture does.
and because of the way we use projects for each shoot, bet I could find it in about 10 seconds in quick review of the appropriate year or month as well.
This is not the thread on project names, but we have from the beginning way back in iPhoto(5) put them in as a date and description.
Cool thing now in Projects/Full Screen, is I can Filter by the date number so typing in 9012 gets me all the projects only from 2009, December. (9) 0 (12) Oh, am aware of what is going to happen when we have been round the scale once and the numbers come back. And we have a plan.
I am sure there are other ways to start a good system, to use the ratings and the keywords of Aperture, and agree that you have to think project specific when it comes to what is a 5.
Reserving 5 only for the 'very best image you ever took of a rose", is a bit limiting and what if my "Very best waterfall picture' is even better?
Thanks for starting a good ideas discussion.
Regards
DJ