Labels, Ratings, and Tags

Color Labels, Star Ratings, and Tags are the quickest way to help you find what your looking for more quickly. The image below shows a few thumbnails with Color Labels, Ratings and Tags applied to them.

Color Labels are means to categorize your images visually, so you can instantly see images assigned to your various Color Labels. There are 5 Color Label options plus the unlabeled state. Color Labels are often used to denote images by purpose or edit status. For example, you might assign a Red Color Label to images that need post-processing or heavy retouching. You might assign a Blue Label to images that are part of a Panorama or other series.

Or, you can use the the Color Labels to denote the status of your images. Assign a Yellow Label to images you have posted to you photo sharing website, Green to images you have sold to a client or stock agency, and Red to images in your catalog that have restricted Copyright usage.

However you use Color Labels, it is best to be consistent and complete with them. For the system mentioned above, it would be misleading to assign a Red Label to only some of the images in your catalogs with restrictive rights - as then you could not trust that unlabeled images really have unrestricted rights.

Also, each Version can only have one Label Color, so try to avoid using Labels for status or indicators that are not mutually exclusive. In the example above, an image could have both restrictive Copyright usage, and could be posted to a photo-sharing website. What color would you assign then? For this reason, it can be better to use Keyword Hierarchies for status indicators that are not mutually exclusive.

Star Ratings are a great way to help you to find your best images quickly. Assign ratings to images in your catalog, and you can quickly select or filter out only your best images.

1.	Start with a new folder or Catalog of images, with all images shown in the Thumbnail Panel and with no Ratings assigned.

2.	Make a quick pass through your images, adding 1 Star to good images and leaving the rest unrated.

3.	Then, filter the Thumbnail View, to show only 1-Star or better images. Instantly, you've filtered out you better images, thought depending on how selective you were, you could still be left with a large number on images.

4.	Now, make a second pass through your images, adding a second Star to the best of these images. Now, your good images are assigned 1 Star, and your better ones 2 Stars.

5.	Filter these images to show only 2 Star or better images - like the step 3 above - and if needed, you can assign a 3rd, 4th or 5th Star to highlight the outstanding images.

Versions can be marked a Tagged, Rejected, or Untagged. Marking a version as Tagged is a great way to make a quick indication of images in your Catalog. You might use the Tag indicator to mark images that you are in the process of editing, removing the tag from finished images (and perhaps apply a Label as well). Or perhaps you Tag several images with similar content so you can quickly select then to compare and select the best.

Marking an image as Rejected will help you keep your catalog free of out of focus, or otherwise poor quality images. One workflow would be to scan through new images, marking the poor quality images as Rejected. Once all images have been reviewed, Filter the Thumbnail View to show only the rejected images to verify that you marked only the poor quality images, then permanently delete the Rejected images. Or keep the images, leaving them as Rejected to prevent them from showing up in the standard view of your Catalog, while leaving them on your computer just in case you do need that image later.

There are several ways to add Labels, Ratings, and Tags to your images: Toolbar icons, Thumbnail indicators, and Hotkeys.

To apply Labels, Ratings, and Tags with Toolbar Icons, you will first need to select the images you want to apply the labels (and/or ratings and tags) to. Then, you can add a Rating, Label, or Tag by clicking the toolbar button associated with the setting you want to apply. The toolbar buttons will show the state of the current Active Version. To remove one of these settings, click the setting that is already applied (click the red color label of a Version that is already set as red to remove that label).

Note: Toolbar Icons will assign Ratings, Labels, or Tags to all selected images, unless Multi-View is enabled when only the Active Version will be assigned.

Thumbnail indicators show the current settings for Labels, Rating, and Tags, as shown in the example image above, and can be clicked to change the Rating, Label or Tag setting for the Version that you click on. To mark a Version as 'Rejected', ALT+Click (Option+Click on Mac, ALT+SHIFT+Click on Linux) on the Tag indicator.

You can also assign Labels, Ratings, and Tags by using Hotkeys and the Application Menu entries.