Auto detecting and culling blurry images

LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

Th..th..that's all folks!
Suspended / Banned
Messages
18,695
Name
LongLensPhotography
Edit My Images
No
What do you do when you come back with a significant number of images (say 1000) and you likely have a fair few (100?) that are both duplicates, and with some degree of camera shake or bad focus. Opening every image and comparing with similars is taking a lot of time, so much so I have whole unedited albums from a year or two ago at this stage.
Is there any automated tool that could flag up possible camera shake or bad focus making the review easier and quicker.

I use LR and PS, and my to-be-replaced MBP is taking its time opening any given file at 100% (15s-30s each!)
 
I’ve not found an ai solution you’re looking for - although have thought of working on one....
Anyway - as I used to do a lot of sport with a tight turn around, it’s your workflow that’s slowing you down.

For Windows I use Faststone and when I was working on macs - Xnview. Use this to quickly go through your images, you can set a keyboard shortcut to move images to a keep folder if you wish - go through quickly and choose the ones you want. It’ll save you heaps of time and then import the ones you want into lr.
 
my first stage is to just go through the images in their raw state in LR and flag the rejects, deleting them usually significantly reduces the catalogue.....

For most images it takes about a second, though some need zooming in to check focus before making a decision
 
flook999 said:
my first stage is to just go through the images in their raw state in LR and flag the rejects, deleting them usually significantly reduces the catalogue.....

For most images it takes about a second, though some need zooming in to check focus before making a decision
Click to expand...

not sure which brand of RAW you use but my manufacturer does not include the jpg preview in the RAW to zoom in and check in LR before importing. So only way to get a preview is shoot RAW+JPG but that reduces (quite significantly these days due to high res) the amount of images I can shoot on the card.
 
Last edited:
nandbytes said:
not sure which brand of RAW you use but my manufacturer does not include the jpg preview in the RAW to zoom in and check in LR before importing. So only way to get a preview is shoot RAW+JPG but that reduces (quite significantly these days due to high res) the amount of images I can shoot on the card.
Click to expand...

thats odd....are you saying you don't get previews in LR of the images in the catalogue?

On the import dialogue (library tab) there a boxes to tick for preview types, have you selected those?

When importing I always convert to dng too, that future proofs the raw files against changes to supported raw formats in LR in the future.

Or are you using an older version of LR which doesn't support your raw format? Adobe do a free converter to get you out of that fix if that's the issue

Some cracking images on your website btw
 
Last edited:
I find photomechanic the fastest. It renders very fast making the selection process quick. No automation though. Capture One can highlight areas in focus if that's an issue, however I find it a much slower workflow. In a way the problem gets worse as you bring home better results as you have more potentials to select from and I'm not sure I'd trust an AI solution for that, although with enough examples to train the algo with I expect it's just a matter of time.
 
flook999 said:
thats odd....are you saying you don't get previews in LR of the images in the catalogue?

On the import dialogue (library tab) there a boxes to tick for preview types, have you selected those?

When importing I always convert to dng too, that future proofs the raw files against changes to supported raw formats in LR in the future.

Or are you using an older version of LR which doesn't support your raw format? Adobe do a free converter to get you out of that fix if that's the issue

Some cracking images on your website btw
Click to expand...

I get previews but I cannot zoom into them as they are very low res preview. I get proper preview once I have imported the RAWs (because LR then makes one at that point).
I used the latest and greatest LR available. It nothing to with the version of LR, Sony RAW files just don't have a full res jpg embedded as part of the RAW. So only a really low-res preview is available which is only useful to see what the picture is but not to check critical focus or camera shake etc.

When I shot on 24mp bodies I simply shot RAW+jpg and got a full res preview I could zoom into. Now I shoot with 61mp shooting RAW+jpg isn't ideal.
Thank you :)
 
Last edited:
nandbytes said:
I get previews but I cannot zoom into them as they are very low res preview. I get proper preview once I have imported the RAWs (because LR then makes one at that point).
Click to expand...

Have you tried fast raw viewer https://www.fastrawviewer.com/

Although, it's not how I use it, one work flow is to inspect the raws on the card, selectively copy the selects from card to a folder on computer, and then import into LR from that folder.
 
I have used Image Ranger which has a good process of identifying duplicates based in the image content. May or may not be what you want but worth a try as they do a trial. (Has a load of other tools in it also)

https://imageranger.com/
 
LongLensPhotography said:
I use LR and PS, and my to-be-replaced MBP is taking its time opening any given file at 100% (15s-30s each!)
Click to expand...

Photo Mechanic https://home.camerabits.com/ is one of the best tools for this as its been designed and evolved around sports photographers rapidly culling images during events. I use it to import from the card onto the computer and then do all the culling in Photo mechanic before importing files into a LR catalogue.

As an alternative, Fast Raw Viewer https://www.fastrawviewer.com/ reads raws and has an option to highlight in focus areas, which I don't actually find all that useful. But, it works very quickly for culling and has been designed around rapid selection and culling.

As I've mentioned in another post, one Fast Raw Viewer workflow is to view Raws on the card, select the ones you want to import, and then copy them to a local folder on your computer and then import into a LR catalogue.

Both programs are designed for rapid culling, and with PM, also for rapid captioning. I use them both, and both are worth looking at. PM is bit pricey, but FRV is a more reasonable cost. I use them both.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
What do you do when you come back with a significant number of images (say 1000) and you likely have a fair few (100?) that are both duplicates, and with some degree of camera shake or bad focus. Opening every image and comparing with similars is taking a lot of time, so much so I have whole unedited albums from a year or two ago at this stage.
Is there any automated tool that could flag up possible camera shake or bad focus making the review easier and quicker.

I use LR and PS, and my to-be-replaced MBP is taking its time opening any given file at 100% (15s-30s each!)
Click to expand...

With hard drives in the range of 2 to 6TBs, and offering plenty of storage spaces, I can't be bothered to delete blurry images. I prefer to keep them to teach me a lesson, to always check camera settings, make sure it's in focus, etc.,
 
The thing sticking in my mind with the OP is : how is an algorithm automatically going to distinguish between lovely intentional bokeh & unintended out of focus... I know I've taken shots in the past where maybe ¾ of the frame is intentionally out of focus...
 
hunnymonster said:
The thing sticking in my mind with the OP is : how is an algorithm automatically going to distinguish between lovely intentional bokeh & unintended out of focus... I know I've taken shots in the past where maybe ¾ of the frame is intentionally out of focus...
Click to expand...

The focus checking tools in Capture 1 and Fast Raw Viewer look for areas "in focus" (based on contrast) rather than looking for "out of focus" areas. With C1 you can adjust the sensitivity of the focus detection. In normal contrast images, it does help scan through multiple images and detect the ones where the focus has missed the subject (the in-focus areas are highlighted in green) such as the eys in a portrait. Low contrast images tend to show nothing as being sharp.

I would imagine some sort of AI focus scanning would work reasonably well to identify images with nothing obviously sharp and then allow the user to verify the deletion. I wouldn't trust it to auto-delete anything.
 
You live & learn. I barely trust me to delete the right images :cool: (where the emoticon for the guide dog?)
 
hunnymonster said:
The thing sticking in my mind with the OP is : how is an algorithm automatically going to distinguish between lovely intentional bokeh & unintended out of focus... I know I've taken shots in the past where maybe ¾ of the frame is intentionally out of focus...
Click to expand...

There is no lovely bokeh in landscape shots. It's either mostly very sharp or it is no good. The blur (shake) is however never close to lovely bokeh.

Major Eazy said:
With hard drives in the range of 2 to 6TBs, and offering plenty of storage spaces, I can't be bothered to delete blurry images. I prefer to keep them to teach me a lesson, to always check camera settings, make sure it's in focus, etc.,
Click to expand...

The problem with that is you never get to actually edit any of the images before the bad ones are out of the way. And you bet I've got 2 nearly full 4TB drives and could do with rubbish gone from there
 
Photomechanic is my go to..I can cull 1000 images to 100 plus in fifteen minutes. But then again ,I'm ruthless.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top