Beginner Faststone Slideshows for Fast Culling?

Sony Corleone

Sony Corleone

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Does anyone here use Faststone for culling?

I gave Lightroom a brief try, and I have Excire Foto because I think it's excellent for finding things, but my most useful tool for culling has been Microsoft Photos, which lets you do full-screen slideshows and in-program deletions. Unfortunately, it displays raw files very badly, and it does not always find and display the JPG previews.

Faststone lets you do slideshows, and while I have not tried it with ARW files, it works great with CR3's. It's free, but I forced myself to donate a few bucks.
 
I think most people who take a lot of photos just use the cataloging tools built into their raw developer- pragmatically, it makes it easier than having to round trip into different tools, which ultimately is just a tax on your time.

All of best known tools - Lightroom, CaptureOne, DXO, Darktable, require a bit of learning to get most out of them and use them idiomatically - I use CaptureOne and a single keystroke is all that’s needed to set the colour tag to red, then when I’m finished with an import, I select by red tag and delete, done - takes seconds.

But… what I will say is that as you learn and become more intentional, you won’t need to do as much culling - for some subjects, spray and pray will always be necessary, but even then I think experience makes you more selective in when you press that button.

In my view, the most satisfying part of photography is taking the photo and getting it right in camera, I don’t want it be flipping between tools, I just get all the work done in CaptureOne and then move on to the next thing. Spend the time trying to develop an efficient consistent workflow - the vast majority of photographers who actually do the job for a living get as much done right in camera, so all they got to do is light processing in Lightroom or CaptureOne. It just takes time to learn any tool - there are no quick fixese - I’ve spent a lot of time in both, I prefer C1 but either C1 or Lightroom have very comprehensive, excellent toolsets that should completely satisfy most workflows.
 
Far as I know, I can't do full-screen slideshows with my other programs, and culling thumbnails is a big mistake.
 
Sony Corleone said:
Far as I know, I can't do full-screen slideshows with my other programs, and culling thumbnails is a big mistake.
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View: https://youtu.be/KzcD9zzoLNI?si=t-rUM6r2Be9AvGge


you can absolutely do full screen culling and slideshows with lightroom and capture one.

It’s just learning a different workflow- view the image full screen and use keyboard shortcuts to colour tag or rate the image. You can select by rating or tag and delete after. I’m not 100% familiar with current Lightroom tools, but a few versions ago CaptureOne built a dedicated culling tool, that makes it really easy to group and view all your images, with loupe and tagging options front and centre.
 
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Thanks, but I don't have those programs.
 
One nice thing about Faststone is that you can link it to editing programs and use it to open photos in them.
 
I’m suggest looking again at C1 or LR because they are very popular apps, used by pros, hobbyists and in commercial settings, they have big communities, and lots of styles and presets - especially Lightroom.

In the end, it’s about picking the right tool for the job. None of them are free but all of them will get the job done quicker and with less clicks than your current solution, and in a more robust way, imo.
 
I don't know what I'll use in the future, but Photolab has turned out to be very good. I am told the noise tools are much better than Adobe, and that makes a difference to me, because I don't want to be held back when I see a good candid photo in bad light.
 
I guess all these things come down to preference and what works for you - I have used DXO but never stuck with it because it felt very clunky to use, and I personally never felt I could get good colour grading results with it - C1 is frequently seen as having great culling workflow, and very decent noise reduction - consistently rated above LR (although I never use it) and raw processing, - I was a LR user for many years and felt my RAWs looked better in C1, but from recent playing it seems much of a muchness.

But I haven’t found noise to be a problem on any modem camera I’ve had really, so I guess it’s just seeing if there is anything you can be doing in camera - like bounce flash (or even one of them little Viltrox sparks) which can make a big difference, or just ensuring the camera isn’t choosing a faster shutter speed than is really necessary (which my Canons will do if they are not tamed)

I typically work in aperture priority with auto ISO, but when I’m in low light situations manually select ISO and work with a slower shutter, it’s just knowing what shutter speed you actually need for a situation which comes with experience and frankly, trial and error.
 
It's a good program for what you are wanting. Just be aware that it is using the embedded jpeg and not the raw file.
If you want a good program that is using the raw file I would suggest FastRawViewer. It's not free, but it's not expensive either.
 
I used fast stone and found it useful and simple for many tasks. I then bought a Mac a few months ago and have looked to try and get something that works similar to fast stone
I used faststone with on1 fwiw
 
Thanks for the tip about Faststone using JPG's. I don't think that will be important in my case since I almost always reject things because of composition, people with closed eyes, blurring, and so on.
 
I use Fastone for culling. I'm a LrC user but don't want the faff of importing maybe 1000+ images into the catalog only to then reject 90% of them as blurred/out of focus/same as others. Once I've downloaded a day's images into my computer I use Fastone to cull (having the program put rejected images into a rejects folder) and only then import the keepers into LrC, Making a backup on another hard drive and finally deleting the rejects folder. This keeps the catalog clean and reduces the chance of corrupting it, which has been reported by other users.

Fastone is very fast to resolve RAW files at full screen and it's pretty simple to remember the somewhat quirky keyboard shortcuts (like CTRL+1 for 100% view when "+" would do).

As @sk66 says, if you shoot in RAW and want to see the raw file for culling (not sure why that would matter) then FastRawViewer is an alternative, and I also use that at times.
 
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Hi - late to this party! I love Lightroom, but as my job produces ALOT of RAW's , i swear (nearly 20yrs experience) by using Photomechanic first to build superfast previews (much much quicker then letting LR do it), make an initial selection there, and THEN import in Lightroom....
Cheers
Kev
 
kevinmoranphotography said:
Hi - late to this party! I love Lightroom, but as my job produces ALOT of RAW's , i swear (nearly 20yrs experience) by using Photomechanic first to build superfast previews (much much quicker then letting LR do it), make an initial selection there, and THEN import in Lightroom....
Cheers
Kev
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It's quicker than LR because it isn't processing the raw file; it is extracting the embedded jpeg.
 
Bristolian said:
...if you shoot in RAW and want to see the raw file for culling (not sure why that would matter)...
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It could matter if culling for other reasons besides focus/blur.
I.e. the automated jpeg processing done by the camera can cause a lot of issues depending on how it's set up (clipped blacks/highlights, excessive noise/sharpening, excessive noise reduction/softening, blown color channels, etc).

I don't really know how RawDigger demosaics raw files, but I do know it shows the true raw file, histogram, etc. And FastRawViewer does as well. (I believe RawDigger is the engine behind FastRawViewer).

But I personally just cull during import using the lightroom interface.
 
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Faststone is my goto for most pre culling and light editing. Ive been using it for many years and love the way they keep up with all the RAW image files. It's free but I donate every few years. My flow is FastStone then Photoshop. I have a specific keypress in Faststone that links directly to open Photoshop.
Well worth a try.
 
So far, I think it's fantastic.
 
kevinmoranphotography said:
Hi - late to this party! I love Lightroom, but as my job produces ALOT of RAW's , i swear (nearly 20yrs experience) by using Photomechanic first to build superfast previews (much much quicker then letting LR do it), make an initial selection there, and THEN import in Lightroom....
Cheers
Kev
Click to expand...
Photo Mechanic gets its speed from displaying the previews embedded in the RAW file and doesn't normally render the raw files

From Camerabits help

Photo Mechanic is designed to be able to preview the files produced by cameras from most major camera manufacturers.

Generally, these are proprietary RAW formats (Canon CR2, Nikon NEF, etc.), or compressed formats like a JPEG. When viewing RAW files, Photo Mechanic displays the JPEG that is embedded in the RAW, as this allows for the fastest browsing experience. It is also possible to use Adobe DNG Converter to render a preview from the RAW data, though this option is rarely needed and comes with a performance penalty.


You can now select using embedded JPEGs as an option in LR, and Capture One automatically uses embedded JPEGS for culling before ingest.

As far as I am aware, LR only uses the embedded JPEGs for pre-import culling, and until it has built its own previews.

Capture One, on the other hand, after ingest, allows you to reopen the "culling" view, where it reverts back to using the embedded JPEGS, of the now imported files, for faster scrolling through large numbers of files.

Which is ironic because Capture One is faster at displaying its own previews than LR is, and reverting back to embedded previews isn't as useful as it would be in LR.

Overall, PM is still a more robust choice for culling large numbers of files, but C1 and LR aren't as far behind as they once were. I've been using PM for a fair bit more than 20 years for culling and captioning :)

But, great as PM is, as I'm now retired, I felt unable to commit to the new subscription model, and I'm now doing my initial culling with Fast Raw Viewer and then importing into Capture One.

I'm actually find FRV better than PM for culling, but neither LR nor C1, can match PM for captioning and general file management/organisation.

FRV allows you to compare 4 images at the same time, unlike the two images in PM, FRV allows you to adjust the exposure, which makes selecting the best shot easier, something you can't do in PM, and it displays a raw histogram. Small things that make a big difference when trying to select a "best shot".

With PM, I had FRV set as the editor (cmd+E) to take advantage of these tools while doing everything else in PM. And FRV + PMPlus+ Capture One sessions would still be my preferred approach, if I could afford PMPlus :-(
 
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