There’s been an active discussion lately in the forum on “how do you rate your images?” [read the thread here], and one thing is for certain — no two people do it the same!

My contribution to the rating game is to take multiple passes at your project. If you only look at it once or even twice, it’s easy to get excited about an image and throw five stars at it, but then after looking at the rest of your shots from the day, and coming back a day or two later, to realize that the five start champion may really be a four or three start dud.

My process involves rating images I think I like (I start with three stars), then looking at just those rated three star or higher images a second time, then up- or down-rating them on the second pass. I’ll then filter by the next rating up (four stars), and repeat the process. You can then look at ONLY your four star, or ONLY your three star, and continue to go past them over and over to see if on subsequent passes certain images rise to the top, or end up getting pushed back down.

Cream rises… that’s sums up my theory on rating.