Light table for comparison of similar pictures

[guill69f]

Hi,

I am running on my last days of trial of Photo Mechanic, and awaiting the Black Friday promo to get a license of the software.
Until then, is there a corresponding way of working in PM to my workflow in Lightroom when I have to identify the best of very similar shots?
Currently, assuming I have 8 pictures to compare, I would select them all in the Lightroom library module, display them in a kind of light table (I think the shortcut for that is Ctrl+N), and then i would gradually exclude those which I don´t want to retain, until I end up with the best one. While I am doing this, i have first visibility on the 8 pictures, then 7, 6, 5 etc as I go through the process of excluding the worst photos

Under PM, I proceed slightly differently: in preview mode I split the screen to have 2 pictures, on one of frames I´ll freeze the first picture of my set, and in the other frame I compare the first picture to the second, third etc. if I find one which is better, i then freeze this one instead and continue scrolling through my set until I eventually which is better, etc.

is there a way of proceeding which is closer to how I work in LR?

thank you!

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

Hi there,

I am not certain which aspects of your LR workflow are most important to you. I have two suggestions.

1. When you are using "2-up" view to compare two images, you can use the 'g' keyboard shortcut to swap the "active' and 'compared' images. This can speed up the comparison process. You look at two photos. If the active photo is not better, arrow key to the next one. if it is better, 'g' to swap it out to be your chosen image, and then repeat. It sounds as if you are doing something similar to this.

2. You can also highlight a few images in a Contact Sheet and use F2 (or the view menu) to only show selected images. (Command-click to select multiple images) This will hide all the other images and you can continue to do rating/culling just on that set. You could there use larger thumbnails if you'd like to see more of them while comparing. When you are done,  F1 will restore the view to All.

I hope this is relevant to what you are asking.

Mick

[guill69f]

Dear Mick, thanks for your feedback.

Actually I don't necessarily want to port my LR workflow to PM, I was just thinking that if on this precise aspect of my flow PM had a 1:1 solution they I would be glad to get some help to find it.

Your 2 tips are great and for sure I'll be using them.

BR

G