The 'Greg Gorman' key is great for identifying the one best shot in a group. That's great, but there is no overall ordering of the rest of the images.
I want to be able to sort images from 'best' to 'worst'.
There is an inherent problem with using 'star' ratings. One problem is the 'anchoring effect' (see a description in the third paragraph of
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-03/mf_netflix?currentPage=4 or read the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring). Because of that, I might give a photo 4 stars when it deserves 5, or 5 when it really deserves 3. It all depends on what the last few images were that I saw, or how good my dinner was, or any number of other factors. Not very objective.
Another inherent limitation of star ratings or color classes is granularity. If you have 100 images, 30 of which are 'highest rating' (whether that is 1 star or 5 stars to you), then for all intents and purposes, all 30 images are equal. In reality, that is not the case.
True, PM does allow you to 'sort' the images by dragging and dropping. This is a step in the right direction, but applies only to a single contact sheet. You can't really say "What are the top 10 images in my entire catalog?" If you could, then you would know which ones to put in your portfolio.
In a web-based photo management system that I created once upon a time, I created a solution, a technique for sorting that avoided the anchoring problem. It showed two thumbnails, and whichever one I hovered over, that was the full image that it displayed below them. As I switched back and forth, I get a feeling for the relative quality of the two images. Sometimes I know immediately which one I like better, other times I have to flip back and forth a while. But eventually I (usually) come to the conclusion that one image is 'better' than the other, overall. I then click that image. The computer stores that relative preference information. Then, I am presented with another pair. This process repeats until the computer has enough 'relative preference information' to be able to sort the images completely. I can stop at any point, and pick it up again later. Wherever I stop, there is a certain amount of sorting that has taken place, the 'sorting' just gets more refined as I continue to evaluate pairs of images.
I no longer use that web-based interface, but I really miss that sorting mechanism. I want to create a replacement for it, preferably as a native Mac app. Ideally, it would either be integral to Photo Mechanic, or a plug-in for it.
If at all possible, I would love to work with Camera Bits to help them design (and maybe implement) this feature into PM. If the feature is not a high enough priority for them, then is there a plug-in mechanism whereby I can create something which is integrated into PM?
