Reviewing thousands of photos at different times without losing your spot?

[southwestform]

I'm going through thousands of photos and ranking the ones I'd like to use in an upcoming project. This will obviously take lots and lots of time and I need to do it a little at a time, though I am concerned that I will lose my spot when I move to filter my Library on another keyword and come back to continue working on ranking the photos (I'm pretty sure wthen I come back to my filtered search it will not continue where I left off, though I can not remember and I don't want to try at the moment in case I lose my spot). Is there some way to leave a marker where you leave off when going through photos? Is there some other way of doing what I'm trying to achieve?

Also, when reviewing the photos in the Library, is there a way to know which photo within the total # of photos that are being viewed? So filtering the Library based on a keyword returns 11,000 photos and I am now going through them, though it would be nice to know that I am currently reviewing, say, photo # 1000 out of the total 11,000 photos. Is there a way to see something like this?

Thank you.

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

Others may have better answers, but I might use an obscure keyword  (eg.   ?  )  and as long as I do not add it to other files I can easily find the image again to select with a highlight. (remember to remove it from a photo when you resume editing). Color laabels can also work if not used for other purposes.

"photo#1000"-  Keyboard shortcut toggles to one option that shows a large (grey) serial number on the thumbnails that numbers the photos visible in the grid, but to have it repeatable when you re-open a search the file sort order must be the same with the same total number of photos.

[johnrellis]

The Any Source plugin has "back" and "forward" commands that restore the previous source, selection, and filter settings.  So while reviewing, you can apply some filters or smart collections to drill in, and then go back to where you where using the "back" command.

[JoeKostoss]

Collections would be ideal for this:

My idea would be to set up a Collection with all 11,000 photos you want to review.  At the end of a session of reviewing, remove all photos that you reviewed from the Collection.  Caution...do not delete from the disk but only remove from the collection.  When you start another session, you simply start from the first photo in the Collection.  You might be able to create a second (or several) Smart Collections at the same time that would automatically add images based on your ranking system.