Tweaking AfterShoot to better fit your needs

When I first started using AfterShoot to help me cull my photos, there were a few personal preferences that I wanted to set. Sure, out of the box AfterShoot is great, but wouldn’t it be nice if things like colors and ratings lined up with what I used in Lightroom Classic and Capture One?

Here’s how to personalize your AfterShoot experience before you cull your next photoshoot.

System resources used

This is a fairly new option in AfterShoot, and it lives right in the top toolbar. You have three options with this drop-down — Low, Medium and High.

Depending on your system, you might want to change this to Low so AfterShoot uses less of your system resources, allowing you to work on other things while AfterShoot culls your images.

Or, if you have a fast machine, you can set this to High. This will use more of your system resources, but AfterShoot will finish going through your photos much faster.

Keyboard shortcuts

Located in the Preferences of AfterShoot, these are broken out into five categories — Stars & Colors, Grid View, Loupe View, Survey Mode and Others. Here, you can change the keyboard shortcut being used. For example, if you wanted to change the Purple color shortcut from a dash to something more recognizable, you can do that.

Personally, I don’t mess with the keyboard shortcuts too much, as both the color labels and star ratings match up well with what I use in other programs.

Setting your stars and colors

Located in Preferences, under Stars & Colors, this is where I spent the most amount of time adjusting to fit my workflow. By default, AfterShoot uses a combination of colors, stars and keywords for each filter. So your Selected images get labeled green, have a 5-star rating and are keyworded. Your Sneak Peaks get a blue label, a 4-star rating and are keyworded.

For me, I already had a process in place when it came to stars and colors. Usually I choose my photos I want to edit by adding a yellow color label. Any “top 10” or favorite photos get a 5-star rating. Then as I move through my editing process, I change the color to green (done), blue (exported to client) or red (original photo before using a plugin).

In AfterShoot, I adjusted my settings to match:

• Selected: Yellow color label, no star rating, no keyword
• Sneak Peeks: Yellow color label, 5-star rating, no keyword
• Duplicates: No color label, no star rating, no keyword
• Blurred: No color label, no star rating, keyword
• Closed Eyes: No color label, no star rating, keyword

Then, when I exported photos from AfterShoot into Lightroom Classic or Capture One (or update its metadata), I could keep my existing workflow and still know what everything meant.

“More” preferences

There are two preference categories here — Import & Export, as well as Miscellaneous. If you shoot RAW+JPEG, take note of these here, as you have the ability to only import RAWs, JPEGs or both under the Import & Export settings.

Under Miscellaneous, you can also find a host of options related to file handling, automatically changing stars and color labels, email notifications and more.

Thanks to AfterShoot, not only do I have a fast culling system … but I have a tool that works seamlessly with what I already use!