A hundred photos from one afternoon. Which ones are actually good?
Every time you come back from a day out — a family gathering, a holiday trip, a child's birthday party — you end up with far more photos than you need. Most cameras and phones fire quickly enough that you have five nearly-identical shots of every moment. A handful are genuinely good. The rest are blurry, badly timed, or just duplicates.
Finding your best shots without a system means scrolling through everything every single time. The Photoshop Elements Organizer has a rating and flagging system that solves this in one dedicated culling session — after which your best photos are permanently labelled and findable in seconds, forever.
Star ratings: your one-to-five quality scale
Every photo in the Organizer can be given a star rating from one to five. The convention most photographers use is:
- 5 stars — exceptional, print-worthy, the very best
- 4 stars — strong keepers, good enough for a photo book or slideshow
- 3 stars — acceptable, might use in a specific context
- 2 stars — weak, kept for reference only
- 1 star — nearly a reject, but something stops you deleting it
You do not need to use all five levels. Many people find a simple two-tier system works better: 4 and 5 stars for keepers, nothing for everything else. Start with whatever feels natural.
How to apply star ratings
Using the keyboard — the fastest method:
Select a photo thumbnail in the Organizer (click once to select it). Press 1 through 5 on your keyboard to assign that star rating instantly. Press 0 to remove the rating. You can keep tapping through a batch of selected photos one by one without touching the mouse.
Using the stars on the thumbnail:
When you hover over a photo thumbnail, a row of five small dots appears below it. Click any dot to set that star rating. The dots fill from left to right — click the fourth dot to give it four stars.
Rating multiple photos at once:
Select several photos (Shift+click for a range, Ctrl+click for individual picks), then press a number key. All selected photos receive that rating simultaneously — useful when a burst of similar shots are all equally good or equally weak.
Flags: picked, unpicked, rejected
Alongside star ratings, the Organizer has a flagging system for quick yes/no decisions during a fast first pass:
- Picked (green flag) — a photo you definitely want to keep and work on
- Rejected (red flag with X) — a photo you want to remove from view or delete
To flag a photo as Picked, select it and press Insert on the keyboard, or right-click and choose Mark as Pick. To mark as Rejected, right-click and choose Mark as Rejected, or press Delete (which marks it as rejected rather than immediately deleting it).
Flags work well as a first-pass tool before you commit to star ratings. Scan through quickly, mark obvious rejects, flag obvious keepers, and ignore everything in the middle. Then go back through your Picked photos and apply star ratings at a more considered pace.
Filtering to see only your best shots
Once photos are rated, the filter bar at the top of the Organizer lets you instantly show only the photos that meet your criteria.
Look for the star filter in the filter bar — it shows five stars with a dropdown. Click the fourth star and set the filter to and above to display only your 4-star and 5-star photos. The rest disappear from view (they are not deleted — just hidden by the filter). You are now looking at your keepers only.
To show flagged photos, use the Flag filter in the same bar — choose Picked to show only your flagged keepers, or Rejected to review what you have marked for deletion before you remove it permanently.
To clear any filter and return to the full library, click the X on the active filter or choose None from the dropdown.
Removing rejected photos
Once you have reviewed your rejected photos and are satisfied they are genuinely worth removing:
- 1Filter to show Rejected photos.
- 2Select all (Ctrl+A).
- 3Press Delete and confirm when prompted.
The Organizer asks whether you want to remove the photos from the catalog only (they stay on your hard drive) or delete them entirely. For true rejects — blurry duplicates, accidental shots of the floor — choosing to delete them from disk frees up storage. For anything you are less certain about, remove from catalog only.
Using ratings with Smart Albums
Star ratings become even more powerful combined with Smart Albums. Create a Smart Album with the condition Rating is greater than or equal to 4 stars and it automatically collects every four- and five-star photo in your entire library — updating itself every time you rate new photos.
This gives you a permanently maintained Best Photos album with no manual maintenance. Whenever you want to browse your highlights, make a photo book, or put together a slideshow, start from this album rather than your full library.
A simple culling workflow
- 1Import your photos into the Organizer.
- 2First pass — scan thumbnails quickly, press Delete to flag obvious rejects (blurry, duplicate, accidental). Do not overthink.
- 3Second pass — go through the remainder, press 4 or 5 for your genuine keepers. Skip anything average.
- 4Filter to 4+ stars — this is now your working set.
- 5Open keepers in the Editor for corrections and finishing touches.
A session of 200 photos typically takes 10–15 minutes to cull this way. After that, every photo you have ever taken has a permanent quality label attached to it — and finding your best shots from any occasion is a two-second filter away.