Photos Workbench seamlessly integrates with Apple Photos to help you organize, name, and compare your photos.
The Importance of Star Ratings
Star ratings are a powerful tool for organizing and culling your photos and videos. They help you identify your best images and categorize them by quality or relevance.
With Photos Workbench, you can assign star ratings to your photos and videos, ranging from 1 to 5 stars. While the interpretation of each rating is personal, here’s a suggested guide:
- No star – Unrated. Still needs reviewing
- ★ (1 Star) – Rejected. Marked for deletion
- ★★ (2 Stars) – Keep without adjustments. May have emotional value
- ★★★ (3 stars) – Okay. Worth investing time into adjustments
- ★★★★ (4 stars) – Good. Worth sharing
- ★★★★★ (5 Stars) – Fantastic. Worth printing
For tips on developing a workflow for star ratings, check out our previous blog post.
How to Assign Star Ratings
No matter how you choose to interpret star ratings or structure your workflow, Photos Workbench offers several efficient ways to assign ratings to your photos and videos.
Star Rating Control
Star ratings are displayed for each photo in both List and Grid views.
- Assigning a Rating: When no rating is assigned, all five stars appear translucent. Click a star to assign a rating—the selected star and all stars to its left will become clearly visible.
- Adjusting a Rating: Click and drag to the left or right to adjust the rating. Drag all the way to the left to remove the rating entirely.
You’ll also find a star rating control in the Info pane, located to the right of the main viewer. The Info pane works seamlessly in both the Single and Compare views.
Rating Menu
The Image > Rating submenu allows you to assign star ratings to selected photos. You can further streamline this process by using the free CustomShortcuts app to assign keyboard shortcuts to star rating menu items.
Additionally, the menu includes options to increase or decrease the current rating for selected photos.
Keyword Palette
Star ratings translate to keywords in the Photos application. Photos Workbench comes pre-configured with a “Ratings” keyword palette listing relevant keywords.
To use the keyword palette:
- Select View > Show Keywords Palette to reveal the palette.
- From the pop-up menu, select “Ratings”.
- Click a button in the palette to apply its corresponding keyword to the selected photos.
- Hold the Shift key while clicking to remove a keyword.
- Hold the Control key to view keyboard shortcuts assigned to each button. For example, Control-1 assigns the “1 Star” keyword.
Note: Photos Workbench does not prevent you from assigning conflicting keywords, so use caution when assigning rating keywords.
Keyword Shortcuts
Both Apple Photos and Photos Workbench allow you to assign single-key shortcuts to keywords for faster tagging.
- Go to View > Manage Keywords and assign the numbers 1 through 5 as shortcuts for the respective keywords “1 Star” through “5 Star.”
- Enable the shortcuts by selecting View > Enable Keyword Shortcuts.
Now, pressing a number key (e.g., 5) will instantly add or remove the corresponding star rating keyword for the selected photos.