Rating images is a way of rating the quality of an image. Rating images will help you find the best images in a collection.

This process works well regardless of whether you're searching for images a specific set or the across the whole archive.

Microsoft added both a star rating and a percentage rating. This allows you to view rating directly in windows explorer. Both the star and the percentage ratings have been added in the Exif specification

This then set the standard for star rating.

Star Rating

This consists of a star system to rate photos, from 0 to 5 stars

The rating levels are as follows, however you may choose to change these levels to your own preference.

• 0 star - Unrated

• 1 star - May be deleted in the future.

• 2 star - Not strong images but may be spare. Usually unprocessed and not shared.

• 3 star - OK photos that need keeping.

• 4 star - Processed images that are for viewing and sharing.

• 5 star - My best photos

These star rating are not fixed and some photos may go up or down in rating.

Percentage rating

Percentage rating is to give a quality rating from 1 to 99. Well yes, but how does it relate to the star rating?

Percentage rating is less used than star rating. One use that percentage rating over star rating is granularity.

For example if map the star rating to percentage rating:

• 5 stars 81 - 99

• 4 stars 61 - 80

• 3 stars 41 - 60

• 2 stars 21 - 40

• 1 stars 1 - 20

This will allow granularity of about 20 points between stars so for example a percentage rating of 50 is 3 .5 stars.

You may just opt not to use the percentage ratings at all. It is less used than the star system.