i would love to hear from some other OSP photographers what your method for editing photos is?! specifically, i am wondering about those who shoot weddings...

after i go through my original files & back them up, i begin editing the photos. i use pictage for my lab. currently, i edit a LARGE selection of photos from each category & then upload the files through pictage's ftp site. i am editing anywhere from 450-550 photos before uploading. i don't have huge sales from pictage, but brides seem to be happy with viewing their photos online & sharing the link with their friends. once the bride has seen her photos, she picks 100-150 of her favorites and puts them in a folder that i will use for her wedding album.

my question is am i wasting my time editing 500 photos up front, before she selects her favorites?? i like the "artistic" feel of my touch on each photo, but its not like very many of them are being bought. i give clients a dvd of original files, unedited & not retouched in any way. do any of you give original files, let bride choose her favorites and THEN edit that selection of 150 photos???

i would love to hear any thoughts on a more time efficient method of this part of my workflow!! thanks!

Learn Lightroom.

LOVE Lightroom.

We edit everything the clients see. Evar.

So you're shooting raw and using presets or something?
Can you expand on this? I'm pretty much doing the same thing as the OP, but image by image and it is WASTING MY LIIIIIIFE! Sorry, ha ha, it is just so time consuming and I am trying to really streamline so I can finish a wedding within a week of shooting it (ie, before I shoot the next one and get all backed up)

We shoot JPG and use presets I've created as I went along. Some BW, some color, some sepia - and I have a pretty tight workflow as far as what to push when.

I think somewhere on OSP is a great summary of what we do - I can't find it right now.

Edit to add two things:

1) write out each step of your workflow so you do it the same each time.
2) TIME each step so you know how fast you are.

When you're done that, post the results and I'll see if there are places you could be faster. In some cases, it takes people 1-2 hrs to DOWNLOAD a wedding. Let me just say - if that's you, I have solutions.

i don't shoot raw. i shoot jpeg. i am also editing image by image bc i make everyone a little different. i do have actions that i use, but it still takes me a while. can you use lightroom with jpegs?

Yes, absolutely you can use LR with jpegs! The thing about LR is that as you edit, you are making changes to the entire photo (no layers, masks, etc.), but the changes are not being made to the original file--they are instead being written to the LR database. Doesn't matter if it's RAW or jpeg, the changes don't "take" until you export the final images (for uploading, burning, whatever). It's great for jpegs because whatever editing you are doing on your images isn't degrading the image at all.

Working with your images in LR is great because you can change one image, then apply those same changes to the next 10. Or 20. Or 100. You don't waste time opening one image, working on it, then saving it, closing it, lather, rinse, repeat. There will always be some images that need some extra PS love, but probably LR will cover most of what you need and do it quickly.

Adobe offers a free 30 day trial of LR--totally worth checking out. If presets are your thing there are several resources for free presets (B&W, added saturation, sepia, cross process) or you can pay for them as well. Kind of like buying PS actions, I guess.

I love Lightroom.

+1

Lightroom, lightroom, lightroom.

The core of my steps:
1. Bring them all into lightroom. Go through on the preview screen and hit the "1" key for every image that I like.
1a. Do a quick scan in Library of the images. Look to see if I kept two versions of almost identical shots. Press "0" for the one I don't want to keep.
2. Tell Lightroom to just display the "1" images.
3. Go into Develop and go through image by image. Use batch processing to white balance & color correct a group of similar images as needed. Choose to convert to B&W or whatever - make it all fit with your style.
4. Renumber the keepers.
5. Export the keepers, upload to online proofing system and proceed from there.

It works the same with RAW or JPG. You can even mix them up. I shoot with two cameras and have a second shooter, we time sync so that I can sort later based on the camera time. It is AWESOME. I couldn't do what I do without Lightroom.

Ok... this is going to be embarrassing. I'm going to estimate since I'm not working on anything right now.

I upload, it only takes 5 minutes or so.
When I'm ready to edit, I basically just go through looking at them in bridge, hit enter when I come across a pic I like and it opens in photoshop.

Then I'll crop, color correct, do any actions (usually boutwell ying/yang, maybe green with envy, big blue, or any b&w actions I want to use) and then save as into a folder designated for each portion of the wedding, like "getting ready" "ceremony" whatever. Anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes per picture, I would estimate.

Then I check my email and goof around on the internet because I have no attention span.

Then I head back to bridge, pick the next image, etc.

It's probably the most inefficient way to do anything ever, but my background is in photojournalism, where I have to edit at most 10 pictures out of the entire take for any given job. I never spent the time to figure out a new workflow because I figured that would end up taking a long time to figure out and learn.

I want to check out lightroom. I kind of want to hire someone to set up a workflow for me and show me the things I need to know... I don't have time (and, more importantly, the patience) to wade through a bunch of tutorial books and stuff like that. Believe me, I have tried.

Lightroom is incredibly easy to learn, I don't think you will need to wade through tutorial books and things like that. I'm sure that you can if you wanted to, and learn every single thing LR does, but you probabaly don't need to. I'm sure that you will be able to pick it up relatively quickly; and it will make your life so much easier.This is almost exactly what I do, and it goes very quickly. I usually import about 1500-1800 photos from a wedding; cull them down to about 800-1000 and then edit those. I also select about 100 of the remaining 800-1000 and export those separately for the slideshow.I think LR is definitely the way to go if you want to really tighten up and increase the speed of your workflow. There are certainly times when you will want to use photoshop for some images but you can do 99% of everything you want in LR.

The editing part has become so time consuming as the business has grown, so I have found a young man that I am going to train to do what we do and pay him to take care of that for me. You need someone trainable and GOOD at PS and/or lightroom etc...I am REALLY hoping this works out!

This is what I used to do. And I have ADD, so I understand the attention span thing, haha!--basically, it took me so long to edit one photo, that while I was editing, my mind had the TIME to wander elsewhere, like "I haven't seen a trailer for that new movie coming out! I should check that out online!" Because editing one photo at a time takes for-ever.THEN I got Lightroom. And it rocks.For me, I think I edit about 100 photos in Photoshop still. But it's a LOT better than editing 800 in photoshop!!

Exactly! I get so bored processing that I do exactly that.. "Oh I have to see what's new on iTunes" or whatever. I will definitely check out lightroom!

Similar to everyone here...

Bridge..
Upload into folders (A, B ,C etc - depending on card) - renumber accordingly (A031 etc).
I go through each folder and rate them 1-5 (5s are used later for promos etc).
I will sometimes open similar shots into the RAW dialog box to check which is better etc, but its firstly a quick edit/cull.
Then show only the rated ones - this is where I start to open into RAW to convert to BW , edit etc - using the copy/paste settings for similar images
(also, if you rightclick an image in Bridge, and choose "Open in Camera RAW..." it opens it in Bridge, rather than Photoshop, so it saves some time and processing power).

I cull them down more whilst I colour correct them etc, by getting rid of the rating so they disappear from site, and then output them for proofs.

And Im SO glad Im not the only one who gets easily distracted during the editing process! Ive found that I use my folders as encouragement, since each may only hold 100 images - once I get to 'this' folder, I will have a break

I use bridge a lot but I hate hate hate hate hate it. It shuts down on me about every 25-50 photos. I don't do the different levels of tags tho. I just tag it a 1 or nothing, then copy all the 1's into an "edits" folder and batch them in PS. I will tag some a 2 which means that I need to edit them individually. I leave everything color until I work on the album so I only end up editing maybe 5-10 shots out of 1000-1500. If bridge weren't so dang slow I would be very fast. I need memory though.. thats the issue. And i am going to format and reinstall windows very very soon. Tips are appreciated!

b