Ok, for right now this is going out to all the Jpeg shooters here on OSP! I sooooo need to get my workflow times up!! I'm dying here! All I want to do is batch color correct. That's it. My whole monkey wrench is with color correction. If I could just get past that hurdle, I'd be ready to roll!! I can shoot good stuff in jpeg mode and do just fine. (at least I think so and so do clients..). Anyways, I am using Lightroom now, thanks to Matt A. and Kevin Swan, but is there something I'm not doing?? Now I know all of you Raw shooters who read this will say that I need to switch. And who knows, maybe I will if it will speed up my workflow. I'll do anything right now since I am finished for this season. I come from the Gary Fong attitude of jpegs, but I can be convinced to do otherwise! Becker, care to help a dude out??? Anyone who has what they think to be a killer jpeg workflow time, please let me know! I really need it. Folks talk about 3 and 4 hour edit time frames for a wedding and I am now where near that right now! Ugghhh!

Thanks,
RK

yea..switch. deffinetly a much faster (and maybe better) solution for what ur probably looking for.

Put aside the debate of raw vs. jpeg and give into the peer pressure lol. "Everyone else is doing it!"

As another JPEG shooter I'd also love to hear workflow tips.

Love to shoot RAW, but until my memory cards increase I dont have enough to do a wedding in RAW. Plus there are lots of times when I think JPEG will be fine.

But I am serious about trimming my workflow time down. I feel like I spend way too much time post-processing, and not enough time doing what i love to do, and what got me into this biz, which is actually taking pictures!!

Hey neigbhor,

I'm hoping someone gives you some good tips b/c I would prefer to go back to jpg.

Scarlett convinced me to switch to RAW when she was here shooting with me in November. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being able to correct so easily (especially color temp) and to copy and paste those edits, etc.

But...number one - I need more cards before wedding season. And number two...my RAW images are so GRAY. But I won't bog your post down with that. I need to post that somewhere else.

So anyway - I can't answer your question, but I hope to see something. I'm confused though - I thought that was what Lightroom was all about??? What does Lightroom do?

Well here's my thing. All I really want to do is fly thru my color correction like I "hear all these other folks" talk about. 3 or 4 hour times for 1500+ images. Once I get thru that, I'm home free! I can build my pre-designs, make prints, yada, yada, yada... This is where my hold up is.



Lightroom is great! It is the fastest way that I have found so far. But shooting jpegs, I can only batch about 12 to 15 pics at a time, whereas people who shoot raw, tell me that they batch like 50 or 60 pics at a time. Now I can see where you could make some time with that kind of processing. I am just trying to find out if I am missing something here before I make a jump over to Raw. C'mon you other "fast" processor jpegers, where are you?????

Gary Fong had a piece of software called bulls eye (someone else made it and her re-branded it to sell) He showed it off on One Step Ahead. You just click on a neutral black or white in the images and boom it was corrected. You could fly through a stack of Jpegs if I remember correctly. It might even batch.

I didn't pay a huge amount of attention b/c I was a Raw freak even back then.

Do what works for you and your clients. Good luck.

Bullzeye is the same as PictoColor's iCorrect software. It's extremely easy to use for color correction - if you want "neutral" color. (The new version lets you modify the definition of "neutral" so that you can warm them up a bit if you like.) Not useful at all for levels correction (because of the way they implemented the levels midpoint control). It also has a skin-tone correction feature - which doesn't work at all with very dark skin (at least in the previous version).

But I don't think you can adequately correct images without doing levels/curves correction at the same time. If you want to do that, Bibble is very powerful.

You really need to just call me. Batch 12? WTF? I can select an entire folder of 1500 and copy paste settings onto that if I want to. It's very easy. Calling. Me. lol

12-15? God I gotta get a few tutorials up!

M

Oh great!! Now I sound like a charity case! ha ha ha!! I will have to put that call into you Mr. OSP Hacker King! Show me the way, master. Young grasshopper wants to be enlightened!

Michael J. and jkantor,
I used to use Bullzeye 3 all the time for color correction. That was until ol' Matt A. and Swan started showing me Lightroom stuff. LR just has everything right there at your fingertips and it seems to be a much smoother workflow for me vs. the old way of doing Bullzeye 3. Same controls, just a better layout. I have been converted! Now I just need to speed up the color correction and I'll be good to go! I think that when it comes down to it, all photographers just want to get the basic "batch" done and then if you want to tweak here and there you can. I can get things moving once I'm over this hurdle.......

Thanks for all the input! Keep it coming!!

If you did there would be a LOT of people indebted to you ;o) I'd like to switch back to jpg too (but I'm trying to get better at shooting manual so RAW saves my bootie).

I'll get the "scoop" and post it back up here!

I'm working on getting a video camera now and if I do, watch out!

I need to setup the SPMatt video camcorder tutorial fund. lol

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?modelId=MOD...=119&page=2

That's the baby I want.

I don't think you want to speed up color and other corrections too much. As was brought up in another thread before the loss of the board - that's half of what we get paid to do.

But if you want to do it quickly, DJ's way of using a combination of auto settings and presets in Bridge would be the way to do it. I don't know if Lightroom lets you do the same.

i'm convinced that mastering your exposures on board the camera (white balance is VERY important) is the key. the less you need to do later the better. this way all you need to do is the artsy stuff to a few shots and voila. i know that in switching to digital i had an attitude of worrying about those things after the fact. i'm getting out of that frame of mind.

i've gone from 20+hours to 6-8hours (because i look at every photo)

it is consistantaly getting less time consuming as i practice man-handling my white balance.

i shoot jpeg.

there's always pictage as well. 20 cents an image and hands off!

This is a much needed post. I too shoot jpeg and I'm getting great results out-of-camera. So, I have a few questions as I don't quite follow:

• Why do you need to color correct your jpegs? The reason I ask is that my jpegs don't need any color correction (unless I'm missing something) and all I do in P/S is pump-up the colors where I would like and occassionally ad an unsharp mask. Most of the time I'm playing around with vignettes and/or converting images to b/w. Should I color-correct and if "yes" why?

• Although I'm also thinking of going RAW for the advantages of presents and CS2's bridge, I am building my own actions to help speed up my workflow. Do you use any PS actions? If 'yes" have you considered creating your own "workflow" action. You can batch edit in PS, you just have to create two folders first - origin and destination.

• I'm still using CS as I don't have CS2 yet. Does anyone have any "tips" on how to speed things up using CS?

• Are you shooting Canon or Nikon? The reason I ask is that I know there are some in-camera tweaks for Canon that make a big difference in your images. I'm a Nikon shooter and there aren't as many but the few available work well.

Thanks again for this post and I look forward to learning from you all. Be blessed and keep shooting!

jkantor- Don't get me wrong. I look at all my pics and go thru them. I'm not wanting to skimp on quality, just speed up the process and keep things moving. I am almost at the point where I need to hire someone in the office to help me out, but I'm just trying to seek some input on how to do it better for me right now. It just wets the taste buds when folks say they can do an entire wedding edit session in 3 or 4 hours! I'd love that!



Sam the Man- I shoot Nikon too! I also shoot everything very flat out of camera. No sharpening, no contrast, normal saturation, 0 hue adjustment. I have found that when I decide to add these things in editing, I get much nicer shots. It's always easier to add sharpening (Kevin Kubota actions) and add some saturation and contrast. My mindset is that I would rather control these things than letting the camera "add" that information to my jpeg file. I feel that I get "cleaner" jpeg files straight out of the camera, if that makes sense.

I like shooting jpeg. I can get great exposures and enlargements over 16x20. The whole point of this post was to see if there is a "jpeg workflow" that is as fast as a "raw workflow" like some people claim to be. Now I'm not here for the whole raw vs. jpeg thing. Whole other topic.........just seeing if times are comparable. If it did speed me up, I may very well consider the switch over to raw. That why I loooove OSP! Just trying to get input from other great folks!!

Sam --

I'd love to hear your in camera settings! I haven't shot with custom settings yet and would like to find out what you have... Also what camera do you shoot with? Right now I'm on a D70s.

--- Gregg

Both workflows are essentially the same - only the software and the processing power and storage requirements are different.

And for those who "nail the exposure" in camera - that's impossible to do all of the time no matter who you are - and with digital (especially jpgs) what it usually means is sacrificing highlights. It also fails to take into account that most of the time, you don't want final images that look like the actual scene - you want more or less contrast and color saturation and specific color correction (on a case by case basis - not globally).

I don't pay any attention to people who say they correct their images in X amount of time. I just do what I think needs to be done. If you don't want to spend the time on it, outsource it. That's the future.

However, color correction skills are what separate average photographers from great ones.

There are 100s of ways to do this business and succeed.

Anyone who's absolutely convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong will have their own way and probably just fail quicker than the rest. 2/3 of new photo businesses fail in 3 years and over 80% in 5 years. If we can't get people to go from CF to the client in under 30 hours, those numbers will only increase. That may be good for you individually but it's not good for our industry.

I download, backup, edit, PS art, color correct, backup, showit, and email the client in about 4-6 hours depending on the # of hours we shot for. If that's not a relevant metric in your business, that's fine, but in mine it means that I can do 40 weddings a year EASILY without wait times. Wait times suck. Nobody is going to wait 4-6 weeks for photos in the future. NOBODY. I'm going to ensure that your competition at least knows HOW to get them done in less than 1 day. If you can do that great. If you can't, you really WILL need to pay attention.

As far as whether people will pay for you if you get "too fast" consider that the last 10 weddings I've edited have been in LR and my clients have been happier than ever. Consider that in that time I've booked 14 weddings for about $48,000 total. Another 14 after New Year's will get me closer to my goal - I would like to shoot 35 this year for $3500. Despite everyone seeing my new improved 4 hour workflow, my prices have gone WAY up and people are stil paying. At this time last year I had 9 weddings booked. Now I have 14 at almost double the price and less than half the time per wedding. That increases my income x4.

A 4x income will keep me in business. That's all it's about - making money, making good photos, and pleasing your clients and your artistic needs. I do all of that so ... obviously there's more than one way to do this.

I would suggest switching to RAW if you are struggling with workflow. I do have a small tutorial about how I do things with Bridge & Camera RAW at http://weddingphotographyproject.wordpress.com/. I cut my editing time from about 15 hours to about 3 using the methods there.

Ijkantor - I understand where you are coming from. I guess that since I am back logged with weddings right now, which I hate!, all those "fast edit" times just get me going! Maybe I shouldn't be caught up in the hype!



Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about Matt A.! I'll be calling!!! You need to send me and email and let me know when..........

Matt and Swan have killer workflows and Matt's gonna be doing a talk at WPPI so I'm sure he'll be doing some demos there!

Also, there are two good videos in my August newsletter ...the same principles are somewhat possible on JPEGs with Lightroom.

I recently discovered a really helpful tool. I have changed my camera color settings to less contrast, and also added a curve through Nikon Capture that boost up the midtones ( mainly skin tones). Even without the curve, the less contrast setting creates less harsh shadow to light transitions on the image.

Here is a sample taken with these settings on my Nikon and a Kubota action for some boost.

Click to view attachment

[quote name='Robbin Knight' date='December 17 2006, 11:03 AM' post='32505']
jkantor- Don't get me wrong. I look at all my pics and go thru them. I'm not wanting to skimp on quality, just speed up the process and keep things moving. I am almost at the point where I need to hire someone in the office to help me out, but I'm just trying to seek some input on how to do it better for me right now. It just wets the taste buds when folks say they can do an entire wedding edit session in 3 or 4 hours! I'd love that!
Sam the Man- I shoot Nikon too! I also shoot everything very flat out of camera. No sharpening, no contrast, normal saturation, 0 hue adjustment. I have found that when I decide to add these things in editing, I get much nicer shots. It's always easier to add sharpening (Kevin Kubota actions) and add some saturation and contrast. My mindset is that I would rather control these things than letting the camera "add" that information to my jpeg file. I feel that I get "cleaner" jpeg files straight out of the camera, if that makes sense.

Hmmmmmmmm, that's interesting and I'll have to try it out. I've been shooting everything IIIa with auto white balance. I shoot a few "snapshots" at an event today and for the first time I blew out my highlights. So, I need to reconsider as I don't like those results and am not use to them. I also use and recommend Matt's "PI Action Set" as they work wonders on your images. I also use KK's Artistic action set and IttyBitty Actions.

Matt, you know I love your action set. How can I purchase your workflow actions?

Hi Greg, I also shoot with the D70s and currently I have my WB set to "auto" and my jpeg setting at "IIIa." I played around with the constrast and satuation settings along with the "vivid" and I liked the "IIIa" jpegs out-of-camera best. But, I'm looking to go RAW for my next wedding and I plan to use DJ's raw presents once I get CS2. How do you like your D70's images?

Hi Robin!! How are you doing?

I shoot JPG and RAW almost equally. I'm still trying to find the magic workflow for ME, and until I do, I'll continue experimenting.

I've seen DavidJay's RAW originals, and I've seen Becker's original JPGs, and here's what I know:
- The biggest key to great images is getting it right at the time of capture.
- Working in Manual helps keep your exposures more consistent across the board.
- Working in RAW eliminates the camera's need to figure out White Balance in AWB mode, however if you set your color temperature each time you changing lighting conditions when working in JPG, there are little to no corrections to be made in post-production.
- Lightroom is to JPGs as ACR is to RAW.
- A two - three hour workflow requires you to be OK with "good enough" and is not possible if you are a perfectionist.
- Less is more. The fewer number of photos you have to correct in the first place, the less time you'll spend correcting them. If you take 2000 shots, cull them down to 800-1000 first, correct fewer and only show the best. Many photographers who have a really short workflow time, are showing very few images.
- A great lab means you don't have to work as hard. Pictage has just started offering free automatic corrections for all images going online and being printed as proofs. This means you can upload your original JPGS, and they'll take care of the rest.

FYI.. my workflow takes me about the same amount of time in JPG as it does in RAW. It's all in how picky you are or aren't and how many images you show.

Robin,

I'm also a jpg shooter. The easiest way to speed up your workflow is to cut out any corrections on your images that go online. You need to get it right in the camera. Or as close to right as you can. Then just edit out the junk and put all the good images online. We never touch an image unless it's going into the album or a custom print for the wall. The clients know they are looking at untouched images. I also don't offer proofs. I haven't offered proofs in 2 years. If they want proofs they pay extra for them and then I'll run them through some batch actions to pump them up a little.

Jim

Hey Anne! I was wondering when you were going to chime in!! I remember how you told me you loved Lightroom so with your comments and watching Swan and Matt A., I was convinced. I know there are more tricks with LR than I know right now so I'm learning what I can with that program. I'm all about getting it right in camera first. I love it when clients say "oh, you can just fix it in Photoshop, right?" Uuuh, no. I don't want to have to take your braces out of every shot! So I know how good it is when you get it right the first time. I just purchased an Expo disc and haven't even played with it yet. I thought I would fine tune my WB when shooting and see if that speeds things up for me.

I like to have all of the pics that I upload to Pictage color corrected first. That way not only what gets uploaded to them, I also have on my harddrive. Now I can start putting the web slideshows together and get along with building the wedding album. Maybe this is where some of my hang ups are. I don't know. I have always felt that once everything is cc'd like I want it, I'm good to start on everything else.



I'm always shooting in manual. That comes from my film days. I'm always running around with my light meter. And no I'm still not at that "zen level" where I can just look at a church scene with all kinds of different lighting and get it right with a guess on exposure. The guy I learned from could do that and this grasshopper has not attained that level yet!

You bring up another good point here Anne. I usually cull all my stuff down to about 800-1000 shots. Anything more than that seems to overwhelm the clients. On the other hand, I followed what Gary Fong had to say about "leaving a lot of stuff in" because you never know what the clients will buy. That is so true! You wouldn't believe the stuff that I see that sells on Pictage that normally I would have tossed away. That is a tough line for me. Maybe I need to start being more strict with myself on this aspect. Stuff that I would have normally pitched, gets bought! It blows my mind! I think ol' Swan is pretty heavy on the delete button so maybe I need to follow that line of thinking a little closer.




Hey Jim - Maybe this too is another line of thinking that I should be doing. When everything is color corrected for me, I feel like I have a fresh slate to begin the album process. Sure things will get edited, but at least they look good on line when the client (or future clients) view it online with my wedding album showcase slideshow.



Now this is something that I still do. I don't charge for them when a client takes delivery of an album. It's like a little bonus for them and they love it. Such good response for me so I don't think that I want to take that away quite yet.........

Wow, I really feel like I'm letting it all out of my soul here tonight! ha ha! Sorry for the long thread and if I have bored you by reading all the way down the list here!

Robbin, how about doing your workflow a little backwards?

Instead of going through everything before creating an album or slideshow... how about making a quick selection of favorites and editing those for a slideshow or album design before going through the rest? That way... you put your best images in front of your client FIRST and QUICKLY so that the client gets attached to the images which you think are the best. Then, when they see the rest of the images, which you can be less picky about, they already have this awesome first impression of how beautiful your work is and it only makes sense to buy your best work?

Good points here. I already do that with the slideshows,but I know I only want about 50 or 60 pics for that and then I'm done. With albums, it's a whole other story. I never know what I want to use until I start building it. I usually just start picking from the filmstrip in Bridge and start building page after page. I never felt like I wanted to limit myself on images that go into an album. I will now contemplate what the wise Ruthman has spoken................

Have you seen DJ's video for jpg workflow using Bridge?

Also; the new version of ACR in Adobe CS3 (free tryout for 2 days from Adobe) can manipulate JPG files identically to RAW.

This makes the main difference between JPG and RAW merely 12 bits/ch vs. 8 bits/ch. So if you're sold on JPG quality, then some of the traditional arguements to use RAW are nullified a bit.

Or; invest $200 for 4 or 5 2GB cards and start using RAW.

Well I haven't tried out the new CS3 download yet so I will have to give that a try and see how it works out. I don't think that DJ had a jpeg workflow thing going on there, just strickly raw stuff. Either way, it's still a nice video to watch.
The decision continues......................

High-volume with minimal value added is always a valid business model (and if you can find people are willing to pay a lot for it, that's great - I guess there's still at least one of those born every minute), but if you don't color correct your images and don't provide proofs, just what what are your clients paying for? Your companionship?

As for my point that "Color correction skills are what differentiate good photographers from great ones," you don't have to look at very many sites to realize that it's true.

I like that approach Anne and will have to incorporate it into my workflow. I'm currently editing 700+ images from an event I recently covered and it's taking me some time to get through them. Thanks for the tip!

Same here, I thought his workflow was just for RAW. Thanks for the tip!

I'm not going to go on and one about this, but I'll lay it out for you.

I shoot jpg, less contrast, auto white balance 90% of the day, sometimes I switch to Flash WB, but I'll shoot 3500 images at an event, narrow down the top 1000 and have all of them edited to perfection is 3 hours flat! I do it using my own workflow that I created and it contains my own 25 custom actions. You can add your own actions, Kubotas, Matt Antonio's or anybody elses that you like. But you have to use ActionRunner to have the speed you need in the jpg flow. It's an absolutely incredible tool. If you'll take the time to read the user manual, do it like it say's and just go for it you'll find it's amazing! Right now, Jeff LaPlante is working on a dummy proof User Interface for version 2.0 but 1.0 does virtually the same thing, you just have to read the instructions and put a tad of thought into the set up. Check it out! www.davistools.com

Fa la la la, bumpy de bump!

shooting raw is a real pain, one less photos, extra time to convert photos for your costumers to view them on their computers, and also a killer on hard drive memory space. however the benefits far outway jpegs.

when i changed from jpeg to raw i was thinking what should i do, and how to do photos quickly for the magazines and charities i work for doing photojournalism. basiclly i use adobe bridge, but first go into photoshop make an action by starting with an image, press record and do your thing until you get what you wnat then press stop and go to the little triangle circle in the top right corner of the action/history pallet and press save action. save it into one of your action packages, by dragging it in. then go back to adobe bridge, highlight the whole joint and then go to tools-photoshop-image processing. choose how you wnat to save the files, eg. .psd, .tiff .jpg, and then let it run. itll make a second copy of your images but with your action, which you created. to use this action at the bottom youll have a small box where you can choose it from the photoshop option.

ps. before you do this launch both photoshop and bridge.

this is for batch reprocessing, although if your wanting to do it man on computer style i recommend david jays showiteffects and then you can install the color balance and go through them that way. this way you dont need to change to raw and still have your photos spot on!

ross

Matt, I would really appreciate if you would make a tutorial on how to make a faster jpeg workflow. Thanks man.

Haha - eventually my site will be full of tutorials on doing just that. My next one will be on making changes to more than one JPG at a time - but I have a bridal show tomorrow so I must sleep now.

M

Hi Robbin,

I use this plug-in by Kodak to batch my jpegs. It can automatically correct white balance and contrast/brightness of jpegs.

Fast and useful.

Regards,
Gabriel

Also, there are two good videos in my August newsletter ...the same principles are

DJ, I would really like to see these videos but can not get thim to play.Are thy still available for viewing?

Thanks

Greg

Thanks for that link. I'll have to go and try that out. I sorta looks like an "auto" color correct plug-in and so far I have never had much luck with anything "auto", but I'll try it out. Can't hurt! ha!

We just changed from a RAW workflow to a JPG workflow. I attended [ b ]'s first party of 5 and found it to be really insightful. RAW is a great tool. It really allowed us to learn. But there are things that I really enjoy from JPG. RAW was too inconsistent and I really don't like the flat look.

Some people are amazing at RAW worflows. We didn't get the same results consistently.

But we have found that the JPG images from our Picture Styles from our Canon cameras have amazing color. Exposures are important to get down. We really don't need to spend 5 hours getting color correction when the Canon 5D's color out of the camera is amazing. I really suggest allowing the camera to color your photos. (That's why we spent $7,000 on the cameras.)

Plus, we have learned so much more about PS since going to a JPG workflow.

Also, Pictage does offer free "Proofing" color correction. Not the final product. Plus, I wasn't impressed with Pictage's computer automated color correction.

Another route is hiring someone to color correct for you. www.Mylavalu.com is really amazing and it's $.17 or so per image. So $170 for 1000 photos. They do both RAW and JPG. When we get bogged down, we will for sure outsource.

the images from a raw file can look the same as a jpg...I just shoot with the settings I like (same as I did w/ jpg) but in Raw. I have ACR set to not change my files when loaded and I tweak them from there. I would much rather try and get the pop at the time of shooting and tweak them afterwood than to drop my settings have them all bland or flat.