Hey,

I've looked all over the web trying to figure out a work flow and I have a few specific questions.

I know a lot of you use automated actions to edit a bunch of photos at once. I assume that doing this with pictures all shot within the same conditions (lighting, camera settings) is pretty easy to get your desired result.

However, what do you do for example, if you've shot all day (like at a wedding) and your collection of photos have a large variety of lighting/camera settings. Now editing all of them with automated actions would be extremely difficult because your results will come out differently for each photo right?

What's the solution? Here are some I thought of, please correct me if I'm wrong:

1) - Separating the photos that have obvious changes lighting/camera settings before the automated action

- If you do this, you'd either separate by ranking/color in Adobe Bridge or create separate folders first?
- Additionally, you'd run the action on each separated group of photos and then go back and tweak it slightly specifically for your desired result.

- If this is what you do, then does that mean one must always tweak the settings of the actions each time they use the action? (This sounds like a dumb question but I'm asking just to make sure)

2) - Other Solution I thought of:

- Don't separate the collection of photos into groups
- Then run only 'safe' actions (simpler actions like sharpening, etc) that you know for sure will only edit them slightly without having to worry about drastic changes to some photos.

- This doesn't allow any major editing to a lot of photos though

3) - Last Solution I thought of - It's a little combination of the above two.

- Run automated action first, then separate the 'ugly' ones out and tweak the action to edit them correctly afterwards + then run your 'safe' actions

Did anything I just typed make sense? Or was I totally wrong?

This is a long post. I apologize in advance for this. I've always been really confused as to how you all do it! Thanks for taking the time. Any positive critique/tips would definitely help a bunch!

please?

Or .... maybe try Lightroom

My general workflow for editing/sorting is as follows

1: Upload all images
2: Delete all just plain old bad pics
3: run through and pick about 60 of my favorites
-In lightroom I run through the pictures and when I find one I just love i hit the 1 key to add a star
4: Edit those and export to post on the blog
5: I then go back to all the photos from the event and select similiar images and apply the desired preset
6: After I've edited all the images I run through them again and edit out ones I don't like and tweak ones that need help
-In lightroom I run through the pics hitting command and the down arrow to apply the x flag.
7: hit command delete and remove all the deleted files from the disk

I know it seems like alot of steps but I can edit an entire event in 3-5 hrs. I use lightroom and go into photoshop if I realy need to save a pic.

Thanks for the reply Matt Dorroh.

Can anyone give some input on my original questions? I use photoshop cs3

Honestly, you're wasting your time with Photoshop/Bridge. Download the Lightroom 1.4 Trial version, it's fully functional for 30 days. Lightroom is a literal lifesaver by the way. After the 30 day trial, buy it. $200 bucks is WELL worth it for the amount of work you'll do (assuming you're making money in the photography world?)

I can guarantee that you won't find anything faster or easier than Lightroom for what you're trying to do.

Alright, I just got the trial version of lightroom.

I'll see what happens from here! hopefully i can find the majority of my answers

Lightroom, lightroom and lightroom. You can find all kinds of free presets on the web for free. Kubota and David Jay both sell them at a great price. This will speed up your workflow in know time.

I know a lot people say lightroom, lightroom, lightroom but for the initial edit it is slow, slow, slow.

Once you download your cards and make your initial backups Breezebrowser or Photomechanic are excellent tools for culling i.e. taking out the uglies, blurs, missed shots etc.

If I'm not lollygagging I can cull a 10 hour wedding (1000-3000 images) and rename them in about 2 hours. I also tag my BWs here (Breezebrowser) and select the images that I will blog (I will give these most PS love). After that you can jump to Lightroom to make your batch edits and export to JPEG.

Major photoshop work is done for print orders and album layouts.

No reason to make it complicated. Lightroom does all of the above. My entire workflow is in lightroom and nothing else until I get a print order or build an album.

YMMV