Hey everyone! I had a really fun and great e-session on Monday! I love the images I got from the session. But when it comes time to blog and edit- I get a little discouraged. I feel like some of the images could be even THAT much better if I just had some sort of PS skill. I see all of these fun textures and vintage finishes on so many images and every time I go to edit- I think oooh maybe I should try to do something extra fun and funky with this image- but it all becomes so overwhelming- I say forget it.

The other issue I am having is the amount of time it takes to blog a session, the resizing, the borders, the upload one image at a time, the placing it in the center each time, it is driving me mad! I know I spend about 1.5 hours blogging a session- and I am wondering how you are all doing it?

Here are a few shots from the session and of course there are more on the blog!

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i really like these! they are fun and simple! ps skills take time..... there are all sorts of places on the net that have little mini training sessions.

oh and i feel your pain about blogging the stuff - i was just about to make some new borders and stuff for my images and i just totally trashed that idea.... no way am i going to spend MORE time doing this...

Thanks Tami- I have been to week long workshops on PS and a few other workshops and I love it all and have learned so much, but it just seems so time consuming. I guess I just am not sure if I want to spend that extra time (and it takes me much longer because I am not proficient) not too mention my brain is always going a hundred miles an hour! Too many ideas, I just don't try any of them. Know what I mean. My clients are definately worth the time, it is just trying to pinpoint what I want to do with an image....my ideas and thoughts seem to go on and on.

Do you have actions or do you do it all yourself? Try Totally Rad Actions they save me a ton of time!

Any other thoughts on blogging and how long it takes you to do- maybe I should start a new thread for that........

I changed my original post- because it was kind of off topic.

Feel free to comment on the images or about your blogging techniques.

Tawyna,
Great session! #4 is my favorite. What a great sun flare and composition!

I know what you mean about keeping up and trying to blog. It takes so long, and after PP work, orders, etc. the last thing I want to do post.

I don't know how great you are with key commands, but they help! If you learn those, they should save quite a bit of time. IMO.

Aw, the last two! So great!

As far as blogging time goes...
I pick 15 favourites. (1 min)
Run a PS action. (1 min)
Rename in LR. (1 min)
FTP to server via Cyberduck (free Mac program) - 3 min
Copy and paste the IMG html code over and over: For example.

<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">

Then I go down the list and change the name to 1, 2, 3, etc.

<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo2.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo3.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo4.jpg">
<img src="http://www.jamiedelaine.com/storage/photo5.jpg">

Then I put html tags for centering before and after the whole group of them. A few spaces into between each HTML photo tag.

That takes me another 2 minutes. Then it takes me about 10 minutes to write.

I can get a session blogged in about 25 min.
HTH!
J.

I use text mate and I click and drag photos from my finder into text mate to blog. No more uploading photos one by one. No sireee! I can literally blog in like 30 seconds, and do quite often, if I am just throwing up a quick photo and shout out.

It's a $40 program, though I would have never known about it if I didn't have my nerdy husband to tell me about it. (I use the blog markdown setting. Otherwise, everything you drag in looks like jibberish.)

I feel like nobody knows about it. It sounds dramatic, but it's changed my life, well, at least the way I blog, which is a way of life for me.

Am I the only one that knows about Text mate for blogging?

PS< Also, get your self some actions that resize, sharpen for web and throw your blog template in your photo. Then make a quick key for those actions to make it go even faster.

Great pictures!

I don't do a ton of photo blogging yet but I have started using Windows Live Writer and it has saved so much time. It's a free program that you download and it configures to your blog (I use Wordpress too) so you just type as it will appear on the blog (no more typing and adding picutures on the 'back end' screen). To add pictures you just add them from your hard drive (or from the web).

Once you are finished you just click 'publish' and it uploads your entire post to your blog in one step. I really like it because I can work on posts on my computer (even offline), save them and get them all ready before I publish them.

Hope that helps!

*smacksmacksmack* stop thinking those negative thoughts!

Your editing is clean and sufficient for proofing. Take those doubts and throw them out the window right now! Working them more in Photoshop would just make them look.... like they were worked a long time in Photoshop. Yuk! Who likes that?

DO make actions to resize blog images and place the logo. That will free up more time for you!

We seriously have almost the same blogging workflow! The only difference is I write most of my copy first and then I put in the image links.

Ugh, me too! I keep putting off blog posts because they take me too long to put together. I think I'll be trying out some of these tips. Did you spend extra time with these in PS? I think they look great! I'm doing an engagement session with a bike soon, so I might have to steal a couple of your ideas.

I really like that last shot! Loving the flare!

For know, my workflow is the following:

Pic 10-12 favorites, tag as "blog" from the proofs, watermark in PS. I still host with Flickr for now, so upload to Flickr. Cut and paste photos into Blogger. Write post. Voila. I'm sure this will change once get hosted. Usually takes me about 20 minutes for the whole process unless I get writers block.

Your pics are amazing. You don't need addition PS work. Your work has a very clean, timeless feel to them.

I feel you - I play a lot in PS and my tastes change a lot too. My answer is to record everything I do as an action. If I like something I keep it an use it.

For editing I use button mode in PS. So it's one click to edit a photo (usually) and then one click for an action that resizes the image, adds a preset amount of sharpening, adds a watermark / border, flattens, saves in a specified folder called 'blog' (cause I'm witty) and closes the file.

If you go this way it's really key to add the save & close to the action so you don't overwrite the original file & you don't have to manually save each one.

And now I'm off to check out Windows Live Writer! Currently I use flickr to host blog images and a plugin to get them into the posts without copying and pasting every url, but it is time consuming - Live Writer sounds perfect.

I think the photos here look great. I love photoshop and I love a good texture, but I also like nice clean photos that speak for themselves. You don't NEED all those textures. Those are gravy. Create beautiful images (which you did here) and add a little boost in clarity and color and they will be super. Take your time later and experiment in photoshop to learn those techniques for images now and a again. But don't do it to every single image!

As far as blogging goes. omg, if it took me 1.5 hours I would never blog.

Like was already said.. actions! I have an action to resize/web sharpen/put a watermark on, all in one fell swoop. I resize all my images anyhow because I give them to my customers as web ready files, so generally that's already done. For a sneak peek I just run the action on the ones I'm sneak peeking.

I use my FTP uploader to upload the images that I want on the blog, I type the img code one time, and then I cut and paste it and just change the image numbers for each one. It takes me maybe 10 mins to make a blog post, less if it's only a true teaser, like 3 mins, lol.

You will get there!

I know this has already been said, but I think that your work is beautiful enough to not need all the extra PS processing.

These are awesome images Tawnya!! Love them!!!

As far as blogging work flow, it does take me longer than I want it to as well. The main thing for me is the uploading 1 at a time. Hate it!! So I'd check out that program Betsy recommended. That could be huge. I'd check it out but I'm having a custom blog built by the guy who did my music site and one of the first things I told him was IT HAS TO HAVE A BULK UPLOADER!!!!!!!!! Hehe. I can't wait. He is going to be making his blogs available to others real soon as well.

As for the other parts of the process I choose and enhance the images I show all in Lightroom (This can take a little while depending on the shots, but I'd be doing it anyway to my top favs, its not blog specific). I used to go to PS for Dodging and Burning, but now with Lightroom 2, I do it all right there. So easy and fast.

I made an action in PS that adds sharpening, my logo border and then saves for web; so that once I have picked and enhanced images in Lightroom, I export them at the dimensions 800 pixels on the longest side and then batch run them through PS with my Blog action.

Now they're ready to upload which has been the most time consuming part for me in the blog workflow. Can't wait to be able to bulk upload!!

Hope you're well Tawnya!

Our process is:

EDIT (15-20 min)
Offload images
Batch rename in Bridge or FileWrangler
Pick Faves and Label in Bridge or LR
Edit in Lightroom
Edit and stamp with watermark in Photoshop
Save full-res PSDs
Batch-resize all blog picks in Bride or LR (Since they're all labeled, it's easy to pull them out with a filter)

BLOG
Write Copy (10 min)
Open the multimedia panel in Wordpress
Select all the resized blog picks
Upload (1 min)
Title all images in Wordpress (~30 secs)
Insert into post from multimedia panel (<10 secs per image)

I have got to ask- What program are you guys blogging in?? Wordpress handles everything for me after I save the web-res copies - I have it set up so that medium images (which it creates) are the right size for my template, so all I do is upload big images, tell it to use the medium-size one, selected "center" (or right, left, or no alignment) and insert that bad boy. I understand Blogger and most other soluitons, hosted or not,will do the same things for you. If I want something special, sure, I have to code it, but coding in every image? I think not!

A lot of time savings for us comes from using batch *everything*. These aren't special actions we built or anything; the Image Processor and Batch Rename are both included with Photoshop/Bridge/Lightroom. Even the things we don't automate, like adding the watermark, are pretty simple - the watermark exists in a central spot on our server as an AI file. We copy it once, then paste it as a smart object into each image, which are all open at the same time, so stamping them's a breeze.