My workflow = not so fabulous,Can anyone help?

<p>So I copy all of my images to my external hard drive first.<br />Then I open up each image from the CF disk one by one and select the top 10-15 images and edit them for my blog. This takes like 1-2 hours because of the editing and re-sizing and selecting the images and sharpening for web and spot healing, etc...<br />Then I go through each CF card image by image. I open up 20 at a time in photoshop and edit exposure, add a little bit of "Oh snap", sometimes I do a curve adjustment, add a warming filter, re-size to about 70%, sharpen for web, save for web devices. So each image takes me about 1 minute and 1/2.<br />So this times about 800-1000 pictures for a wedding takes me like 4 weeks because I can only edit after my full time job.<br />This can't be right? Can anyone help. Please note that I just purchased light room but don't really know how to use it. But I hear this helps with faster editing. Thanks so much!!!</p>

<p>I'm always interested in hearing other people's work flow. It interests me.<br>

Here's mine, not sure if it's any better. Each wedding takes me about 2 weeks to complete working nights 8pm to 1am.<br>

- Get home from wedding and back up all pictures to the harddrive and disc.<br>

- Quickly gloss over the pictures and pick 4-5 at random to fix up in Photoshop and blog.<br>

- Organize all images in chronological order and rename files to fit that order (I shoot with 2 sometimes 3 cameras, so the cards are out of order depending on when I upload).<br>

- Then, I go through and delete the non-keepers.<br>

- Once I have everything I want to keep, I go one by one editing each image (sometimes just an "oh snap!" (love it!) or "Clarie-ify") or sometimes more.<br>

- Once all images are edited I upload them to my online portrait sales site (instaproofs) and burn a back up disc for me and burn the final discs for the client.</p>

 

<p>I think using Photoshop is your problem. You really need an image management/editor tool. Now, most on here are stuck on Lightroom, but I've tried it and hated it. You have to "import" a batch of photos into the program just to work on them, and then you have to export them somewhere else. Not efficient.</p>

<p>I use ACDSee Pro 2.5 (version 3 is in beta now, and coming for the Mac any time now). Anyway, you can try it free for 30 days at <a href="http://www.acdsee.com">www.acdsee.com</a>. I use this program for 95% of my post production work. I use Photoshop for the other 5%, and only for compositing, text effects, or sophisticated stamp tooling. Opening up 20 images at a time in Photoshop is your problem. With ACDSee Pro, you can preview, edit, and manage any folder of RAW or JPEG images on your drive without having to import or export them. You can batch process groups of images that all need the same thing; the batch processor lets you check off all the operations you want to apply, like white balance, rotating, sharpening, shadow/highlight, and tons more. Then, you set it to batch process your images while you do other things. That's a HUGE timesaver. Plus, it will background process your RAW images, and batch convert them to the format of your choice.</p>

<p>Plus, it's only $130, less than half what Lightroom costs. Get a tool like this, and you can get your life back. Or, hire an editor at $10 an hour to do the grunt work.</p>

<p>The first thing you should do though, is download the images and select the keepers/tossers. Don't get into editing, just give them a thumbs up/down and cut it down to the essential images. With a tool like ACDSee (or others) you can easily see all the thumbnails and preview them to make those decisions. With Photoshop, you'd have to use Adobe Bridge to view thumbnails, which is just too clunky.</p>

<p>I never edit from the CF cards, its too slow.</p>

<p>I import to LR2 and copy them to an internal/eSATA drive first. Once in there, I do the "grading" of images by a star rating system. Hit a number to rate an image (I do 5 or skip the image), once the initial edit is complete (usually about an hour or so for an 8 hour shoot) I begin editing down for any "not quite there" images. That takes about another 30-45 mins. Then I spend about 6+ hours editing the keepers in LR2. Then export to a jpeg folder within the client folder and I'm more or less done with the flow part.</p>

<p>Absolutely agree: don't use Photoshop.</p>

<p>With Lightroom I can get through 5k sports images shot in one day. Day zero: shooting. Day 1 - pick the ones I want (usually around 2500, so 50%) Days 2 & 3 adjust and crop. That's with relatively constant lighting, so 10 minutes work gives me exposure and colour balance settings for the lot. For social event shooting it's a bit slower, but it's still possible to work through 500 pictures and come out with 300 nice edits all in one afternoon.</p>

<p>More misunderstanding on how Light Room works. Which I understand since it takes some time to become familiar with all that it can do ... just like with PhotoShop. But, there is a reason it has become so popular with production photographers and event shooters ... if it wasn't fast and very efficient it would have died on the vine.</p>

<p>When you insert a CF card into the reader and open LR, it instantly loads thumbnail previews for editing. Uncheck the image and will not be imported into LR. When you import the images there is a back-up file created anywhere you want it. You now have two copies.</p>

<p>It eliminates the need to import the CF card to your hard drive first, and then take it into another processing program. The CF card remains intact and can be set aside for a third copy.</p>

<p>There are two processing modules in LR ... Library and Develop. In Library there are whole sets of basic controls to alter the images. You can select whole groups of similar images, correct one and apply the settings to the remainder. Unlike other programs, you do not have to wait for the corrections to be applied, but can move to the next group. This is a very swift method for getting to proof level quality.</p>

<p>The Develop Module in LR provides more refined controls and now includes some fantastic brushes and selective exposure controls.</p>

<p>LR allows the insertion of User Presets where you can apply your own recipes or conversion techniques. Also, things like Nik Define 2 are available as plug-ins for LR to do sophisticated noise reduction.</p>

<p>Finally, any image can be directly opened in PhotoShop for more specific work and saved back in the LR Library for that job. There is no need to use Bridge at all. One place with everything in that one place ... and multiple copies of it. </p>

<p>What used to take me days, now takes me hours. </p>

<p>Oh the lovely topic of workflow... here is mine<br>

1. Post wedding I load all images into lightroom - LR auto backs-up to a second drive. One step. - I also have an off site back up for my computer so I have a total of 3 copies. Check to make sure copy is on my back up hard drive Note - these are all the RAW files.<br>

2. Sort and rate - I sort and rate photos which are keepers and photos where are Photog picks. Keepers are 3 stars my picks are 4 stars and 5 stars - 5's go to portfolio and onto blog.<br>

3. During sorting and rating I also create additional copies for B&W images because I always like to keep the color - I make not if there are blocks of photos that need color balancing<br>

BTW I am doing this while photos are loading.This is all done in LR - saves a ton of time and I could not do it without LR - it is the best tool I think a wedding photographer has.<br>

4. All 3 star photos are exported to High res JPEG into a Folder with B&G name - note I do not change the names of any of the orginal files because when I back up I back up with the orginal file number. Since I work with a partner of some weddings and two or three cameras this helps with no duplicates.<br>

5. All 4stars & 5 stars's go out for photoshop if needed - I only turn B&W ones that are 4/5 so this would be done in PS and I have created some custome actions which work well for this. I look at all 4-5 in PS and import them 25 at time to buz through them. I have Actions which I work from - this greatly increases my PS time. I also Layer when I working to create the best outcomes.<br>

6. Pick four or five photos from the 5's to put on blog - PS these first and post... load all All 5's into PS for a look and changes<br>

7. Resize all 4/5 for loading onto my site for B/G review and printing into proofs<br>

8 Order proof book<br>

8. Burn DVD for B/G<br>

(An 8 hour wedding will yeild about 750-825 photos - I pull about 200 for my favorites for proofs. I photo finish all of these 200 if needed - these 200 tell the whole story and have details shots too. I am thinking about how I am going to put together the album when I am doing these edts so there is a little bit of everything in their based on what the B/G have told me they are looking for. It takes me 4-6 hours to do the above. - the client is net with about 600 images total. 200 my picks - 400 additional picks.)<br>

I promise sneak peeks by wednesday following the wedding - they are usually up by monday - I promise them the proofing album with CD within two weeks - I usually deliever within the time they return from their honeymoon (7days) - then <br>

9. I request that they make their choices within one week of reciept of the proofs and CD....once they make their choices from the proofs and CD if needed - Putting the book together takes me about 4-5 hours - I give myself 8 hours to complete it. I work primary at night on these things so it could take two working sessions. Then I let it sit for a day and make changes if neededI create their album - they proof it via a PDF file and I promise it back to them within two weeks - Most of my clients have all delieverables within one month of their wedding.<br>

9. Burn DVD for My files of full size images and PDF of book - Back-up all PS files. Store in my off site bank safe <br>

My total time for post production of a wedding I try to keep under 14 hours.<br>

Hope this helps - I never work from the CF cards as they are not a stable enviorment to work from.<br>

BTW - this is taken almost exactly from Scott Kelly's work flow with my own personal modifacations as he describes in his LR book.</p>

 

<p>one last word about LR - get a book and read it when you get the program - it is a tricky program and not very forgiving once you names files etc. However, it dosn't damage the orginal file which I love. There is talk out there that within a year or two LR will be so complex that there will be no need for wedding photogs to use PS - I am waiting for this day... also you can look at mutiple photos at the same time to compare them and pick the one you like best - love this feature. There are some great presets - I have created my own Actions and Purchased some - when LR refines it's tools and you can load actions I will no longer need PS... yeah - bring it on...</p>

<p>Learn lightroom in a hurry. I only need to use photoshop for the odd image and for some batch processing here and there.<br>

What I do:</p>

<ul>

<li>Load all my images from the CF cards to the hard drive into one folder </li>

<li>Pull it up bridge and do all my deleting (test shots, blinks, out of focus)</li>

<li>Load into lightroom</li>

<li>Flag those I will give to client and rate which ones I will edit</li>

<li>Edit those I need to (takes only a couple hours)</li>

<li>Export using LR. Blog images get exported using photoshop.</li>

</ul>

<p>Last wedding during the reception I loaded all the images I took from the day (low res jpegs) onto my laptop and edited my 40 fav's and had them on display in about 30min.</p>

<p>ACDSee has a device detector, and will import images directly from a card and put them wherever you like. It automatically creates a hidden backup folder containing a copy of any image you work on. This runs in the background so the original can always be reverted to (you can turn this off, too). Thumbnails are auto-generated, and images will be displayed in the preview window immediately. There are a whole slew of edit functions, all of which can be auto-batched, and the last tweak in any edit function can be applied to the next image with a click. You can also save your own presets of any adjustment.</p>

<p>It also has the best shadow/highlight tool I've ever seen, with it's Light EQ function. 9 sliders for shadows and 9 for highlights, you can adjust shadows or highlights in high precision, without affecting the other tone ranges in the image. Lightroom only has 2 shadow/highlight sliders. Like all the other tools, the last setting can be recalled or batch processed. This tool is also in the RAW converter for high precision edits.</p>

<p>I also use this tool at weddings to throw images into a dynamic on-screen slideshow displayed either on my laptop or a projector. Simply download your card to the computer, check the box on each image you want in the slideshow, and hit "Auto slideshow". The images will fade, pan, slide from one to the other, whatever you want. It will also let you take those selections and save the slideshow as a self-contained .exe file, .swf file, or .scr file. I create an .exe file of selected images from every wedding I shoot, and keep them in folders on my laptop to use when meeting with clients. To show examples from a wedding, simply double-click and it runs full screen. </p>

<p>One other tip: my external USB 2.0 drives have never been as fast to edit as when they're on an internal hard drive. Check your system and do a processing test to see if this is the case. I prefer internal drives for this reason.</p>

<p>I would also never edit from a CF card. Bad idea.</p>

<p>I should say it's probably 4 nights of actual editing and 2 weeks for album designing etc. 2 weeks total. If that makes more sense.</p>

<p>Mey be U should deliver less pictures.<br>

I edit on a old lap top, with only 256 MB RAM :(<br>

WHen I come I home I donwload all imaged to one folder, then copy all images to a subfolder and I view them in ACDsee, what I dont like I delete. I view everything 2-3 times and delete many pix as I go. Then I edit in Photoshop. I dont open many images, 5 at the time for fatsre workflow, but I need a new lap top badly, will be geetting a 4 GB RAM on mine and hopfefully editing will be much faster.<br>

Also, I deliver from 200 to 400 images per wedding max.</p>

 

<p>I LOVE Lightroom and could not do with out it. I didn't find it tricky or hard to master at all and I am not very technically minded either. As it's designed specifically for photographers it's much easier to master than PS.<br>

Anyway this is what I do<br>

1. Upload RAW files from card to external hard drive<br>

2. Burn RAW files to DVD<br>

3. Import all images to Lightroom and look at each one, flagging my rejects.<br>

4. Delete all the rejected photos<br>

5. Spend a min or so on each image doing basic corrections (WB, exposure, colour etc) and cropping.<br>

6. Export to external hard drive as high res jpegs.<br>

7. Open about 20 at a time in PS to do final edits (B&W conversions, sharpening, etc). I have my own actions too and use these at this stage.<br>

8. For viewing galleries I sometimes export the final images back into LR and export as low res files into a new folder just because it's super quick.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Hey everyone!! thanks so much for your responses! The only thing that makes me hesitant to use lightroom is that I paid a lot of money for the TRA sets to use in PS. So I guess I would have to re-purchase actions for lightroom? Is there a way to rate your images in PS? Is Bridge free?</p>

<p>Kay, I think you should at least download the free ACDSee Pro trial and give it a good shot for 30 days before you invest nearly $300 in Lightroom. It's only $130 to buy it and I really think you'll like it better. No harm in trying it.</p>

<p>You can rate images in ACDSee as well, you can locate them via keywords, by the calendar date you worked on them, by catagories you set, by IPSC fields and much more.</p>

<p>Hi Kay, I use the TRA Actions as well, but only on a few of my favorite photos.</p>

<p>Think of it this way: use Lightroom as your main tool, use LR to cull sort and rate your photos. Use it to do your basic color correction B&W conversion, etc.</p>

<p>Use PS as your fine tuning machine: When you have chosen your favorites for a client highlight gallery, or your blog, then just open those few in Photoshop and apply your TRA actions. Simply save the file, and you will see those changes in LR.</p>

<p>I doubt the client needs Boutwell's Magic Glasses applied to 1000 photos, besides you can easily replicate the effect in LR using Clarity, Contrast and some sharpening, then you can easily sync that across X number of photos with one click.</p>

<p>Lightroom has some amazing presets that IMO rival Photoshop actions. Just google it. In fact, the only time we use PS now is when we have to do major retouching. But that is even rare now due to the new Adjustment Brush feature in LR2 - MUCH FASTER!</p>

<p>I would be wary of the ACD solution. The adobe products work so well together, and you mentioned that PS is a part of your workflow. Besides, LR2 can do all of the things that Steve C suggests.</p>

<p>The reason LR2 costs more is because it is better, and it is invaluable. You'll see. It'll pay for itself in the first hour.</p>

<p>Try Scott Kelby's books for quick instruction.</p>

<p>Does anyone use Aperture? I do, but trying to get my workflow sorted and not really working well</p>

<p>Here's mine. Normally for weddings.<br>

Takes me about 2 days, 1 if I'm in a rush.<br>

Import Photos into lightroom. Once the first card is done, I insert the next one and begin editing. You can edit while you import.<br>

Unlike most people I don't go through the all and select keepers before I edit. I instead Look at al the shots in a series. Delete the ones I don't want and edit the rest. Since the lighting and exposure is usually about the same in each series this is the most logical way for me to do it.(A series for example would be the family formals, or the cake toss.)<br>

Once I'm all done I rename all the photos using the date and time for their file name. So if it was a pic for today it would be 20090620-092930m That would be June 20th 2009 at 9:29 and 30 seconds. the 'm' is for Martin so I know I took it and not my partner.<br>

After the rename I open them up in Bridge. I like bridge because I can select pictures in any pattern and apply batch actions to them. So I'll select all the ones I want to ajust sharpness on and run them through a batch.<br>

I then get them as big as I can in bridge, and go through and do final touches on images I want. Finally I run a batch that saves them all as JPG at Quality 8 and leave them uploading overnight to our print lab.</p>

<p>With 30+ years as a computer programmer I initially found Lightroom less than wonderful. Many of its operations were counterintuitive to an old hacker like me.</p>

<p>But when I started using a digital camera (Nikon D3) for my aerial projects I found myself with <strong>MANY</strong> more images to sort through than I had ever shot using film. So I revisited Lightroom, this time with a copy of "The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book for digital photographers" in hand. In spite of the unwieldly title, it's a terrific book, as are most of the works of Scott Kelby.<br /><br />The very first section of the first chapter, titled <em>Before You Do Anything, Choose where to Store Your Photos</em>, explains some of Lightroom's file management procedures. These few paragraphs paid for the book all by themselves. My programming experience (and the hubris that goes with it) had led me to make a few completely invalid assumptions, and that got me off to a bad start with Lightroom.<br /><br />There were still a few things that I didn't love (we programmers are a persnickety lot when it comes to software), but the latest version (v2.3) addresses most of the nits that I chose to pick.<br /><br />In short, I can't imagine doing a 1000+ image shoot without Lightroom (and the book that makes it usefull!) -- Greg</p>

<blockquote>

<p>ACDSee has a device detector, and will import images directly from a card and put them wherever you like. It automatically creates a hidden backup folder containing a copy of any image you work on. This runs in the background so the original can always be reverted to (you can turn this off, too). Thumbnails are auto-generated, and images will be displayed in the preview window immediately. There are a whole slew of edit functions, all of which can be auto-batched, and the last tweak in any edit function can be applied to the next image with a click. You can also save your own presets of any adjustment.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>LR has all this, along with a million other things it can do. As Marc said, "misunderstanding."</p>

<p>Try Lightroom or Aperture for the Mac. I import everything and then edit what I want. Usually within about 24 hrs of shoot of 400-600 images, I can complete my processing and upload to the web, and if necessary, my photoshop work of 10 touched up images emailed to the client. </p>

<p>If you're using Nikon cameras; Nikon transfer, view NX, and capture NX can provide a complete workflow.</p>

<ol>

<li>Connect the camera, nikon transfer starts automatically. Punch in a folder name and set preferences for file renaming, adding copyright info etc. Transfer simultaneously to working disk and backup disk. </li>

<li>open working folder in viewNX, set ratings. </li>

<li>click captureNX button from viewNX to edit selected image</li>

<li>save images as you edit them in captureNX</li>

<li>select edited images in captureNX and run batch process to convert to jpeg</li>

</ol>

<p>I don't do weddings, but usually have around 400 shots a day to deal with when I shoot (street, nature, sports..). It takes a couple of hours to look, evaluate and rate. A few weeks to edit and save about 10-20% of the images to exactly how I want them. A half hour to batch process into jpegs.<br>

below: one of 74 images selected for editing out of 364 total shots that day.</p>

<p>Hi Kay, just invest in DXO pro, load your images to a folder on your hard drive and process this folder entirely with DXO, just load the program and click process to batch correct all images to what output , size etc you want. Just put the kettle on and have a break. Later you can always resize or crop if needed. This program is ideal for weddings etc . You can download a trial , just google DXO. You download your cameras and lenses to the program and it will correct all shortcommings , it's a great program.<br /> Regards Aad</p>

<p>To the original poster, You're saying you need about 1.5 minutes times 1000 minutes to process everything. That's 1500 minutes or 25 hours. That's well in line with what others here seem to be saying. The reason it's taking you 4 weeks is you're only spending an hour a day on it.</p>

<p>Average about 400+images for a 5 hour shoot. We charge $25 hour for editing ( around $300 ) I drag the RAWs to the HD --open Bridge --sync /select the images from the first portion( ie pre shots)... apply an adjustment in the RAW editor.....crop each image 8 X12 in CS and apply an action ( sharpness~saturation~ 8bit convert) ...........then on to the next event of the day --same process ....burn a DVD of the RAW and the edited Jpegs .........upload & print 4X6 if the client has opted ...</p>