Culling Images

<p>How fast do can you cull through 1000 wedding images? I'm not so concerned with the final number, but the total amount that you went through. </p>

<p>Depends... I believe weeding out machine gunned sequences with Irfanview on a decent machine with UHD screen is pretty quick. Making sure you leave one picture showing the guy with the purple tie is another issue.</p>

<p>LOL... yeah, depends... Your machine's speed, and your software (I use LR) are two limiting factors. With an SSD equipped machine (even my laptop), the images load fast enough to minimize the delay to my 'analog' brain - even when dealing with 25MB RAWS. A slow machine will easily add hours if not days to the process - and add an infinite amount of frustration. </p>

<p>However, that 'analog device' in my skull is the one that has to evaluate each image for it's potential, determine if it works, whether it adds to the 'narrative', and weigh the importance of the content - as well as making an actual yay or nay decision. Speed isn't important.</p>

<p>Typically I plan on 2-8hrs for an initial cull, though rarely do I only have 1000 images for an initial cull. I am 100% certain I <em>could</em> do it faster, but IMO, trying to set the speed record is utterly stupid.<br>

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<p>Whether it's 300 images or 500 images from any particular job, I was wondering what your average speeds were. I chose 1000 at random, but what I was hoping for was your time per 100 photos to gage if I'm moving just waaaay too slow. Thanks</p>

<p>Just deleting images about 40 minutes for 1,000. Second round duplicates secondary shots etc. ad another hour. Then color correcting and exposure adjustments add two hours roughly. Retouching 100 images for an album can take a day.</p>

<p>Keif, are you referring to the time it takes to make aesthetic judgments? or machine time to download, display and select? </p>

<p>If I have 100 images to go through, my workflow will begin with a rapid selection of the best pictures which takes no time at all and tweak them if necessary. I will then go through a couple of iterations to determine if more should be included. The aesthetic judgment takes minutes and machine time is of course dependent on file sizes and computer speed. </p>

<p>If you can open the image, decide where you like it and click delete or move on to the next one in five seconds each, that's close to an hour and a half right there. That's really only enough time to see whether it's grossly out of focus, grossly off in exposure, grossly bad expression, picture of your foot, etc. Anything more subtle than that and you're looking at hours.</p>

<p>For me it varies, but yesterday after importing my RAW files, it took me almost 2 hours to go through 3000 images checking for focus, sharpness, closed eyes (for couple and group shots), complete under/over exposure, floor pics (yes my trigger finger can get the best of me sometimes). In the end I usually have about 1000 images that I don't mind presenting to the client for proofing. I use ACDSee which is very much like PhotoMechanic and way faster than LR for culling. I'm also starting to incorporate creating proxy DNG files for faster workflow, but that's a debate for another day. Thanks, everyone.</p>

<p>I use Lightroom, and for a wedding I sit down, look at every photo quickly and tag the selects, rather liberally. I leave unfledged anything that I'm sure won't be included. I will typically spend a couple of hours and cull out about 300 photos out of a 1000. I don't machine gun, but will often take 2 or 3 photos of a situation. On my next cull when I'm started to create my close to final sequence I then will pick the best one of each "duplicate" scenes, unless I think that the flow through that moment is important to the wedding or event. It depends on whats happening, but generally for anything over 300 or so images this is how I work more or less. Sometimes if I see something interesting I will play with that image, which does waste time, but I can't help myself.</p>

<p>Photomechanic is the fastest solution to culling images. I average around 45-60 minutes to cull 4500 images. Culling in LR is not ideal as you firstly have to import all the pictures and it's slower.</p>

<p>Also, edit "in"and not "out". In other words, mark/tag the keepers, not the rejects. This is more efficient.</p>

<p>I absolutely 100% agree with David Bell.</p>

<p>Photomechanic and edit in (if you delete more than you deliver). Keyboards shortcuts is a must for speed.</p>

<p>If you do any retouching a wacom tablet is a must for speed as well (when you get a hang of it).</p>

<p>Also having a clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish when you shoot, saves time in post. If your exposure is very close, your focus is right, your framing and composition is good and it is clear what you are communicating, post production is fast. </p>

<p>The time it takes to select images is not nearly as interesting as the total time you spend in post (per wedding).<br>

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<p>In contrast to David and Pete, I actually edit out for my first round quickly then edit in the second round around. I think it depends on how your mind works. For me, I want to exclude the bad shots with not much thinking the first time around. Then I spend a little more time editing in. When editing in, I relate the pictures to one anther and make sure my selected pictures can tell the wholeness of the story of the day. I don't always count the hours but in general I will say I spend 4 hours to get to 300 to 400 photos from 1000. I often do a third round (another hour or so) on a different day with a fresh pair of eyes before I start on editing the finalists. So productivity wise for a ten hours wedding an additional 5 to 6 hours goes into culling and another 5 to 6 hours into finalizing and editing (and blogging). </p>

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<p>I sometimes do the cull in Lightroom - and with an SSD Macbook images loading from one image to the next is more or less instant - less than half a second at least. It may depend on what your preview settings are.<br>

<br />But my favourite way is to synchronise a Lighroom collection to an iPad using Photosmith, and head off to a cafe and do the initial cull or two over a coffee. with 2048 pixel previews, and using the auto-advance setting in Photosmith I can hit a rating on an image an the preview instantly moves to the next image so that I can get through them with a single gesture, not having to press anything to advance to the next image. This afternoon for example I got through an initial cull on 2000 images in around an hour over a longish coffee.</p>

<p>There is also Lightroom mobile, but I tried it once and it doesn't have auto-advance, or at least I didn't find it, so I rejected it as too fiddly for the moment.</p>

<p>You do have to synchronise your collection back and forth between Lightroom and iPad when doing this, but you can do other things while this happening. You can synchronise two or three (or more) weddings ahead, so that if you get the urge you can do the ratings on a quiet moment on a train if you suddenly have the urge.</p>

<p>My workflow, shoot a wedding on Saturday. Get up Sunday morning with a pot of coffee, load images in LR, I agree importing / exporting takes a ton of time, and then start going through them. while they are loading I normally prepare by gear for my next job (normally only means removing my rechargeable batteries and cleaning my lenses). Takes me about 2.5 hours to process 1000 images. The trick (as someone else mentioned) is getting things right in camera. <br>

The advantage I have is, since I shoot for two different studios, I remove very few of my images (just the obvious bad ones). I FTP them to the studio and let them cull the ones they don't want to present to the client.</p>

<p>Yes edit in, that's what I meant to say, at the end of each edit run I have flagged photos in, in LR I then just have to look at the flagged images for next cut or processing. I don't know Photomechanic, but my computer is fast, does have an SSD and does not take a long time to load or any other process on an image. I pretty much can do 95% of all the work in LR with some images going out and back in for b/w conversion for certain looks, or other things I might have to do in PS.</p>

<p>I would personally suggest FastRawViewer – it’s extremely fast, and allows one to prepare for the conversion by setting white balance and exposure correction. Plus, it has over- and underexposure indicators, so you’ll be able to see where you went wrong there. Also, you can check your focus with it as well. (It has a focus peaking function) It also has a nice "propagation" feature.</p>