hannah_epley1

<p>In my earlier days of shooting weddings, I had a couple who had financial hardships and agreed to a payment plan where there was a small remaining balance after the wedding - I almost wasn't paid because they kept making excuses after the wedding because I had given them their pictures and they didn't think it was "worth the money."</p>

<p>You have to be firm with clients - if you want to shoot their wedding (Are they a good looking couple? Good venue? Portfolio material?) I would say to shoot it but tell them first that you won't release their images to them until the final payment has been made. Don't budge on that, they can find a different photographer if they want things their way.</p>

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<p>Third, it's absolute stupidity to<br /> store you images in an 8-bit workspace simply because you make last minute<br /> color corrections to match the printer. Don't you? If you're only storing<br /> JPGs, you're throwing away color range as you do the final adjustment. I<br /> always work in a higher bit-space and use photoshop to output a set of images<br /> for the printer. Then after printing I can delete those files and keep my RAW<br /> or PSD originals.</p>

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<p>We don't handle the printing, so no, we do not make last minute color corrections to 'match the printer'. We work on regularly-calibrated monitors and know what our output will be by looking at the screen. Where Patrick was wrong was that my question was not "should we get rid of all our backups" it was "is it necessary to have two archived copies of the RAW files when you have 1 archived copies of RAW files and 3 archived copies of properly processed JPGs?" I definitely prefer to use RAW files in making prints & prepping images for albums. That's what we do for most of our output. I do agree that weddings should be shot in RAW because it allows for the best possible image quality. But if a photographer exposes and white balances things correctly, is his or her image going to look so terrible shot in JPG, or stored in JPG? I don't think so.</p>

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<p>This is the most stupid question ever posted on P.Net. Sorry, but that is the truth</p>

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<p>Yikes, I posted the question on the wedding forum to get wedding photographer input... guess when I'm questioning how to logistically deal with "the most important day" in people's lives I'm bound to piss off one photographer. :-)</p>

<p>After some brainstorming with the boss tonight we worked out a system for backing up RAWs offsite on Terrabyte hard drives. Makes me feel a whole lot better, it's what I wanted all along. Thanks to everyone who submitted constructive input to my question. Have a happy wedding season everyone! </p>

<p>I work at a high-volume studio managing the post production. Our photographers are all required to shoot RAW for quality purposes, and we've been preparing ourselves for lots of storage & backup as expected.</p>

<p>Currently, this is a basic run-down of our workflow:</p>

<p>1-Get RAWs from photographer & import<br>

2-Batch edit images in Lightroom, export as JPG<br>

3-Upload JPGs to Pictage, utilizing their free color correction<br>

4-Burn DVD of JPGs for clients (the digital negs are included in their package)<br>

5-Burn DVD of renamed RAW files along with Lightroom Catalog - this is copied and the copy sent to off-site storage<br>

6-Design album (typically we use the edited JPGs for this)<br>

7-Delete RAW files from hard drives 30 days after photos released to client<br>

8-Delete all files from hard drives 30 days after album is delivered to client</p>

<p>So, after all is said and done, we have 3 copies of the original files on DVD (one unedited, and 2 copies of the edited RAWs in separate locations), 1 copy of the edited JPGs on DVD, the client has the edited JPGs on DVD, and Pictage has a copy of all the edited JPGs which we can have FTP'd to us if need be. My boss now wants to eliminate Step 5 from the process to save time - he concluded that since we rarely go back to the RAW files after the images are released to the client, we might as well not keep them. So we would be left with only: 1 copy of unedited RAW files on DVD (and filenames that don't correlate to ours, no catalog of edits), 1 copy of the edited JPGs on DVD, the client DVD, and Pictage copy. I'm hesitant to make this change because I was taught to always keep the RAWs just in case.</p>

<p>What do you think? And keeping the RAWs backed up on a hard drive or in paid online storage is not an option - we shoot 300+ weddings per year. Thanks in advance for your input!</p>

 

This took me a little under 1 minute in Photoshop:

 

1 - Gray eyedropper in curves - selected a shadow on her dress to get my target neutral.

2 - Bumped up the RGB curve to give a little more brightness & contrast

3 - Make a hue/saturation layer - go into each individual drop-down option (each indiv. color), bring saturation way up to quickly see which pixels I'm affecting, then desaturate what shouldn't have a color cast.<div></div>

The filet mignon. I can't get enough of it. :-)

 

Besides the lavish meal, I love taking the bride & groom on a private shoot for 1/2 hour and being really creative and capturing the romance.

Thanks for the responses, Mark, I just got a new workflow approved where we rename towards the beginning and back up the renamed originals, to avoid confusion on the end of things.

Renaming on import creates two problems: The backed-up originals will still have only the original filename, and after we import, we often delete 20-100 pictures that were either test shots, out of focus, blinks, etc. So our new numbers wouldn't match Pictage as our numbers would have gaps.

I was recently hired as post-production manager in a high-volume wedding studio (300+ weddings last year) that

uses Lightroom 1.0 and Pictage. I had not used Lightroom prior, and while I have adjusted to using the program,

I am having issues with the workflow here - let me explain... the current workflow:

 

1 - RAW images, no duds deleted, are submitted by photographer on DVDs to studio, these DVDs are duplicated,

copies sent to offsite storage.

 

2 - Files are imported from DVD into a client folder on drive F & cataloged in Lightroom.

 

3 - Image collection is edited, duds deleted, job is sorted via keywords, renamed in a four-digit sequence, and

exported as jpgs.

 

4 - Exported folder is uploaded to Pictage, and Pictage does the color correcting, renames the files, and handles

all orders. The way we renumber the files makes it so our exported .jpgs have the same number as Pictage's

renumbering.

 

5 - Exported folder and Lightroom catalog are burned to DVD, these DVDs are duplicated, copies sent to offsite

storage.

 

6 - 14 days following release on Pictage, the client folder (NOT including original files) is backed up on a RAID

drive, and deleted from my drive F.

 

Here's my issue:

 

We do not have space for the original RAW files, which is why we delete them (they are already backed up twice).

If future editing of the images is needed (where I have to return to the original files) the filenames do not

correlate and I have to select them by hand.

 

I came to the conclusion today that when we rename our files, we should use OriginalFilename_####, so that when a

client requests a filename from their Pictage gallery and that original file has already been deleted from our

drive, our backed-up Lightroom catalog has this information stored in the last 4 digits of the file. I tested my

theory today, and I had to manually re-connect the new filename and old filename, which was OK since I knew we

had the correct file. Problem being that Lightroom then automatically changes the renumbered file back to the

original filename. If I had to do this with a batch of files - a whole job - it would be a huge waste of my time.

 

We do not want to have to store ANOTHER copy of the original files after they are renamed, and because Pictage

automatically renames files, we need to renumber so their #001 is our #001.

 

Perhaps your head is now spinning as mine is. Can someone help me? Is there an easier way for Lightroom to take

the OriginalFilename_#### file and reconcile it with re-imported files? Your input would be much appreciated.

I'm in a bit of a unique situation, in that I'm living in Chicago right now for

school, originally from Iowa and living there next summer after graduation, then

moving back to Chicago next fall, then moving to who knows where after my fiance

finishes school. I have been looking into getting a tax ID number because I am

starting to get regular business now with my wedding and portrait photography,

but I don't know where to start because I'm going to be moving a lot. Should I

do this through my home state? The state that I'm currently living in? Or not

bother until we've settled down somewhere and I have an official location? I'm

not sure legally what the correct procedure would be.