<p>My wife and I are in the midst of a back-and-forth with our wedding photographer because we're not happy with the image deliverables we were given. While the subjects/scenes in the photos are great, the quality is way below what we were expecting. We wanted advice on how to reason with our photographer because we believe we have legitimate concerns that aren't being handled correctly.<br>
<br /> Per our contract, we were promised "high-res photos" which I interpreted as industry-standard high-resolution -- where we'd be getting large, 10-25mb-range files. Instead, we recieved images that were ~3mb in size. For comparison, my iPhone takes files this size.<br>
<br /> I asked out photographer about her workflow and she said that she resizes the photos when converting from RAW to JPEG to a 300dpi, 3500x3500px (depending on ratio) frame. From Lightroom, those images are exported into Photoshop where additional edits are made and finally exported. She must be using a bunch of compression, because the images viewed at 100% appear a bit blurry.<br>
<br /> Because of this workflow, it would require a complete re-mastering of every file. We really want unscaled photos with a reasonable, level 12 JPG compression. We'd be happy just getting the originals (RAW) but our photographer is unwilling to release them. That's fine. We suggested we'd also be happy with her re-mastering 80 or so of our favorite photos and we'd pay her for her $500 for additional time (for reference, the whole wedding photo package was $2,200 for two photographers and edits). Her response was that because of the time needed to re-master to our specifications, she'd have to charge $15 per image. That doesn't sound reasonable to us.<br>
<br /> Our thought is that she should have produced acceptable-quality images to begin with or had a workflow that could enable her to produce better-quality exports upon request. As of now, we're unable to order professional prints due to size/quality warnings on multiple websites. Our photographer is hyper-defensive about her deliverables saying that they should print fine with one of her two suggested printing companies. She said that none of her other clients have ever had an issue with size and quality, suggesting that I'm totally in the wrong.<br>
<br /> Does anyone have any thoughts on what to do here? Any advice on how to speak with our photographer moving forward? These photos are very important to us and I want to make sure we're able to get the highest quality photos available without paying a ransom.<br /> Thanks!</p>
