Processing thousands of images!

BOM

BOM

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862
Name
Steve
Edit My Images
Yes
Hey Guys,

After doing my first wedding for a friend of mine I have just over 1500 photos to deal with. So far I've downloaded them, copied them to DVD, imported into lightroom, grouped into different collections manage processing. Now I'm going through rejecting the ones I dont want and processing the ones I do want to keep.

This is going to takes hundreds of hours, there must be a better way. Do you select just X amount of pics and process those? Lots of batch processing?

Any tips welcome.

Cheers,
BOM
 
The last wedding proof album I saw had 495 images in it, most were superb.
Some of the best ones had 2 or 3 versions, i.e. colour, mono and duotone.
I wouldn't process everything you took, I don't think anybody on the planet takes 1500 pictures and gets 1500 winners.
I'd say pick out the best, or the worst depending on how you look at it and work from there.
 
You are not going to use all 1500 images.you can get rid of a lot of them, so a bit of editing is called for. First delete all the rubbish ones, the blinks and the wrong expressions etc. Now I would go through and select those that you really want to keep, and get rid of the rest. Don't hang onto multiple images of the same shot If you want you keep a record of all the images back them up onto DVD. but if you keep everything it'll be a nightmare organising and choosing the ones you want.

I would suggest you choose the images you want to keep by dropping them into a quick collection. It's simple and easy. The "B" key allows you to add and delete images from the collection. With this number of images I suspect you'll need to go through the quick collection to re edit them a few times.

Give yourself a target as to how many images you really need to work with. How many pictures are you going to need to make up the album? You don't want to overwhelm the Bride and Groom with pictures. I don't have a magic number perhaps someone else has but I would think more than 100-150 is too many.
 
It sounds like your workflow is like mine, and I find it perfect. Ok so I haven't yet had as many as 1500 to work through.

I just bring them up full screen, scroll through with the arrow keeps and press P to pick the keepers. I am usually a bit more forgiving on this first run through. I then filter the 'Picks' and go through again, pressing U (Unpick) on ones that perhaps I shouldn't keep, this time I am much more picky. I often find myself flicking quickly back and forth between two or three photos to decide on which one to keep (if they are of the same thing).

You can then process one, create a preset, apply to all which are similar (subject, location, lighting etc. Otherwise preset might not look right) and then go back through them and tweak if necessary.
 
If you batch the files, they will inevitably not be the best processing for each individual file. Pick the absolute corkers (hope you have some!) and hand process each. Then do your second selection. If you pick very similar shots, you can process them 'same as last' in raw to get a basic tiff file and play from there.

Being selective is the best way to keep the shots top quality.

Graham
 
It's why it called 'work'...

batch-processing helps though...just sort a few actions for frequent-use procedures...

Other than that, man-up and get the coffee on...lol
 
stan the man said:
i've used two of the curves presets ...but only IF they've suited the images...also the same with the black and white presets..but feel like i'm cheating :thinking:
Click to expand...

naaaaa.... I did some family portrait shots the other day, smashed one of the b&w presets, sent them via email, then slothed around and watched tv for the rest of the night.

It's not cheating, it's just being uber efficient.
 
1500 isn't unusual for a wedding, Since I always have a second shooter we frequently have more than that.

The advice above is good advice.

First cut is just to delete the dross - my wife does tht for me - saves me hours!

Then for all the smiliar shots, pick the best and ignore the rest

Then process what's left

Finally go through and make sure you have at least one of each of the required formals - there's nothing worse than forgetting the pic of the b&g with their parents!

I'd expect 2000 pics to take about 6 hours or less, otherwise I'm not profitable
 
Yep, I kind of do the selecting in reverse. I don't delete the rubbish ones I select the good ones that I want to work on. I do it in Bridge and have the display set to a horizontal film strip. That way I can whizz through them and just tag the ones I'm interested in. Save in a new folder.

Then, if I need to do any adjustments I can batch process those. Speeches are usually good for that. Batch the lot and WB them.

Now I have a decent set of pics to work from, the 100-150 is a good range. I can go through them fixing any little problems and using any actions for B&W etc. Then another batch for renaming and sharpening and off they go.

After that I'll pull out about 50 to go on my website and run a resize on those.

I normally take 3-4 hours to do that with 1100 pics.
 
Lot to think about here, thanks guys.

I've batched them into groups and am working through them, but I'm processing as I'm picking.

I've been keeping multiple images, so I need to be far more picky. I certainly wasnt expecting to get 1500 keepers, but I think I've fallen into the trap of thinking that most are nice and worth keeping as every picture has my friends in it :lol:

When I get home tonight I will run through all the images being far more picky to cut out the dross.

This whole experience is a huge learning process, thank you for your input :thumbs:
 
A handy tip someone on here pointed out to me in Lightroom the other day.....if you hold down SHIFT when you press U, P or X it automatically moves onto the next pic. Saving a second a shot on 1500 is nearly half an hour, definitely worth every little workflow streamlining technique you can find!
 
1500 photos, jesus? I'll bet the bride was sick of the sight of you by the end of the day :D

The last wedding I did we took 600 shots between us, filtered out down to 225, hand processed 15 completely (20 mins or so each) and lightly processed the rest (30 secs to 1 min on each). These then went into a slideshow (watermarked and not printable quality) onto a DVD with all the shots in a seperate folder on it for them to view and choose album shots and seperate prints for themselves and family/friends.
This method works well for us as the bride can see the look of the fully processed image which will be applied to all the album choice shots.

Total processing time - about 7 hours....
 
neo2810 said:
1500 photos, jesus? I'll bet the bride was sick of the sight of you by the end of the day :D
Click to expand...

:lol:I was with them from 8am until 11pm, however I was drinking for the last 4 hours and getting shots of all the drunken relatives, theres about 400 of those! I couldnt put the camera away, everyone wanted more photos :)

Boy have I got some stunners from the night, got to love the nifty fifty in disco conditions :D
 
BOM said:
:lol:I was with them from 8am until 11pm, however I was drinking for the last 4 hours and getting shots of all the drunken relatives, theres about 400 of those! I couldnt put the camera away, everyone wanted more photos :)

Boy have I got some stunners from the night, got to love the nifty fifty in disco conditions :D
Click to expand...

Ok, granted my shoot was only about 6 hours. :p
 
OK, 1500 is quite a few, but certainly manageable in LR with the right workflow and control. This is what I do.

  • First set your filter to show 'Unflagged Photos Only'
  • First pass = remove the dross and shots you know you won't be keeping. I do this by running through them one-by-one, pressing 'x' to mark as 'rejected'. LR will automatically move onto the next image once you have done that.
  • Second pass = select the ones you like. Do this by running through them again one-by-one but this time pressing the 'P' key.
  • Change the filter to 'Show flagged Photos only'
  • Depending on how many shots you have remaining... if it is a lot, then I'd rung through that list and mark the best ones with a colour; say press '6' to mark the image with a red label.
  • Filter to only show these 'Picks' and 'Reds'
  • Process accordingly and mark with another colour to show when they have been processed.
  • Filter with this alternate colour to show final set of images.
 
Not sure this will help, but I frequently find myself in the same situation.

My workflow is as follows:

Browse the RAW files and save only the ones you think are the best, making allowances for coverage of as many people as possible. As others have said, 150ish is more than sufficient. Also delete the really crappy ones (technically poor, closed eyes, gurning etc..)

Once saved as 16 bit files, open individually and edit. I have an action that loads a set of curves / hue sat adjustment / channel mixer for the purposes of luminosity and colour adjustment and B&W conversion. The combination of being a picky sod and not always getting things spot on in camera means I edit them all. Which takes ages :thumbsdown:

Batch process to jpg, which saves an enormous amount of time.
 
I regularly have 1000+ images to go through, and rarely are they suitable for batch processing.

I open 15 at a time in PS, and delete or process there and then.

I used to waste a load of time looking through them deleting the absolute rubbish, before a second sweep of the not so goods, followed eventually by processing the good ones.
 
Just got back from holiday, had 2100 shots, chopped them down to 515 using lightroom, processed some and marked others (landscapes) for further work.

Took me about 6 hours.
 
1. Select the good ones.
2. Select the good ones.
3. Select the good ones.

By now, you should have about 10-20% of the original amount.

4. Process.
5. Profit.

That's my workflow :)
 
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