Wedding Photography Processing Workflow

andiphoto

andiphoto

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Andrew
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Hi Guys,

I did my first wedding on saturday and with mine and the second toggers photos im left with 1200 and thats after some quick pruning of my set..

what do you normally do once you have uploaded all your pictures on to the computer...

ive backed up the lot.. (once on sdhc and second on a external harddrive)

then ive put them into a folder and now im lost... ive tried processing from there but have ended up with 30 processed photos in 2 days lol.

what do some of the more organised and seasoned pro's on here do..

id be greateful for some insight into your workings..
 
What is it you've promised the bride and groom in the way of photos?

I usually shoot about 100 photos an hour at a wedding and expect to cut that down to around 50 to 60 photos an hour for them to appear on the website. For a full days shoot this would be about 500 photos. To fully edit every one of those photos would take weeks so all I do for them to go on the website is to give them a very quick (and I mean literally 5 seconds) edit of the exposure, contrast and crop.

This will be sufficent for the B&G to pick their favourite images which I would then do a proper process of which might take up to 10 minutes per photo. It could take even longer if you're doing cloning and using layers to bring out details in different areas of the photo. If you end up doing that to every one of your 1,200 photos then you'll still be sat there this time next year and you'll miss out on that glamour shoot.
 
Don't what ever you do even attempt to individually process 1200 photos!

there was a thread recently on this and some of the experienced guys and gals like dd posted some very usefull tips, do a search!
 
right without the use of Lightroom... what do you guys do when searching through the pile of photos (iv got over 1000) thats including the second togs.

how do i sift the images quickly as im finding using the viewer adn then delete is taking its toll. with them being RAW files and 24mb each.
 
Bridge & ACR/Photoshop.
 
Haven't used Bridge since I got Lightroom, and this is where LR comes into its own. However, do you have it and can it apply a sorting filter of some description? If so, open in bridge, straightforward tweaks in ACR, then mark in Bridge as selected - but like I say, can't remember if you can do that or not. :shrug:
 
If you are using bridge go through the lot and tag the ones you want to delete. That cuts the numbers down for a start. Separate them out and delete.

Rename the existing files (You need to be able to allow the couple to identify the image so good numbering is essential)

Go back through tagging the ones you think are good enough for the album (Ctrl F6). Pull those out copy to Album folder.

Whizz through those doing any crops WB etc, write to disc and resize into web folder. Only now do I look for some images that I think will work for more extensive processing but most of mine use actions so are quick and easy to do. Save them is a separate folder. Upload to client viewing area of the website. Call them to let them know their images are ready for viewing. Total time, about 4 hours.
 
andiphoto said:
Hi Guys,

I did my first wedding on saturday and with mine and the second toggers photos im left with 1200 and thats after some quick pruning of my set..

what do you normally do once you have uploaded all your pictures on to the computer...

ive backed up the lot.. (once on sdhc and second on a external harddrive)

then ive put them into a folder and now im lost... ive tried processing from there but have ended up with 30 processed photos in 2 days lol.

what do some of the more organised and seasoned pro's on here do..

id be greateful for some insight into your workings..
Click to expand...

varies very slightly depending on how we shot the wedding. if you have 2 cameras, then you need to do some popping files together, and ordering

1. backup, backup, backup + profile monitors
2. set up light-room to create individual sidecar files
import into lightroom, get lightroom to A. tag the images with the meta data you need. B apply the auto WB Auto tone Presets (you can always retrospectivley remove these)
3. do a runthrough and delete the obvious
4. do a runthrough and consider things in sets of repeats, if a shot is repeated, remove from lightroom (but not delete). Criteria for choice: experession, eyes closed, blinks, posture, tech issues, distractions
5. do a runthrough again, looking at the new groups - you have got rid of the purposfully shot repeats, howabout ditching the different but close
6. you now have a paired down set of images

Divide this up into groups of timings & location (esp indoors outdoors)

7. run through in sets, and sort out WB - stuff needs to be consistent accross the day (large screens or 2 colour profiled screens help here)
8. run through and sort exposure exactly

You should now have a decent set of colour-balanced well exposed images

9. run through and deal with crops, straightening etc. (some people do step 7,8,9 together, but this requires a lot of concentration)

10. choose the ones for B&W etc (you can create copies in lightroom)

11. choose the ones for special processing

12. its spots and dots time - run through the whole set, and deal with any cloning, spots, dots, dust bunnies etc..

you now have a set of wedding images

13. output files for web, sharpen accordingly
14. output a set for printing, sharpen accordingly
15. output a set for viewing quickly on a pc, sharpen accordingly

16. back up everything - the output files, the raw files and lightroom sidecar files, the catalog
 
andiphoto said:
right without the use of Lightroom... what do you guys do when searching through the pile of photos (iv got over 1000) thats including the second togs.
Click to expand...

Richard King said:
1. backup, backup, backup + profile monitors
2. set up light-room to create individual sidecar files
import into lightroom, get lightroom to A. tag the images with the meta data you need. B apply the auto WB Auto tone Presets (you can always retrospectivley remove these)
3. do a runthrough and delete the obvious
4. do a runthrough and consider things in sets of repeats, if a shot is repeated, remove from lightroom (but not delete). Criteria for choice: experession, eyes closed, blinks, posture, tech issues, distractions
5. do a runthrough again, looking at the new groups - you have got rid of the purposfully shot repeats, howabout ditching the different but close
6. you now have a paired down set of images

Divide this up into groups of timings & location (esp indoors outdoors)

7. run through in sets, and sort out WB - stuff needs to be consistent accross the day (large screens or 2 colour profiled screens help here)
8. run through and sort exposure exactly

You should now have a decent set of colour-balanced well exposed images

9. run through and deal with crops, straightening etc. (some people do step 7,8,9 together, but this requires a lot of concentration)

10. choose the ones for B&W etc (you can create copies in lightroom)

11. choose the ones for special processing

12. its spots and dots time - run through the whole set, and deal with any cloning, spots, dots, dust bunnies etc..

you now have a set of wedding images

13. output files for web, sharpen accordingly
14. output a set for printing, sharpen accordingly
15. output a set for viewing quickly on a pc, sharpen accordingly

16. back up everything - the output files, the raw files and lightroom sidecar files, the catalog
Click to expand...

i will have a look at downloading the trial of lightroom 3 and doing this...
 
Lightroom really does seem to be the tool of choice, if your doing this regularly it will more than pay you back the cost in terms of hours saved!
 
andiphoto said:
i will have a look at downloading the trial of lightroom 3 and doing this...
Click to expand...

As you're doing it commercially? you should really consider buying it too. Its on pre-order everywhere though. Anyone know when it becomes widely available? I've been using the Beta and its fantastic. The LR3 Beta runs out at the end of June, not sure how long you have with the actual Trial copy, might be 30 days which should give you enough time to process all the photos.
 
Lazgoat said:
As you're doing it commercially? you should really consider buying it too. Its on pre-order everywhere though.
Click to expand...

the full version has been available for a couple of weeks now. You can buy the full version either direct from Adobe or I know Amazon etc, now have it in stock
 
advantage of lightroom:
- very good workflow
- pretty much anything you could ever do in a darkroom, you can do in lightroom
- very good management of images, when you learn it
- when used well the presets, and abilities to create your own are invaluable to workflow
- works well on 2 screens
- not too steep learning curve
- non destructive with RAW
- ports well into PS
- useful for batch tagging of images

Disadvantage of lightroom
- it manages colour for you (well, but not flexibly)
- it doesnt extract 100% out of a RAW file compared to some other converters (although this is better now). You need to look at what camera you shoot with, and decide if this is an issue for you. The only way you will be able to tell is to do AB tests, or find a site that has done them for you. Reality check - we are clutching at straws o this one
- it isnt obvious immediatally how to back up a set of images... meaning you have RAW files, you have the output files, and you have a lightroom catalog with all the image edits in it. There is also the option of sidecar files, which is what you really want, but ligtroom doenst particularly let you know this, and you need to set it up properly before importing
- the lightroom catalog can go unstable, which is why it asks you to do a backup on start. Ignore at your peril... In saying that, the backups are good, and if you do have them, you wil have a fairly low chance of having to ever repeat much work. If I were processing 1000's images, I would be inclined to restart lightroom every few hours to force a backup
- really does need a decent machine to run it
 
thanks for all the info, just got the trail... if i like.. ill try and scape together (or use the money from the prints of the wedding if there is any :p) to pay for it..

with regards to uploading to website, can you use lightroom slideshows on your website, and how does this work>
 
Advocate Lightroom,

Fantastic workflow solution with some of the best bits of Photoshop,

Now Lightroom v3 just added excellent Noise features so may for be be an all in one solution exports to PS nd back again for additional titivation if required...

I dont use the Print module, Slide show, web stuff though

Al'
 
Richard King said:
2. set up light-room to create individual sidecar files
Click to expand...

Do you mean one sidecar per image, with a name similar to the original raw, in the same directory as the raw?

I want this functionality!

How do you do it?

Can it be done in Lightroom 1.4 or do I need to upgrade?

Andrew
 
andiphoto said:
thanks for all the info, just got the trail... if i like.. ill try and scape together (or use the money from the prints of the wedding if there is any :p) to pay for it..

with regards to uploading to website, can you use lightroom slideshows on your website, and how does this work>
Click to expand...

I did one quickly for Mrs_C by publishing a slideshow to a folder then copying the folder to her site using FTP and linking it in. There might be another way but not seen it yet. Still having a mess.

Incidentally my method of allowing multiple MAC computers to share one lightroom gallery works just the same on LR3 as it did on LR2. I have the same gallery (and therefore settings etc) whilst using the laptop, desktop or the computer in the studio.
 
A lot of people here use lightroom, but I actually prefer just to use Bridge and Photoshop.

You may find yourself a bit bewildered by Lightroom to begin with and I'd suggest attempting to navigate through all the options on an actual job with a deadline looming perhaps isn't the way to go about learning to use it effectively.

In Bridge you can flag all the images you want, re-order them, re-name them and copy to other folders.
You can also apply batch-processing.
For me, Lightroom didn't offer any significant advantages, which is why I didn't bother upgrading from the trial version.
 
Another thumbs up for lightroom, if you can live with some of its limitations then it is a good tool. Sharpening and Noise Reduction are a bit crap, so I end up exporting all of my files out of LR to PS CS4 for a final sharpen and noise reduction.

Also a small point to the OP, I would say that workflow and post production are almost as important as technical ability with a camera, and I always advocate new wedding togs (being one myself), but this should really be something you are confident with before undertaking paid work. Just some advice, no offence or conflict intended.
 
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