I recently did a workshop at PhotoCamp Utah
We discussed in a short 45 minutes how to increase the effeciency at which we edit.
In preperation for the class I asked 4 other photographers at all ranges of ability to submit their WORKFLOW
Each Day – See and compare
I the next few days I will post each of these workflows.
You will be able to see the differences and similarities.
Submit your own
If you’d like to contribute please write up your workflow and we’ll add it. jarvie@jarviedigital.com
We will start with my present workflow.
Scott Jarvie
1. Picture Taking
I take awesome pictures
sometimes I chimp/pre-delete on camera because I have time and or want to save space on computer HDs
2. Importing
I import from card using Lightroom. Little USB external importer thingy.
I store on a hard drive organized by date. (2009-03-14) Thus making it chronological order.
I rename the folder to include a description after the date.
(This maintains the chronological order but makes it easier to know what it is)
I have the computer pre-render 1:1 because I hate wating when i’m going through them
2.5 Pre-Edits
In order to figure out which pictures are my favorites sometimes I want to see what they look like in a OK light
So sometimes I’ll grab a picture edit it really quickly and then synchronize with all the pictures like it.
I’ll do that for underexposed images so that when I do the next step I’m seeing a good image to make a decision on.
3. Selecting
I use “P” to pick or flag the image.
I keep one hand on the “P” and the other on the next arrow
Sometimes I click “X”(Reject) when a picture is so bad I should delete it off the computer to save room
Hitting “P” – I’m basically saying… I think this customer will want this image
A yes no decision is the fastest decision you can make. Faster than deciding 1-5
4. Develop
I develop ALL the ones that I selected.
I used to use presets a lot more but now I know exactly where to go so I usually don’t do presets.
I spend 5-30 seconds on a picture
Every once in a while when I want something fresh I’ll go through my presets and see which one might be nice.
But I’ll always tweak the picture after applying the preset.
Sometimes I make a virtual copy and try a second edit on the second version.
5. Reorder
After much investigation I’ve found out that putting your best face forward is super important
So I go through all pictures and pick my favorites to display to people first.
Then sometimes I go through those favorites and pick the bestests
I used the colors to symbolize levels of goodness
Recently I have been using the star rating feature to do the same thing.
1/red being great 2/yellow being to be shown even before that and when needed 3 to be even betterer
I use categories to save contain the ones I want to sort and reorganize
You can drag pictures into a specific order you want.
6. Export to JPG
When they’re all in order I export to JPG with the file name the same but in front of the file name
I put a sequencer 001,002 – I believe that’s a custom file name ability.
That way when I put them in a gallery I can have that gallery organize them by filename.
And therefore my pictures will be in order… the order I want.
The amount of people that will look at your second page of pictures decreases by 2-3times
And half again for the next page of pictures.
So if your best picture is on the 10th page you basically just shot yourself in the face. Or you’re saying I don’t care if anyone ever looks at these picture.
7. Upload to SmugMug
I use SmugMug to display my pictures to customers.
I have them display by filename order
Sometimes I make a chronological gallery of the same images as well – in those cases I organize by time taken.
8. Distribution
I give my customers a link to the SmugMug and tell them to grab them off smugmug and make themselves a Facebook gallery
I sometimes make a blog by dragging straight from SmugMug into my blog editor
I’ll grab a set of pictures from off of smugmug (because they are perfect size and have watermarks) and use those pictures to upload to Facebook and sometimes I even use Flickr
