# Post processing time allotment help.



## juicegoose (Dec 11, 2013)

What seems to be the general thoughts from everyone on their process of allotting enough time for post. I've noticed that I can pretty quickly go through and edit out the bad photos from a shoot but where I struggle are with my "marginal shots" or the ones that will take more work out of camera then the for sure keepers. The marginal shots are the ones where the lighting might not have been just right or there is a little more color correction needed but the potential for it to be great is there. I think it boils down more to my perfectionist attitude and my longing to provide a good value to whomever I'm editing the pictures for. Take for instance a recent shoot. This shoot was the first one I actually was paid for(still a friend) and of the shots I took I've narrowed down about 15-20 that I feel are very good shots. There are even more(20 or so) that have taken some work to correct in post and that eats up time. Personally I have this fear that only giving 15-20 pictures to a paying client, friend or not, will cause some anger. For reference I only asked 100 dollars and it was a 3 year old birthday party.  For those that have been working at this for a long time or heck even those that haven't. What seems to be your workflow and selection technique. Do you go through the shoot, eliminate the automatically bad ones first and then start rating the others and if your A group isn't large enough start looking at your B group? I've being asked more and more to take photos and I really enjoy it but post is eating my lunch. How many shots seem to be typical for say a family shoot or something of the like.

Thanks for the advice and clarity 
Adam


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## KmH (Dec 11, 2013)

juicegoose said:


> What seems to be the general thoughts from everyone on their process of allotting enough time for post.
> 
> I've noticed that I can pretty quickly go through and edit out the bad photos from a shoot but where I struggle are with my "marginal shots" or the ones that will take more work out of camera then the for sure keepers. The marginal shots are the ones where the lighting might not have been just right or there is a little more color correction needed but the potential for it to be great is there.
> 
> ...



FIFY. Solid blocks of text are hard to read on larger computer displays.
the f stops here: how to attract terrible clients

Pre and post production time generally runs about 3 times longer than the shoot itself.
So, the total time you need to schedule to complete a 1 hour shoot is 4 hours. 1 hour shooting and 3 hours pre and post production work.

15-20 fully edited images per hour of shooting is quite normal and should be stated in your contract as what you guarantee to deliver.

A good general retail service business rules is - Under promise. Over deliver.


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## juicegoose (Dec 11, 2013)

Thanks for the link. What did you mean by the first line in your post "FIFY. Solid blocks of text are hard to read on larger computer displays."


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## Derrel (Dec 11, 2013)

FIFY= Fixed It For You. It's a passive-aggressive way to say ,"I think that you're lazy and I also consider you borderline illiterate," and to let you know that the respondent took offense at having to real your poorly-written post. So, now you know what FIFY means...it means somebody wants to make you look like an idiot, and THEN to make the point of correcting your writing, in public. Pretty amazing, right?

Anyway...post production editing time is loooong for people who shoot first with a "I will fix it later in post," approach and or attitude. The tighter and better you shoot at the time, the less need there is to rescue/revive/make presentable/salvage individual frames, or entire sessions. Lightroom 3,4,or 5 ought to allow a competent, disciplined shooter to mow through a well-shot session VERY quickly. The more familiar one is with making global changes across entire sets' worth of "similars", the faster and easy editing is. A less-experinced shooter will, I think, VWERY often shoot in ways that require 3 to 4x the shoot time. A better, more-disciplined shooter knows the value of shooting it "right" as much as possible, and how to shoot family portraiture sessions for finished results with minimal need for heavy or complex post work.

You might want to read the article KMH linked to. I just read it. Pretty good article.


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## juicegoose (Dec 11, 2013)

Hahahah That's awesome!!! There is always going to be negative people in the world. I try not to worry myself with them. Punctuation was never my strong suite that's for sure. Typing on a phone doesn't help.

Yes, the article he linked to was indeed a good read. I do try to take the approach you mentioned Derrel and I think in this particular instance I was running around a room, chasing a 3 year old, and trying to adjust settings for dark hallways and well lit open rooms. The results weren't as even across all the photos as say an outdoor familly photo shoot. The question remains valid though on delivered photo expectations from a shoot. Do most offer a set amount of finely polished photos and shoot for that number only or leave it fluid and see what the shoot produces?


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## 12sndsgood (Dec 13, 2013)

I just generally say I will edit up the best photos. Around 10-20 for like a family session. promise a little and deliver a lot. I dont' want to say you will get 20 images and then just have a bad set and sit there and edit up crap photos just so you can hit that number. for events it's different and I will usually edit up enough to fully tell the story of the day without getting to redundant on photos.

As far as editing goes when I started out I worked on trying to get a process down and repetition and then I worked on getting quicker and quicker on that repetition and time frame because time is money. I will generally spend 10 minutes or so on a single photo. synch those changes to the other photos and then spend about a minute or two on each photo down the line. just doing what needs to be done and not getting to hung up on sitting there and adjusting every single slider to see which will make it perfect.


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## robbins.photo (Dec 13, 2013)

Derrel said:


> FIFY= Fixed It For You. It's a passive-aggressive way to say ,"I think that you're lazy and I also consider you borderline illiterate," and to let you know that the respondent took offense at having to real your poorly-written post. So, now you know what FIFY means...it means somebody wants to make you look like an idiot, and THEN to make the point of correcting your writing, in public. Pretty amazing, right?



I guess I'm old school. I miss all the red marks. Sigh.



> Anyway...post production editing time is loooong for people who shoot first with a "I will fix it later in post," approach and or attitude. The tighter and better you shoot at the time, the less need there is to rescue/revive/make presentable/salvage individual frames, or entire sessions. Lightroom 3,4,or 5 ought to allow a competent, disciplined shooter to mow through a well-shot session VERY quickly. The more familiar one is with making global changes across entire sets' worth of "similars", the faster and easy editing is. A less-experinced shooter will, I think, VWERY often shoot in ways that require 3 to 4x the shoot time. A better, more-disciplined shooter knows the value of shooting it "right" as much as possible, and how to shoot family portraiture sessions for finished results with minimal need for heavy or complex post work.



Well I don't work under a deadline myself and I do occasionally go back and see if maybe I can salvage a blown shot that didn't make the keeper pile, but I guess my rule of thumb is if I spend more than 10-15 minutes on it and I'm still not seeing dramatic enough improvement to move it from the chaff to the wheat pile, eh, time to give it the old heave ho.

As to the article KMH linked, is it all in one big block of text?  That's my preferred reading format.  This paragraph thing is just a fad and trust me it will not catch on.. lol


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## imagemaker46 (Dec 14, 2013)

Post will almost always take more time than the shoot, depending on the shoot and the number of images and how competent that photographer is with the editing tools. I do a lot of in camera editing while I'm shooting to help keep the numbers down, I spend enough time on the computer as it is.  As far as the edit goes, I go through everything and delete anything that I don't like right away( bad expressions, that kind of thing)  I run them through photoshop and make the changes that have to be made, even if they are similar, or I have several that are the same. 

After everything is done, I go through and delete any of the finals that I don't need.  What is left is what the client gets. Once the client has the images I move the images to two portable hard drives, and have a remote site for storage of some images as well.


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## pixmedic (Dec 14, 2013)

Post time isn't  _*just*_ about fixing all the mistakes you made because you shot all willy-nilly figuring you can make it all better later in photoshop....
a lot of shoots, especially weddings, can produce a _*lot*_ of pictures. 
just the process of going through all the photos and picking the ones you think will be keepers can be pretty time intensive, and we count that as part of our "post production" time.  We often go through more than one culling process as well, which also adds time to the clock. 

the actual editing time per picture isn't really all that much. but multiply it by 300-400 pictures, and it can really add up fast.


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## 12sndsgood (Dec 14, 2013)

For me it seems I spend more time picking the ones I want edit more them anything lol. Almost makes a bad shoot easier because less keepers to choose from lol


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## juicegoose (Dec 19, 2013)

Thanks for the replies guys. Great advice for sure. Ive seen some people will cull out the obvious bad shots then post a client gallery and allow the client to select a certain number of poses then edit those as necessary. Anyone do that?


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## tirediron (Dec 19, 2013)

juicegoose said:


> Thanks for the replies guys. Great advice for sure. Ive seen some people will cull out the obvious bad shots then post a client gallery and allow the client to select a certain number of poses then edit those as necessary. Anyone do that?



That is exactly what I do.  Each session comes with 'X' images as part of the price.  They choose the ones they want (and if they want more than the allotted number for their sessionI charge 'Y' per additional image).


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## tirediron (Dec 19, 2013)

pixmedic said:


> Post time isn't _*just*_ about fixing all the mistakes you made because you shot all willy-nilly figuring you can make it all better later in photoshop....
> a lot of shoots, especially weddings, can produce a _*lot*_ of pictures.
> just the process of going through all the photos and picking the ones you think will be keepers can be pretty time intensive, and we count that as part of our "post production" time. We often go through more than one culling process as well, which also adds time to the clock.
> 
> the actual editing time per picture isn't really all that much. but multiply it by 300-400 pictures, and it can really add up fast.


^^This!^^  If I'm doing a basic studio session, couples portrait, headshot, etc, and processing times hits more than 1-2 minutes/image, that means I've f****ed up. Badly!  In event coverage (weddings, parties, etc) processing time can be longer because you can't control every aspect of the shot, and sometimes you have to remove half of drunk Uncle Charlie from the background or something like that, and as Jason mentioned, the sheer number of images from a big event can make processing take a while.


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## tommyboy (Dec 30, 2013)

For weddings, one day shooting.  1200-1500 images, 350-500 solid keepers.  2-3days post processing in Lightroom (and/or Photoshop if needed).


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