Editing

[Akchas]

As a fully digital converted film photographer I shoot for “Quality” not “Quantity” though I still end up with a lot more images on digital than I ever did shooting film.

The problem with this is I don't “edit” hundreds of images only a few during my time in the digital darkroom.

My question to you is “How much time do you spend on an image?”



I am using CS2 and spend maybe an hour on four or five images from a session, meaning I crop adjust brightness sharpen ( if needed) save for print and web (dual versions). I know that seems slow but most of that time is spent going through the many “look a like” images finding that one image with just the right everything.

If I find that really outstanding image for maybe the Maxuim style of editing, I can spend the hour on that one image, doing the blemish fix, smoothing skin tones, selection highlights etc.

I have found a few PS plug-in that say they help with this, but as with PS itself there is a learning curve on each of them that ad to the time setting on the computer.

All in all I still spend more time editing the images in the digital darkroom (setting at this computer) than I ever did in the darkroom or in the photo session itself.


Any comments?

Chas

[synthetic]

I don't know... I think time spent is going to vary greatly and depends on intent of use for photo, quality of original, critical eye of the imager and experience and effiency with Photoshop.

For instance, I work for a newspaper and we have a system we were taught for imaging photos for the press and it was all setup using a series of quick key commands. Even with adding clipping paths and minor touch up... I never spent more than 20 minutes per photo and usually could do most in 5 minutes or less without clipping path and 10 minutes or less with clipping path. But then again... these are just for newsprint so maybe we are not as particular too.

However, if I am working on something for a billboard, flyer, magazine or web, I tend to spend a little more time on things.

[sageone73]

I think it all depends on your end result or the job. For example, when I did some corporate headshots, I had about 200 shots that were going to be given to the client as part of the contract. I spent about a half hour doing some general post processing on all the shots with the help of actions and some automation in CS2. However, I then picked about 10 great shots and spent another 10 minutes on each - creating some black and whites, sephia's, frames, etc., etc.

For something personal, like a birthday party or just some neighborhood shooting, I'll take so many photos that I'll only keep a third of them, still leaving me with enough for a quality shoot. I then rank all my shots 1-5 with the help of adobe bridge. Then I take some time with all the 5 ranking shots and make multiple versions of each using version cue. That way, I can keep coming back to different shots and giving them different looks and experimenting. Basically, if it's a personal job, I don't put a time limit on it. However, if it's for a client, I add that time into the job and work accordingly.

One last thing to keep in mind is to not over do it. You can go deeper and deeper in to post processing, but at the end of the day, if you don't have a great image to start with, you spend too much time trying to fix shots that you're just simply satisfied with and not truly happy with.