Turn around time?

[MikeZip007]

What would you say your average turn around time would be to process pictures and get them to your clients? Say you have 200 pictures, how long until your client has their copies in hand? Do you delete any of them (like obviously bad ones ie. blinking) Would it be beneficial to shoot in JPEG and RAW to speed up the time that a client has their prints? A little inshight would be great!

[MJPhotos24]

For youth photos I try two weeks...that's 400+ photos for 200+ clients. Cut it close and went over but thats the goal...but it depends on the PS needed. Had to put kids in the pic that weren't there and that took a long time since I dont have the skill to do so and had to send them out to get done! No pics make it off my camera that are not good enough, blinking, soft focus, etc = delete. Shoot in JPG right now but thinking of switching to RAW...it makes processing time longer by a little bit, but you have a lot more options....Also think next year a slogan is going to be "you'll have your prints back in 2-4 weeks or they're FREE!" 2 weeks hope for and 4 weeks to cover my six.

[Nyobie]

Turnaround time on one of the photo shoots I did in Vegas was one week for a 12 hr day worth of photos. I think I shot around 400 images at 4 locations thru the course of the day. I would recommend deleting anything you wouldn't want to show anyone (in other words, it isn't representative of the level of work you like others to view) but taking great care not to delete something that was a specific request. Once deleted, it can be an effort to recover the deleted image depending on how you deleted it.

If you're planning to shoot 200, if you've got the card space, I'd recommend shooting in both image formats. If not, go with RAW only and convert later. You have no data loss with RAW so your post-processed images can be manipulated while in RAW format before converting if you want to make any minor tweaks. If you shoot in jpg format, you can be somewhat limited with post processing manipulation depending on how large your jpg image is to begin with and how good your post processing skills are. Editing a jpg image that already has considerable data loss can result in some really strange looking effects that wouldn't be considered top quality.

I've heard of other photographers stating that the images wouldn't be available for 6-8 weeks from the date of the photo event. I think that's a long time personally, but I have no idea what these guys are up against in the way of other bookings. I figure, the sooner, the better as long as the finished quality is acceptable to your personal standards. Don't take any short cuts just to get the job done quickly if it means that you would sacrifice the quality of your work. Take the time you need and let the duration be whatever it is for turnaround time. It's much more important that the results are good than how fast you were able to get them finished.

Good luck!!

[cowpix]

For large events, I aim for a 10 day turn around. Most of my work is time sensitive, always up against ad deadlines.

[Oneslowz28]

I average around 4 min per photo on sports shots. Most of my processing is pretty much the same.(USM, contrast, spot healing here and there, etc.) Wedding photos average 7-15 min each depending on each shot. For a lot of basketball and volley ball shots I average less than 1 min each. Most require a crop and then I batch every thing else.

What helps me speed up the initial processing time is that I don't resize or color correct for print until a parent or client orders the prints. I will usually have the image ready for MPix less than 24 hours after the client orders the prints. There is the rare occasion that I will have to revert back to the RAW file to correct a crop thats too small or not the right ratio.

I set a nice safety zone in my turn around clause. I offer 10 day turn around on portraits, 10-15 day turn around on sports, 25 day on wedding prints, 60 day on wedding albums, and 5 day on real estate work. I have only went over 1 time when the print house I used to use burnt and didn't notify there clients for 30 days.

[Tandem]

I have a full-time day job but I can still manage to get a portrait shoot processed in a few days or so. My goal on sports photos is to have them posted by the next evening and if I get behind no longer than five days.

I'm doing 16 game high school basketball tournaments four weekends in a row (Thur, Fri, Sat). I shoot them RAW and I've found out I can average about one hour processing a game posting 85-100 photos out of 160-200 shots if I multitask. I can be cropping and straightening one game in Lightroom while batch another game with Neat Image while I'm uploading a third game to the website. If the gym has consistent lighting I use the same preset for all the games and that saves a lot of time.

RAW doesn't take any longer than JPG once the first game is transfered off of the card because I'm already working on that game while transferring the other games.

[MikeZip007]

I have a full-time day job but I can still manage to get a portrait shoot processed in a few days or so. My goal on sports photos is to have them posted by the next evening and if I get behind no longer than five days.

I'm doing 16 game high school basketball tournaments four weekends in a row (Thur, Fri, Sat). I shoot them RAW and I've found out I can average about one hour processing a game posting 85-100 photos out of 160-200 shots if I multitask. I can be cropping and straightening one game in Lightroom while batch another game with Neat Image while I'm uploading a third game to the website. If the gym has consistent lighting I use the same preset for all the games and that saves a lot of time.

RAW doesn't take any longer than JPG once the first game is transfered off of the card because I'm already working on that game while transferring the other games.

How do you batch process RAW photos? I have PS3 and use Camera RAW but I find myself doing one picture at a time. How can I make color adjustments in one photo and save it as a JPEG, then apply all of those settings to the rest of the photos in the set?

[sfaust]

Lots of applications will do that for you. Lightroom, photoshop, ACDsee Pro, etc. Just look for processing applications that support batch RAW processing. I would recommend LIghtroom because the raw processing is excellent in my opinion, and its fast and easy when you want to process a lot of images that just need some tweaks here and there, and conversions to JPG.

I can't advise you on the time it takes to process 200 images because it really depends. On some shoots, I just do minor tweaks and convert to JPG and they can be done within 30 minutes of sitting down to do them. On other commercial jobs, one or two images could take me the better part of a day because of compositing or other special requirements. And then there is everything in between. It really depends on what they client is looking for, and what the final image is supposed to look like.

Either way, something like LIghtroom will save you tons of time if you need to tweak the images before conversion.