Pro youth T&I / Action Photogs -- How does the order-to-print process really work?

[S.Horton]

So, here is a link to one of our local pro sites.

Without comment on the photos themselves, I noticed that they do not appear to be color corrected or processed in the display.

http://johnpittman.onlinedigitalphotos.net/mp_client/pictures.asp?action=viewphotos&ressearch=true&eventid=&size=thumbnails&pagenum=1&resetsession=no&keywords=False&category=JV+Volleyball

Clearly, this outfit does not just print what we see here -- They're locally well-known and seem to do quality work.

So, in reality, does an outfit take the order, then post-process and print? Is that just the way the industry works?

[convergent]

I've done it both ways, and it depends on the event... how many events I'm doing... how big the events are... and how much time I have. In my workflow, I always have an opportunity to do processing and final cropping between order and fulfillment. Ideally I'll do some processing before posting them, but its not required. For a large tournament or something, forget it... no way can you process them all. You just need to make sure your customers know what to expect.

[S.Horton]

Ah, that makes sense -- Do you crop/straighten and eliminate soft shots, then post? Or, just let it fly.....

[Patrick]

I sort the keepers, "auto" adjust in ACR, then make that available.
When they are ordered I crop to desired size then PP each photo for the best print.

It would be a total waste of time and money to adjust every photo to only have a handful be purchased and printed.

[Dennis_Hammer]

For T&I I process before hand, for action I process only those prints purchased. Now you can say I actually do the same for T&I because I take the orders at the time of the shoot. So everything I shoot is already sold. So all thats sold in T&I to relatives who order through my site have been processed already.

[S.Horton]

Ah, so you're also only posting very small images for review and purchase......

[MJPhotos24]

Basic description...and it seems longer than it actually is.

T&I - two week turnaround - usually got everything back in a week but you want to make sure you have all the prints, all checks clear, etc.
- order forms are given to league coordinators at least two weeks before shoot
- on day of shoots the kid/parent gives me the envelope as there kid comes up to get there pic taken. It becomes a huge unorganized pile.
- home, organize, sort images
- edit photos for print sizes
- upload to Exposure Manager and buy print ready
- get order, organize
- hand out to parents

Action Photography
- This is VERY dependent on your service. When I used Shutterfly ALL photos had to be pre-processed and uploaded as print ready. I hated it, I'm busy as busy can get during the baseball season. One of the big reasons I use Exposure Manager, display only option. So now its...
- Shoot the game
- Download and CULL to get rid of the crap
- Caption (very basic for all photos, nothing more, no names, nothing like that)
- Copy to a seperate folder
- Photoshop action resize/save to smaller files (sometimes will do a PS action to do auto levels and all that but not recently)
- Open in PS and crop if needed just to get the kid in better focus
- Upload to ExpMan
- Wait for sales
- EDIT after the order
- Upload full res files for print

Now some will just upload everything as is and not do anything to the files, upload the crap and all. That's pointless IMO because now you're making parents go through images that will never sell and probably annoying them. Why would anyone want to show there throwaways to the general public? People will notice immediatley if there's a lot of them and that hurts your business. Then if you have an image that is not tightly shot some parents won't be able to tell if that's little Johnny or Sally as well so you have to crop in a little. For Soccer season I did cull but didnt crop much unless it was a good distance away, but was on tighter deadlines then. Football been cropping closer just so they can see better. BUT not so tight that they think they a lot would be cropped and lost if they ordered a certain size.