How much time do you spend editing?

I am curious about this. I personally like to photograph people. I find if they naturally look good, i can take around 5 to 10 minutes per picture which i feel is fine. But if they have bad skin with terrible acne and just plain ugly, it can take between 30 mins and 1 hour to make the picture look atleast half decent. Im now wondering what will happen if i had to shoot a wedding. I would be spending a hek of alot of time editing.
So am i fast enough? How much time do you spend editing? Also, for those people who make a living through photography, do you charge more, when more editing is needed? Or do you just suck it up and work extra hard for a set rate?

That's a lot per picture!

What software are you using?

For me, anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 hours.

Whatever it takes

Rayk wrote in post #12183042
Whatever it takes

This...

Sometimes it's quick and painless... other times, well... let's just say it's a labor of love.

^ +1 really depends..

Rayk wrote in post #12183042
Whatever it takes

ni$mo350 wrote in post #12183097
^ +1 really depends..

^^^ This. For pics I take for work where time is important I try to set up the shoot so there is little post processing needed. We choose the pics that will be used and I process only those. The rest stay raw.

For fun, I might spend minutes or hours depending on what I am trying to do. It really depends on the project and photo.

Mike wrote in post #12182679
That's a lot per picture!

What software are you using?

Adobe camera RAW, and then photoshop CS5 if necessary. If the person has a skin problem, i use portrait professional to help speed things up.
My work flow is speeding up quite a bit. At first i was spending hours on every picture. As time went, i realised most of what i was doing was actually making my pictures worse. I now keep editing to a minimum. Adobe camera raw can usually get my image 90% complete.
I was wondering what methods you guys use to clean skin? I know of a few methods. One is the gausan blur which i only use for complete hamburger heads, then there is the skin patch tool with fade patch combo that i find gives the most natural results, but can take a hell of a lot of time, so i use it on skin thats already in average state. and finally i use portrait professional if i have lots of pictures of the same person with bad skin. But you got to be very careful with the settings, they can often destroy your image, especially the skin texture settings.
I was wondering if there are any other methods of cleaning bad skin that could save time?
Oh and to smooth off crinkled backdrops i use the content aware fill feature in ps cs5 instead of using the clone tool. That was a discovery that saved me alot of time too.
Any more tips out there to save time?

BTW... What genre of photography are we talking about? Wedding shoots? Landscape? Architecture? Portrait? Fashion/Glamour?

ChasP505 wrote in post #12183233
BTW... What genre of photography are we talking about? Wedding shoots? Landscape? Architecture? Portrait? Fashion/Glamour?

Well i guess anything to do with people. I personally am learning in the studio. I have a few requests to do weddings but im not confident enough yet and i have only one short range lens.

If your doing portraits, it really depends on your skill level and workflow to be honest. If the make up is spot on and the model has flawless skin and lighting is on point then it shouldn't take that long. Sorry but I don't think there is a solid answer out there because there's just too many variables.

I have spent literally days in total editing time on one shot but trying different techniques and styles to perfect workflow, etc. If I did a simple edit it could take 5 minutes though but it depends on what you want the final outcome to be. An artist can do a very simple painting in 5 minutes or spend a year on one. Only you know when it's done

I am pretty fast having done a few hundred thousand...

Lightroom edit/adjust everything but the skin, average less than 1 minute per shot.
Photoshop for those that need a bit of work, a minute or two, mostly cloning.
For closeups that need additional skin work Portrait Professional about 3-4 minute per shot....then fine tune in Photoshop another minute or two.

For wedding photos I average 100 pictures an hour in Lightroom. I fine tune a few in Photoshop 2-3 minutes each for 10-20 pictures.
Very little skin work at weddings average maybe 5 shots that go to Portrait Professional and fine tune in Photoshop about 7 minute per photo.
Any photos that need more fixing that that get deleted.

The key is to take straight clean photos with proper exposures and properly framed to begin with. For people with bad skin don't take a lot of closeups.

I don't charge extra for editing, I include everything in the one time up front charge. I fully process every photo they get.

Shockey wrote in post #12183578
I am pretty fast having done a few hundred thousand...

Lightroom edit/adjust everything but the skin, average less than 1 minute per shot.
Photoshop for those that need a bit of work, a minute or two, mostly cloning.
For closeups that need additional skin work Portrait Professional about 3-4 minute per shot....then fine tune in Photoshop another minute or two.

For wedding photos I average 100 pictures an hour in Lightroom. I fine tune a few in Photoshop 2-3 minutes each for 10-20 pictures.
Very little skin work at weddings average maybe 5 shots that go to Portrait Professional and fine tune in Photoshop about 7 minute per photo.
Any photos that need more fixing that that get deleted.

The key is to take straight clean photos with proper exposures and properly framed to begin with. For people with bad skin don't take a lot of closeups.

I don't charge extra for editing, I include everything in the one time up front charge. I fully process every photo they get.

Your workflow seems almost identical to what i do. This is the level i hope to acheive. And you gave me one of the secrets: 'For people with bad skin don't take a lot of closeups.
'

For me it's usually just a few minutes. If I don't limit myself to just a few minutes I could sit there forever trying different things and what not which i just end up not using and going back to my original adjustments I made in the first few minutes.

I don't use portrait professional myself, but since others have brought it up, I did get their discount email today..

use code 'ese20' for 20% off any edition. Brings the one edition with the PS plugin down to ~$48.