Do you process all of your shots? Even the proofs?

I'm sure its been asked a thousand times, so here is to one thousand and one.

Still fairly new at this whole photography thing(especially the business side of it!) and soon I shall have a client page on my website so clients can check out their pics online, and order from there etc. (way, way better than sending a CD, yes? hahaha)

As my life starts to get busier I began to wonder, "Do I process all of the images just to have the client print 4 or 5 of them?" I'm a BIT of a perfectionist so I want to show my clients THE BEST - even as proofs, but editing all the keepers from a senior shoot....is going to take a heck of a lot of time! I can do it now, but once business picks up and if I start doing weddings next summer.....

So Pros what do you do?

Thanks for the help,
Alex

I usually show about 30 images, and all of these are processed with LR3.0 and CS3. Each raw file needs a little unsharp mask at 0.3-0.7 px and maybe some gamma/contrast adjustment.

How many images do you edit? It would be quite an undertaking to edit ALL the images from a shoot!

I weston I wrote in post #12760707
I usually show about 30 images, and all of these are processed with LR3.0 and CS3. Each raw file needs a little unsharp mask at 0.3-0.7 px and maybe some gamma/contrast adjustment.

How many images do you edit? It would be quite an undertaking to edit ALL the images from a shoot!

I'm not sure. I haven't really done an *official* senior shoot. I did a few last year but I know I kept WAY to many. haha. I'm guessing around 30 or so... Get to many and its just way to many for clients to even look at!

I shoot mostly architecture nowadays. So when a client requests proofs within a week, they're generally unedited very low-res jpgs. Files suitable to email and to give the client a general idea of the angles/compositions to expect.

For these low-res jpg's, I only do lightroom adjustments --- lens correction, exposure and whitebalance stuff.

I can understand not showing unprocessed images to a client, I certainly would hesitate to do it( especially for portrait photography). But at these resolutions, you're not able to make out any blemishes or anything...

So no, there's no way I could process all of my shots. I would be subjecting all my photos to a mediocre level of processing, instead of the few shots with more time and processing invested.

I edit everything before a client sees it. I just like for them to see the "final product". But I don't do much besides some sharpening, color boost, and of course adjust some levels. The most time I spend on each image is a minute or two.

I fully edit proofs - I select the top images from the shoot and go to town. Sometimes an image will take 2 minutes, other times it will take the better part of an hour. On average, for a portrait session, I probably spend about 8-12 minutes on each photo. For something like a senior shoot, that comes out to around 2 hours of editing.

Part of being a photographer is knowing which photos are going to sell. Or at least, being able to guess really well. For something like a senior shoot - where I have about 50-60 raw files from two hours of shooting - I can know pretty much instantly once I load them up which ones are "definite sales" and which are "probable sales." If an image doesn't fall into one of those categories, I don't touch it.

Of course, it should go without saying that the hundreds of shots I take over the course of an 8 hour wedding day get far less attention per image than, say, the 15ish shots I select as proofs from a senior shoot. But I still edit them, if only minimally.

joe

Batch proofs, retouch selections.

Processing != retouching.

If you find yourself fixing exposure and white balance from senior sessions, it's time to tighten things up. Portraits aren't that dynamic.

I simply do quick edits on my proofs, usually spending only a minute or two on each photo. Once the client chooses the ones s/he would like to purchase, I'll do a more detailed edit. If you're spending a lot of time editing proofs that will never be purchased, that adds up to a lot of wasted time.

I do the shoot, sort through the 100-300 photos, select the best 25-50, process those in LR and CS4 if needed, and then give the client a disc of low res. JPEGs if they bought one (they all do) and then let them decide which ones they want printed.

Thanks so much everyone for answering!

I edit as necessary for the size and manner of my preview. I never want to try to explain, "I'll retouch that out in the final," because most people can't visualize it. So to the extent a fault will show in the mode I preview it, I retouch the preview.

But shooting portraits, I also edit carefully. I rarely show more than 20 images for a portrait session--the only exceptions are for professional portraits...those are being shown to professional image-people for commercial purposes, so they see all the so-called keepers pretty much as-is.

never show anything unfinished