STICKY:  How to photograph a high school Senior - Part 2

Question in regard to editing photos. I am not a retoucher, my wife does that. I'm looking for efficiencies in the process primarily, in hopes of reducing the amount of time spent editing sessions. We typically show about 50-60 images from each session. I'd like to show them all fully editied but 1) it seems like a waste to edit photos that may not get ordered and 2) the time involved seems to be too much.

How many photos do you usually show, how many are fully editied and how many can you edit per hour? It seems like my wife can do about 8-10 per hour. That includes smoothing skin, removal of blemishes, eyes, teeth etc as well as boosting colors etc... She doesn't use any actions. I can't see investing 5 hours in editing.
We usually edit 10 and then tell them any ordered photos will get the same retouching.

The busier we get, the more efficient we need to be. Not ready to outsource editing yet though.

KCMO Reefer wrote in post #16188809
Question in regard to editing photos. I am not a retoucher, my wife does that. I'm looking for efficiencies in the process primarily, in hopes of reducing the amount of time spent editing sessions. We typically show about 50-60 images from each session. I'd like to show them all fully editied but 1) it seems like a waste to edit photos that may not get ordered and 2) the time involved seems to be too much.

How many photos do you usually show, how many are fully editied and how many can you edit per hour? It seems like my wife can do about 8-10 per hour. That includes smoothing skin, removal of blemishes, eyes, teeth etc as well as boosting colors etc... She doesn't use any actions. I can't see investing 5 hours in editing.
We usually edit 10 and then tell them any ordered photos will get the same retouching.

The busier we get, the more efficient we need to be. Not ready to outsource editing yet though.

50-60 is twice what I aim to show. Personally, I wouldn't fully retouch more than one just to show the potential. I would however do the basics(exposure, wb, etc.). 2-3 minutes per pic.

KCMO Reefer wrote in post #16188809
Question in regard to editing photos. I am not a retoucher, my wife does that. I'm looking for efficiencies in the process primarily, in hopes of reducing the amount of time spent editing sessions. We typically show about 50-60 images from each session. I'd like to show them all fully editied but 1) it seems like a waste to edit photos that may not get ordered and 2) the time involved seems to be too much.

How many photos do you usually show, how many are fully editied and how many can you edit per hour? It seems like my wife can do about 8-10 per hour. That includes smoothing skin, removal of blemishes, eyes, teeth etc as well as boosting colors etc... She doesn't use any actions. I can't see investing 5 hours in editing.
We usually edit 10 and then tell them any ordered photos will get the same retouching.

The busier we get, the more efficient we need to be. Not ready to outsource editing yet though.

I tend to show 300 pictures *all of them minus any that are slightly out of focus, blinkers, etc*, and I only edit 4 of them, the ones that go on FB as teasers before the picture viewing.

This works pretty good for me, I spend minimal time processing since im not processing pictures that dont get ordered. I have started to go through them quickly in lightroom and make slight crops if I need to, just to have a better picture to show them.

KCMO Reefer wrote in post #16188809
Question in regard to editing photos. I am not a retoucher, my wife does that. I'm looking for efficiencies in the process primarily, in hopes of reducing the amount of time spent editing sessions. We typically show about 50-60 images from each session. I'd like to show them all fully editied but 1) it seems like a waste to edit photos that may not get ordered and 2) the time involved seems to be too much.

How many photos do you usually show, how many are fully editied and how many can you edit per hour? It seems like my wife can do about 8-10 per hour. That includes smoothing skin, removal of blemishes, eyes, teeth etc as well as boosting colors etc... She doesn't use any actions. I can't see investing 5 hours in editing.
We usually edit 10 and then tell them any ordered photos will get the same retouching.

The busier we get, the more efficient we need to be. Not ready to outsource editing yet though.

I do the same usually. 5-10 edited (which are the facebook previews).

Two programs that could help speed you up.....imagenomic portraiture and autoloader.

I do this for a hobby so my workflow is quite a bit different but on a typical shoot I'll edit about 60 or so just in lightroom for color balance, exposure, contrast, sharpening, noise reduction etc. Then I post them to a gallery I call proofs and let them pick a number of photos that I fully edit. The number I fully edit depends on which package they order.

Thanks for the responses so far. We do in person viewing. I'm at the point that I don't like showing the images that aren't fully retouched. Now we do color adjustments, cropping, etc... but not the skin retouches.

Last night our client saw 60 images. Half were fully retouched. They bought 24 of the 60 and most had ben edited. I'm just struggling a bit with showing images that aren't there "very best", if that makes any sense.

We're doing very well with our sales but I guess the perfectionist in me is trying to come out. LOL

We have OnOne's Perfect Studio with Perfect Portrait and my wife doesn't care for it. I downloaded the trial of Portraiture awhile back too. Maybe I need to learn how to edit too and with both of us going at it, we'll be more productive, although we're still investing the man hours. Or, I can just settle and be happy showing 5-10 editied images with the unedited photos.

Try Portrait Professional (http://studio.portrait​professional.com/), I'm pretty impressed with it. I tried Perfect Portrait and didn't like it either.

Goshke wrote in post #16178533
1.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94020356​95/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

2.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94048008​28/
IMG_1639Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

3.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94047889​76/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

4.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94020320​85/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

5.
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94020492​77/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

6.
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94048098​66/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

7.
http://www.flickr.com/​photos/goshke/94047932​88/
Ivana by Slobodan Gosic, on Flickr

Nice job on the posing.

sevillafox wrote in post #16189142
I do the same usually. 5-10 edited (which are the facebook previews).

Two programs that could help speed you up.....imagenomic portraiture and autoloader.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I dont edit images that are not going to be purchased. I do previews on FB of files that i like to give the clients an idea of what to expect.. but they are not full edits.

I get i dead bang right in camera so some adjustments and im set for proofs.

Mike, I been noticing a background you're using a bit lately. You just showed it in the Buddies with the 3 girls. I've been looking for something just like it. Do you have a name for it?

Great work btw.

I'm not a seniors photographer, hell never really go out of the studio for portraits, but a family member asked me to do her daughters senior portraits. I figured I can always use the practice and its family. Here is the first one off the press.

3 from last nights session- We had super flat light last night until the sun dropped low in the sky. Did the best i could even with strobes out there. Plus shes 6' tall and all legs. Had a hard time posing her. She was awkward to say the least.

Mike, she is just beautiful - and stretched out! I really like the 3rd one. I can see how the posing would be difficult! still, I think you did well. Did you try any with her sitting on the ground?

A couple from last night. Finally. Great light last night.

jb_browneyes wrote in post #16209468
Mike, she is just beautiful - and stretched out! I really like the 3rd one. I can see how the posing would be difficult! still, I think you did well. Did you try any with her sitting on the ground?

Yes. I have a few. Will post later. Had to really stretch her out on the ground. She has a 36" inseam on her pants. Tall girl.