how much pp before the hand over?

How much pp do you do to pictures before handing the clients the cd or proofbook? I see a lot of photos on here and think wow that one took some work but it looks amazingly better than the original must have! Do you pick and choose a few to give the B&G a taste of what you can do or do you just save that for the album? I can't imagine doing more than basic color enhancement to the whole lot of them.

I make sure all the images look their best before giving them to the clients. I don't understand why anyone would want to have their images out in the world any less perfect.

I personally charge for pp work and have that built into my contract but on the other hand I do not hand over pictures that are blaugh......they better be keepers.

I guess it depends on a lot of factors. If your final product is an album...and the proofs are only a step toward creating that final product, then maybe you don't do much to them.

However, for many photographers, the 'final' product includes all of the photos...and then I agree with jessiper...I wouldn't want any of my photos to looks less that perfect.

Remember that they will judge you on what you hand over.........not what you can potentially do to the photos. It is simple for me....give them the two good ones.........ha.. Make them as perfect as possible or ruin my image.

Krista,
Can I offer a quick suggestion. The photo on your website....is good but does not seem like your best work. Maybe have another photo as your main photo.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hand over blah pictures, they are all "keepers" and of course there are some that I like to take extra time with to make them stand out even more. Maybe just because my pp skills are still pretty slow but I can't imagine taking that special time with each (or even most) of the 500 proofs I typically give! I am just wondering if you do more than the basic adjustments to the majority of your pics before handing them over to your clients or do you just do up your favorites?

Hi i sit for two days and level contrast and sharpen all photos 1000 photos Iam new two the game and can not seem to through some ones specal day photos away .I do have to learn to slow down on the day and stop snaping so much.

Maybe it depends on what you call a basic adjustment....and how fast/easily you can edit. I recently had a groom with a scar or mark on his forehead...and I edited it out of every photo I gave them (200+). It didn't really take all that long.

I try to think about whether they will want to blow up an image for a print bigger than 4x6...and if I think they will (any of the formals or couple shots) then I'll edit it a bit more. Things like tan lines on a bride's maid...that might take a fairly long time to edit on say 50 images...but does it make sense to do it only on some of them and not on others?

Same wedding, one of the groom's men was a fishing guide and spent a lot of time sitting on a boat with a hat on. The result was that his face was red and his forehead was pale white....and the line was very distinct...it was pretty funny actually. I fixed that in all the images...although I did a quicker/dirtier job on ones where I didn't think they would enlarge it.

Scott
Thanks for the suggestion. I am actually in the process of updating the site now.

Mike my hat is off to you. I guess I will just have to get a good bit faster at it! It does make complete sense to make them all look their best.

BEWITCHED wrote in post #4058121
Hi i sit for two days and level contrast and sharpen all photos 1000 photos Iam new two the game and can not seem to through some ones specal day photos away .I do have to learn to slow down on the day and stop snaping so much.

Now this is just MHO, but what you need to learn to do is throw some of those away.

Admittedly I am very old and I come from a time when I'd shoot 3 rolls of 120 (15 on) to produce a 30 side album! But even shooting digital with 2 shooters we rarely exceed 1000 pics in a day, and they quickly get whittled down to 200-350. If you're shooting 1000 plus you must have (almost) duplicate images. It's not the B&G's job to sort out the best images, you didn't pick them for their artistic vision - they picked you for yours. You're not throwing away their pictures - they're not their pictures until you've handed them over.

I've said it before, but the most effective and underused post processing trick is simply the delete key.

To the original question, everything gets colour balanced, curves etc. Then a selection get special effects and all the PJ shots get a B&W conversion, some of the PJ stuff won't even get presented to the B&G in colour. That accounts for about a days work and 350-500 images for the happy couple. Hopefully I'll get faster at this, or at least better.
I'll only revisit the PP to ensure a uniform look across album pages, by request or for enlargements.

jessiper wrote in post #4057889
I make sure all the images look their best before giving them to the clients. I don't understand why anyone would want to have their images out in the world any less perfect.

stathunter wrote in post #4058015
Remember that they will judge you on what you hand over.........not what you can potentially do to the photos. It is simple for me....give them the two good ones.........ha.. Make them as perfect as possible or ruin my image.

I agree - I dont expect my clients to "guess" what the picture might look like when I'm finished... I am the photographer not them.

In saying that though - I dont do heavy PP - just basic adjustments including B&W etc. Occasionally I'll throw in a midnight sepia and a few signature things, but thats about it.. Doing all of the above doesnt take all that long in the scheme of things.

I give customers images with color and brightness corrected, nothing else usually unless an image really needs work. I call them digital negatives.

Krista, do you have lightroom? I like to give my clients the best pictures I can.