I need advise.....please!

mxmom

HI everyone,

I have always taken pictures of my family and friends (motocross) and others started asking me to take pictures of their kids. My husband suggested to start a webpage on here, which I am working on, and will sell the pictures I take of everyone. Here's my question....... When we bought our new computer the Corel paintshop came with it. It was ok just for what I was doing for personal use, but I have heard so much about photoshop and I started looking into buying it. There are 2 I believe, so which one is best? Or do you have any other suggestions other than photoshop?

Also I have another question. Once I upload my pictures into my website, (which can be from 600 -1500 depending on the size of race) do you delay processing on your orders to make adjustments to photos that have been ordered at that time?
I have a Canon Rebel XTi, Tamron 70-200 2.8f lens that I mainly use when I'm on the track.

Any suggestions would be great!!!!!
Thanks

wadesworld

Personally, if you're not already familiar with Photoshop, I'd recommend that you use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It should cost less than standard Photoshop, and should have all the re-touching tools you need. More importantly, it excels at managing photos - which is important if you're going to be taking lots of pictures.

vt1122

If you have Paint Shop Pro you should be able to do anything you need to.
600 to 1500 photos you are not going to want to process every shot.
I use Picasa which is free to quickly go through images, delete the ones I don't want, crop and do some minor tweaking before I upload. Then set proof delay and you can further process any photos that are purchased if needed.
Works well for me.

Dano

Try the 30 day free trial of LightRoom. You really do not need CS3 or 4 unless you are doing some major adjusting of your images. I have both but with LR 2.3 I use CS3 very little these days.

xtnomad

You are selling photos, Thats good. I would take change a little slow, I have found the old system works, new is a learning curve. I have been using Photoshop Elements 5 and it will do everything I can do and I am not trying to stay on the edge of new editing stuff. If you can learn new go for it, If you are use to what you are using stick with it and maybe load some new software and get to know it before you delete what you have come to know.I started with a point and shoot and the software that came with the camera and it took me on the learning curve to delete the software to move to Elements for full time use.

Toshido

i definitely echo the suggestion of lightroom. i am not very good at photoshop, aweful really.

Lightroom is easy to use and is great fr organizing your photos as well.

That many photos would take way too long to process them. I have yet to actually sell anything but I do have a plan...

First on my site I have a sample gallery showing the differences in different levels of processing, from straight outof camera to finished product. That way people can get a feel for the differences.

Second I treat my pictures different depending on whether I am shooting on spec or paid to be there. If paid to be there I will run the photos through a simple auto tone to get them close to right. Then post them online as proofs. Once ordered I will finish processing them.
Shooting on spec I need to put my best foot forward and try to wow them with the final image. So everything is post processed and than put online. Of course that means a lot of work so I cull them a bit heavier as well so I don't have as many to deal with.

Finally congrats and keep having fun.

johng

mxmom wrote:

Also I have another question. Once I upload my pictures into my website, (which can be from 600 -1500 depending on the size of race) do you delay processing on your orders to make adjustments to photos that have been ordered at that time?

I'd like to address this part of your question. Now I don't shoot mx, but I shoot a lot of other sports. First thing's first, you need to cull your shots a LOT before posting them. Get rid of the Out of Focus (OOF) shots and just poor shots right off the bat. You'll do yourself a HUGE favor as a business if people aren't looking through 100 crappy shots to see 20 good shots mixed in there.

Second, even if you cull that number in half, people don't want to go through 300-700 photos trying to find photos of themselves. They'll give up and you won't make much money.. You need better organization or keywords so people can jump to photos of themselves (or their kids) with minimal page turns on your site. Again, hopefully someone with MX sales experience can jump in and give you a sport specific example of how to organize the gallery.

Those two things are going to be the biggest obstacle to you making sales online. People are not patient and simply won't be able to take 45 minutes to go through 30 pages of a gallery trying to identify themselves especially when 2/3 of the shots are poor and there are a lot of duplications.

Good luck

mxmom

Thanks for all the info. I appreciate it and I will look into lightroom 2. There is too much money involved to "learn from your mistakes"!

Thanks Again

PS. I do agree with johng and his comments. I have already started doing both of those even when I was taking shots of just the family. I hate showing off photos with bad ones in the group. As far as the grouping of photos, I try to minimize how many I put together. I also try and group similar classes together so they can see most if not all their pictures in one group. Thanks again for all the comments.

Ann McRae

mxmom

I used to have PSP and the only reason that I changed to PSCS was because I changed to a Mac. At the time I did that I had not heard great things about LR1.

When LR2 came out, I got that. My point of view is that Lightroom can do everything that I do to sports photos except make the complex collages with layers. Heck, LR maybe can do that and I don't know it!

LR is the way to go- get the free trial - I am sure you will love it. The power to batch process RAWS is so much of a timesaver, but there is so much more to LR.

As well, take johng's advice about keywording, organizing and culling. Only show your best work.

Finally, whether you fully process and post full size originals or post unprocessed shots, set your galleries for proof delay. It is a really important part of selling photos - the final check to make sure the photos, and the customers cropping, are just right.

ann