On-line viewing: What aspect ratios do you use?
bitwise95
Registered Users Posts: 48 Big grins
When I prepare my final proofs for online viewing, I have been using the original 3:2 ratio with a loose crop. My theory is the customer can then crop to most aspect ratios and I can review/modify before sending the order to the lab. This approach causes additonal work flow when I provide web-resolution images as I need to do a 'final' crop.
There are probably a zillion ways and we need a way that works for ourselves. What approach have you found that works well for you?
There are probably a zillion ways and we need a way that works for ourselves. What approach have you found that works well for you?
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What happens if you don't have time to review/modify before it goes to the lab?
I am always amazed at the number of people on this forum who do this (soft proof) and I have never understood why they would choose to do this.
What is the problem with putting up the final product and moving on to the next gig?
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My problem with doing final crop ratios is that my crystal ball is broken and I can't tell before hand if a client will order a 5x7, 8x10, A4 or whatever, all of which have totally different crop ratios. How in the heck ( without a crystal ball) do you work out what crop ration to use??
I agree, if you are going to edit, use the original ratio and go from there when you know what the customer wants.
I shoot 3-5000 images over the course of a weekend. There is no way I am going to sit down and edit all those pics before putting them online. It would be completely counter productive anyway because I'd be putting them up a week later which according to all the advice I have seen, would be a huge mistake.
I cannot see how a person would have time to edit ALL their proof images but then not have time to edit the relatively small number of pics that were ordered before they go to the lab. Makes no sense to me at all.
Editing proofs would take many days, the orders would be lucky to take an hour even witht eh other work I have to do to send them to the lab anyway.
The other thing mistake with editing proofs is that I do a lot of insert and mag cover prints and if I cropped the images tight to look good as a print, it would undoubtedly give people the impression that doing the novelty prints was going to cut into the photo itself and kill sales.
I don't waste time editing any images until they are sold. I am able to shoot straight out of the camera well enough that the images can be shown to clients without having to rework them and I have none of the concerns like some shooters that unless each and every shot is " Fixed" that they will somehow be offensive to the clients and ruin my reputation as a shooter.
Maybe this comes from the old days of film when you learned to get it right in the camera and editing and retouching was rare other than a crop in the printing ( and a totally laughable proposition for proofs, because they are proofs, not final products) rather than the automatic nessicity people take it to be these days.
How do you keep track of all the proofs and finals and what is and isn't done, what has or hasn't been delivered, who tracks back with all your customers to get the proof choices back and all the changes. Then do you have to figure out the billing per how many proofs were edited?
How much time does all that take?
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I'd say that's too many (by about 10x, imho).
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That one is actually quite easy. With the Nikon, I shoot in 5:4 so my print sizes are 8x10, 11x14, 16x20, 24x30. Doesn't get much easier than that.
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The question was about on-line.
The move to HD format 16:9 is very definite for a full-screen view, at least in my neighbourhood.
If your customers are facebook types or embedding in web-sites then it does not matter much. Probably 5x4 is OK, being roughly 1 column size.
Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question entirely?
I upload the shots to the web gallery as taken less any obvious bloopers and the frames where we shoot white boards to identify what that series of shots is. We shoot whiteboards with the identifying info and then a folder is made to download the images into. The program we use to create the proof gallerys looks in the main folder any automatically updates and adds the latest gallery. We have 2 plastic boxes in the trailer, one for card that have to be downloaded and the other where the cards that are finished go so they can be grabbed by the shooter or runner when they heading out to the next event.
We use the same gallery when we put the pics online as we created at the event and loaded onto the Vstations.
When people order online, I get a form with the clients details and we process the frames they ordered either as prints or put them on cd.
It's not hard to process one order at a time and mark the order form I print out as done and package up the order to be posted.
Usually the CC details are on the form although we do give people the option we will call them if they are wary of using their card over the net and we just fill in the details on the form and mark it as paid.
The sytem I use is about as it can get and it has worked fine so far.
A good event for us is 30 orders, when it gets to 100 I will have to look at a more elaborate billing system no doubt.
The majority of my sales are on site and we use a HTML gallery creator for the vstations and when people bring us the order forms with the images they want to purchase, We look at them and if there is anything specific they want we do it and show them then and there and print it. For online we only bother getting the client OK on inserts and Mag covers and just send them an email with teh final proof attached and when the ok or changes ( rare) come back, that is written on the order form but most likley dealt with straight away and then resent if needed.
Onsite they pay there and then while the order is being processed and if they decide to come back to pick it up we slap a post it note on the envelope witht eh clients name and the fact its paid or not as some people wander by on their way to the bathroom or whatever, order a pic and then have to go get their money.
I would even say there is an added value factor in showing unedited images and then giving them a tweak in the final print because the client gets more than they were expecting and are always visibly pleased and impressed.
In any case, there is no way in hell we have time to edit any amount of proofs we shoot onsite so we have no choice than to show exactly what we shot and thats an added bonus to shoot carefully in the first place.
For the online, as I said, i'm not going to waste time editing images that will never be sold and if I did, the time delay would outstrip any advantage of increased sales at lesat 1000:1
Again, not sure I understand.
I upload all the shots we take less the obvious errrors that are apparent with a quick scan of large thumbnails. I don't understand why you would take pics and then not show the proofs of them barring errors.
We shoot from 5-15 shots per competitor on average per test they do (2-4 per event) and upload what we have taken. The events average 1-200 competitors so if we reduced the number of pics taken by a factor of 10, that wouldn't even allow us to cover all the competitors in some of the larger events we do which have 3-600 competitors. On a big event we did of 1500 competitors we shot in excess of 30K images but talking to other people shooting the same events, that's not at all an over the top amount of images to produce or deliver for sale.
After 2 years it's pretty much impossible to pick what they will buy out of a bunch of shots and it sure as heck isn't always the standout best pic they want, so If I have it and its a good shot composition, focus and lighting wise, I use it.
So yes, I show them all as to cull them would be to cull sales, no question.
I agree it's too many shots and I'd love to shoot only the competitors that want to buy but you never know who is going to buy and sure as heck you miss a rider, they will be the ones asking where their pics are. It's also very difficult to say exactly where the best shots will be or again what angle the competitor will best like.
I'd very much like to go to the pre-booked model to reduce the workload and the number of proofs we have to show but that is going to be difficult logistically and from the point of educating the clients but it's something I'm looking at in the future.
Sorry, I thought you were talking weddings. It sounds like logistics almost require you to deliver that many images.
Here is a wedding website I created for a customer as a value-add. Comments appreciated.
Founding member of The Professional Photography Forum as well.