Post-processing Service Recommendations (esp. for nature, landmarks, non-wedding)

WinsomeWorks

I'm not seeing any post-processing services listed now in SmugMug's list of member discounts / partnerships. I thought we used to have something with ShootDotEdit or another service? I'm wondering if anyone has a service to recommend for my needs.

I'm hoping to find a service that would cost less than 25 cents per image, or that has an average close to that price or less. In general, I don't do weddings or events, at least not for a professional fee (Although I do have some past weddings & events I'd love to have someone else post-process too). Mostly I just want to get away from the computer & do more shooting, & I'm way way behind in post-processing, uploading galleries, and retouching.

Most of the services I'm finding online focus on wedding & portrait photography, & say almost nothing about other color-correction services they may offer. When I've been on a trip, I don't mind looking through & choosing the photos that are worth uploading and/or editing, so I usually wouldn't need the culling service. However, I need a service that I could send, say, 75 photos from a trip, & they could do the basic post-processing for me. I just don't have time right now to do much of it at all & consequently I'm not getting these photos seen. A current batch I'm thinking of includes a bunch of landscapes in contrasty lighting, with waterfalls (simple lightening means completely blown-out areas, so they need more time than I have to contribute to them)

The services I've looked into the most, recently, are Pxlvue & Photographer's Edit. Their sites too say very little about photos other than wedding or portrait. I'm willing to try them, but... any other ideas, anyone? I tried & failed to find an online batch-processing tool (one that doesn't need downloading) since I'm on a temporary computer right now with little space & and old XP OS & all, but failed to find anything. I thought that would be a stop-gap measure. PicMonkey doesn't seem to have batch yet. But online batch processing wouldn't solve everything at the moment. Thanks for any ideas.

Peano

> A current batch I'm thinking of includes a bunch of landscapes in contrasty lighting, with waterfalls (simple lightening means completely blown-out areas, so they need more time than I have to contribute to them)

Sounds like a lot to expect for 25 cents an image. I haven't seen your images, of course, but judging from your description, these fixes could easily take 15 minutes -- which would be $1.00 per hour. You might try searching for image editing services in India; there are quite a few that charge very low fees, but I'm not sure that even they would work this cheap.

WinsomeWorks

Peano wrote: »

> A current batch I'm thinking of includes a bunch of landscapes in contrasty lighting, with waterfalls (simple lightening means completely blown-out areas, so they need more time than I have to contribute to them)

Sounds like a lot to expect for 25 cents an image. I haven't seen your images, of course, but judging from your description, these fixes could easily take 15 minutes -- which would be $1.00 per hour. You might try searching for image editing services in India; there are quite a few that charge very low fees, but I'm not sure that even they would work this cheap.

Well, actually, the services I was already looking into have rates in that vicinity, or less. Either PE or PxlVue was 23 cents I believe, & another was 32 cents, which I'd probably be OK with. Not if actual retouching is needed, of course, but most of what I'm looking for, except for some individual cases where some cloning of spots is needed, appear to fall into their categories of "color correction". They mostly describe that as lightening or darkening, contrast, saturation, color balance... that type of thing. My main concern was that none of the services I found say anything about other types of photography. It seems there would be nature & landscape photogs out there too who'd like to spend less time at the computer?! But yes, I can try looking into the India suggestion. Maybe Google isn't picking up those services in my searches, so I'm not sure how to find them.

Some of what I need to do, I could do here on SmugMug, if they would only change/add a couple photo editing tools. For instance, if there were an actual lightening/darkening tool.. the "Auto-correct" tool almost always adds contrast, so it's only useful in a fraction of the cases where lightening or darkening is needed. I suppose I can just try sending some trial photos to some of these services & see how they do with non-portrait photos. I just thought someone here may have experience with one that's geared more towards nature / landscape / landmark photos.

Peano

You do nice work with the camera. The results could be made significantly better, I think, with some decent post-processing.

WinsomeWorks

Ha!! Oh my... funny you should pick an ancient one like that-- that was just a snap from an old HP (probably 3 mp or so) camera that someone gave me-- first digital I ever used! (11 yrs ago maybe?) But thank you for trying something on it! The two subjects in the photo do mean a lot to me, & the dear old cat's been gone a couple years now. Yeah, I can do lots of stuff, both correction-wise & effects-wise, when I have time. And I have PS & LightRoom when I'm not working with a crippled computer. But I'm an outdoorsy person & just can't bear all the screen time that the amount of photography I do takes-- just doesn't feel healthy to me. I do like knowing HOW to do it, just don't want to spend my life on it.