what is the standard for most wedding photographers
do you post proofs on Smug Mug
do you print proofs (if so how do you deliver, in an album or gift box)
or print a book of proofs
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Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
edited September 24, 2010
I deliver minimally color corrected images, sometimes completely un-corrected (I like SOOC)
The client (weddings) get a disc of these images, and the same images get uploaded to SmugMug in high-resolution.
The clients can order prints through SmugMug and I have a proof delay set so I can retouch and fully correct any orders that come in...
I think it is VERY good to look at physical proofs, though. For the first few jobs in anyone's business they should make a print of EVERY image they deliver, WITHOUT a lab's automatic color correction, and scrutinize / compare. This will go MILES in helping hone one's eye with respect to color correction, and how images look in print overall. You'll know exactly what you can get away with at high ISO's, or heavy cropping, etc. etc. Can you make a 24" full-page album spread with that image that is slightly fuzzy and shot at ISO 3200? I don't know, you tell me!
Of course later on in business you can just out-source your color correction, turn on the Bay Photo hand-correction as a final touch, and all that good stuff. After all you've got a business to run, or at least if it's just a small side business, you'd still rather spend as much time as possible with your family and friends.
But my point is, making prints is a big part of developing your eye in general, and I think you should at least make loose 4x6's of every image you deliver, and maybe a few 5x7's and 8x12's, maybe even the occasional 16x24. If they turn out right, you can just gift them to the clients, or keep them as samples... Usually though I'd keep the 4x6's to myself, because half of them would get all written up on the back, ("skin too magenta", "cropped crooked", "clone out exit sign", etc. etc.) ...and the other half you can keep as a small collection to show potential clients. I still have a box of loose proofs laying around somewhere that I used to show to clients. I haven't used it in forever since I just show albums to my clients now, but proof prints are a great affordable way to have something tangible to show. I also use Blurb books too; it's oh-so-easy to keep a small 150 page 7x7 softcover book in my camera bag at all times, I can just pull it out and hand it to a potential client and say "here's a collection of the 150 best images from a wedding I shot last year..."
- Edit the "favorites" to perfection (waste of time? probably, but I have my reasons). The first few I grab and edit usually get posted on Facebook as a teaser unless the client would rather me email them.
- Post the watermarked favorites to a private gallery for clients, if they want to share it, that's their business. I send it to my mom and best friend for critique when I send it to the client, they're my worst critics and I'll take their honesty.
- Allow the client to order the sizes/coloring of the picture they want.
- "Un-watermark" the ones the client wants and save them into a folder for future reference. (I save a photoshop file, a black and white watermarked and a color watermarked jpeg of every file, to un-watermark it, I just make the watermark layer in the ps file invisible and re-save)
- Send to printing and voila'!
It's not the best system, but it works for me, at least now while I have a relatively small workload. I'm the type that wants to see what I get, I wouldn't order a picture from anybody who said "Oh, I'll edit that later" I like to see what I pay for in advance, but that's just me. I *might* retouch it a bit before it goes to printing, I fixed eyeliner on a client who wanted a 16x24 canvas of her and her daughter, it was a huge print and her not quite perfect makeup was bothering me.
....
- "Un-watermark" the ones the client wants and save them into a folder for future reference. (I save a photoshop file, a black and white watermarked and a color watermarked jpeg of every file, to un-watermark it, I just make the watermark layer in the ps file invisible and re-save)....
WHOA THERE, tiger!
Don't you have a SmugMug pro account? There is absolutely no need to save PSD files like this.
* Upload your full-res JPG's to SmugMug, and set a watermark while disabling original size images. The client will have access to "L" and "XL" etc. size images for sharing on facebook or emailing to friends and family, while YOU get an easy off-site backup of your files.
* That way, when a client orders a print, you just look at the print order with the file names, go back and find / flag the images in Lightroom or Bridge, and do the final touches if necessary, then use the replace tool in the print ordering system. Or if you insist on fully editing your images, (which I think is insane if you're delivering more than 50-100 images per shoot) ...then you don't have to do a thing, you just check the order and then click "send to lab"! (I'm sorry if you already understood the watermarking system in SmugMug and have a completely different reason for doing things this way, but honestly I'm tellin' ya there's a better way...
* I don't know how much editing goes into "perfection" for you, but hopefully 99% of it is possible in Bridge or Lightroom, and therefore you can avoid going into photoshop and having to save a PSD for more than just a couple image files per job. Honestly I only save 10-20 PSD files per year, and I'm delivering 20,000+ photos each year!!
I have very little physical interaction with my clients, expect for the day of the wedding, so to continue with this theme I have all of my proofing done online. All of my files are processed in LR as necessary and proofed in my self-fulliment system. When a client makes an order of a large image, I do go back and comb over it to make sure there are no dust spots or crazy things that will effect the print negatively before it goes to print.
I keep all original RAW files on backup and work directly from those. 99% of my images never see photoshop. I do not watermark my images, it just doesn't make sense considering that I am giving them full res images. The proofing / ordering system is my way to sell prints to family members
Matt is VERY right to suggest making test prints for yourself - paper and screen are two different monsters.
Nope, no Smugmug for me, we have our own website and it holds all of our galleries for us, our links are easy to remember for a reason. I'm paranoid about losing files (had issues last summer with my pc and almost lost everything, never again) so it's all backed up on my ehd, every file, every jpeg and every Photoshop file. Megabytes are cheap now, so I don't mind. And they're only getting cheaper.
Honestly, editing doesn't take *that* long for me, I've had full galleries from sessions up within 48 hours before. The longest I've taken was a month and it was for a wedding, I was out of town without my computer for the first two weeks after the wedding. The bride knew it wouldn't be quick and she was ok with it.
And yes, I'll admit that I rarely use bridge or lightroom, photo mechanic and Photoshop for me, pictures rarely take more than about 10 minutes each anyway. Just adjust a few sliders, an exposure brush here, a heal brush there, an action or two and voilà.
Nope, no Smugmug for me, we have our own website and it holds all of our galleries for us, our links are easy to remember for a reason. I'm paranoid about losing files (had issues last summer with my pc and almost lost everything, never again) so it's all backed up on my ehd, every file, every jpeg and every Photoshop file. Megabytes are cheap now, so I don't mind. And they're only getting cheaper.
Honestly, editing doesn't take *that* long for me, I've had full galleries from sessions up within 48 hours before. The longest I've taken was a month and it was for a wedding, I was out of town without my computer for the first two weeks after the wedding. The bride knew it wouldn't be quick and she was ok with it.
And yes, I'll admit that I rarely use bridge or lightroom, photo mechanic and Photoshop for me, pictures rarely take more than about 10 minutes each anyway. Just adjust a few sliders, an exposure brush here, a heal brush there, an action or two and voilà.
Well then, allow me to mention that I think you should use SmugMug to proof! :-P
An external hard drive is great for a quick recovery when one disk dies, but if your house burns down or gets burgled, (?) ...you could be out of luck. At the very least, get a third drive and keep it off-site. If you shoot weddings, the off-site backup needs to be done BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP.
And like I said if you're shooting mostly portrait sessions and only delivering a few images, maybe you can afford to use Photomechanic to cull and then just go straight to Photoshop. But still, 10 minutes per image would completely un-acceptable for my own business model, considering that I sometimes proof one or two thousand images per week. (Do the math...) Personally, I try and keep my per-image clock at 10-30 seconds per image. THAT, to me, is a "proof"...
Just giving a peek into a high-volume workflow, like I said it may not be right for you.
Comments
The client (weddings) get a disc of these images, and the same images get uploaded to SmugMug in high-resolution.
The clients can order prints through SmugMug and I have a proof delay set so I can retouch and fully correct any orders that come in...
I think it is VERY good to look at physical proofs, though. For the first few jobs in anyone's business they should make a print of EVERY image they deliver, WITHOUT a lab's automatic color correction, and scrutinize / compare. This will go MILES in helping hone one's eye with respect to color correction, and how images look in print overall. You'll know exactly what you can get away with at high ISO's, or heavy cropping, etc. etc. Can you make a 24" full-page album spread with that image that is slightly fuzzy and shot at ISO 3200? I don't know, you tell me!
Of course later on in business you can just out-source your color correction, turn on the Bay Photo hand-correction as a final touch, and all that good stuff. After all you've got a business to run, or at least if it's just a small side business, you'd still rather spend as much time as possible with your family and friends.
But my point is, making prints is a big part of developing your eye in general, and I think you should at least make loose 4x6's of every image you deliver, and maybe a few 5x7's and 8x12's, maybe even the occasional 16x24. If they turn out right, you can just gift them to the clients, or keep them as samples... Usually though I'd keep the 4x6's to myself, because half of them would get all written up on the back, ("skin too magenta", "cropped crooked", "clone out exit sign", etc. etc.) ...and the other half you can keep as a small collection to show potential clients. I still have a box of loose proofs laying around somewhere that I used to show to clients. I haven't used it in forever since I just show albums to my clients now, but proof prints are a great affordable way to have something tangible to show. I also use Blurb books too; it's oh-so-easy to keep a small 150 page 7x7 softcover book in my camera bag at all times, I can just pull it out and hand it to a potential client and say "here's a collection of the 150 best images from a wedding I shot last year..."
Good luck!
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
- Edit the "favorites" to perfection (waste of time? probably, but I have my reasons). The first few I grab and edit usually get posted on Facebook as a teaser unless the client would rather me email them.
- Post the watermarked favorites to a private gallery for clients, if they want to share it, that's their business. I send it to my mom and best friend for critique when I send it to the client, they're my worst critics and I'll take their honesty.
- Allow the client to order the sizes/coloring of the picture they want.
- "Un-watermark" the ones the client wants and save them into a folder for future reference. (I save a photoshop file, a black and white watermarked and a color watermarked jpeg of every file, to un-watermark it, I just make the watermark layer in the ps file invisible and re-save)
- Send to printing and voila'!
It's not the best system, but it works for me, at least now while I have a relatively small workload. I'm the type that wants to see what I get, I wouldn't order a picture from anybody who said "Oh, I'll edit that later" I like to see what I pay for in advance, but that's just me. I *might* retouch it a bit before it goes to printing, I fixed eyeliner on a client who wanted a 16x24 canvas of her and her daughter, it was a huge print and her not quite perfect makeup was bothering me.
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Don't you have a SmugMug pro account? There is absolutely no need to save PSD files like this.
* Upload your full-res JPG's to SmugMug, and set a watermark while disabling original size images. The client will have access to "L" and "XL" etc. size images for sharing on facebook or emailing to friends and family, while YOU get an easy off-site backup of your files.
* That way, when a client orders a print, you just look at the print order with the file names, go back and find / flag the images in Lightroom or Bridge, and do the final touches if necessary, then use the replace tool in the print ordering system. Or if you insist on fully editing your images, (which I think is insane if you're delivering more than 50-100 images per shoot) ...then you don't have to do a thing, you just check the order and then click "send to lab"! (I'm sorry if you already understood the watermarking system in SmugMug and have a completely different reason for doing things this way, but honestly I'm tellin' ya there's a better way...
* I don't know how much editing goes into "perfection" for you, but hopefully 99% of it is possible in Bridge or Lightroom, and therefore you can avoid going into photoshop and having to save a PSD for more than just a couple image files per job. Honestly I only save 10-20 PSD files per year, and I'm delivering 20,000+ photos each year!!
Take care,
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
I keep all original RAW files on backup and work directly from those. 99% of my images never see photoshop. I do not watermark my images, it just doesn't make sense considering that I am giving them full res images. The proofing / ordering system is my way to sell prints to family members
Matt is VERY right to suggest making test prints for yourself - paper and screen are two different monsters.
Honestly, editing doesn't take *that* long for me, I've had full galleries from sessions up within 48 hours before. The longest I've taken was a month and it was for a wedding, I was out of town without my computer for the first two weeks after the wedding. The bride knew it wouldn't be quick and she was ok with it.
And yes, I'll admit that I rarely use bridge or lightroom, photo mechanic and Photoshop for me, pictures rarely take more than about 10 minutes each anyway. Just adjust a few sliders, an exposure brush here, a heal brush there, an action or two and voilà.
photography facebook
twitter
An external hard drive is great for a quick recovery when one disk dies, but if your house burns down or gets burgled, (?) ...you could be out of luck. At the very least, get a third drive and keep it off-site. If you shoot weddings, the off-site backup needs to be done BEFORE YOU GO TO SLEEP.
And like I said if you're shooting mostly portrait sessions and only delivering a few images, maybe you can afford to use Photomechanic to cull and then just go straight to Photoshop. But still, 10 minutes per image would completely un-acceptable for my own business model, considering that I sometimes proof one or two thousand images per week. (Do the math...) Personally, I try and keep my per-image clock at 10-30 seconds per image. THAT, to me, is a "proof"...
Just giving a peek into a high-volume workflow, like I said it may not be right for you.
=Matt=
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum