Ask lbobi: Photogs, how much time do you spend touching up each image?
Ok, I was sure I'd posed this question before, but maybe it was somewhere else. I don't see anything in the archives, so due diligence being loosely observed, here I go...I hear and read a lot about photographers processing images at about 2 minutes/image. That seems reasonable if you're just applying presets via Actions and batching. When working with portraits, though, I find myself taking 15 to 25 minutes per, after culling and applying mass presets (on import) in Lightroom. I actually timed a recent edit session. Obviously, that's a lot of time....
I think my main time barrier is with layers and masking. I can't let a portrait out into the wild without, hmm, making the skin and eyes match more closely to my stylized memory of the person. I wrote a great little action for skin smoothing, but I still have to go back and mask in just the skin, leaving the eyes, teeth, etc., as well as background and clothing untouched. And I built a very nice Sharpening action (copied & updated for Smart Objects from part of an lbobi Action), but I still need to mask in just the eyes, teeth, etc. And there's touching up the color on lips, whitening teeth, bringing light to eyes if needed, etc. Finish things up with a few tweaks in Topaz Adjust (apply a preset, tweak the sliders just so). Individually, such things may take 30 seconds or so, but the seconds add up. Before I know it, 20 minutes have gone by on the one picture!
I don't do reshaping (or very rarely do it), although I will on occasion remove the stray hair or odd piece of dust. I'd rather get that stuff right in camera, but, you know, stuff happens. I'm ambivalent about blanket skin tone adjustment plugins/actions. It seems such things would apply to the tones across the entire image and not just on the subject. But I'm unsure how one could reliably work at the frenetic pace of 2 minutes/image without such plugins/actions. Most of what I do is a condensed version of what I've learned from, e.g, Kevin Ames' and others' books, and personal preferences developed from long hours of experimentation.
Am I doing something...unwise for business...with my edit work flow? I really want my subject to think how beautiful she is when she sees her images--to see something she might see in a high-end glamour magazine, or see a warm glow of family comfort. Am I worried too much about that, or do I just need to learn to move my Wacom pen faster? As much as I enjoy working in Lightroom and Photoshop, I enjoy making pictures in my camera much more. If there's a way out there to achieve the results I want in a much shorter work flow, I'm open to learning that way....
You can check out an example of an image I spent about 20 minutes on, if you want. This image went through all the steps--a touch of healing, soften the skin, apply some Topaz Adjust tweaks, add a Soda Pop! action, and finally apply a sharpening layer. The bulk of time was spent in masking for the skin and sharpening layers...
Looking for speed,
Matt
Matt,
Quick question, are you editing the images before or after the client places their order?
Matt,
I can see how this would be a concern as 20 minutes to edit 1 image does seem like a daunting task. I would say that I probably take a maximum of 10 minutes on an image (and it has to be one that I'm really wanting to pay special attention to). But in general I'm probably spending about 5 minutes per image on a series of images. By looking at the specific image you left as an example, I can see that you would want to pay special attention to each image. In my experience I use a series of actions as well, but have edited them in that for example when I use OhSnap from TRA, I always change the opacity to 40%, so I started my own folder at the bottom of my actions pallette and named it Michelle's Faves. I re-recorded the action, dropping the opacity at the end to 40% to remove a step of my own. In that I have all the actions I regularly use in a row and in the order I use them, so I can just click the series in a few minutes and be finished with about 10-20 images in about 30 minutes. There are lots of other tools out there for you. One that I particularly use for skin tones is Imaginomics Portraiture. It works on multiple skin tones at one time and has saved me a ton of time. There is also a tool called ActionRunner that you can drag and drop a large batch of images onto a particular action and it will run the action on all of the images instead of you having to push play for each individual image.
I hope that some of this info is helpful. Feel free to give me a shout if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to help. Best of luck.
@Amber: A little of both. I don't like letting anyone see raw images, so I'll cull and crop, and my Lightroom import preset does pretty good at setting tone curve, vibrance, etc. Short answer is, right now I go about half-way and then final-edit the selects.
I'd really like to have future clients only see fully-edited files that are ready to deliver (or send to the print lab). There's also the point that what the client chooses may not be the best fit for my portfolio, so the portfolio images still need to be edited. I really would like to be able to apply a few actions and minimize masking, etc., to get the results I want to deliver. Part of that equation is, of course, getting desired lighting and composition in camera, which is where I place a lot of my efforts. The other part of the equation is the point of the original post, though--how to maximize the glamour in the images without spending all my time on them...
I think I'll check out some of @Michelle's suggestions. I like the idea of putting the actions in a set in a specific order, so you can just click-click-click. Mine are all just jumbled up in no particular order...
Thanks!
Matt
Hey!
Can we see a before image?
We do not touch up all files for the Ordering Appointments. We pick a few favorites and do those - that helps with buying suggestions. We then go back and touch up what they purchase. I know touching up all files is what you'd like to do for client/portfolio reasons, but maybe pull aside portfolio images to work on at a later time.
Allison :)
Allison,
Wow! The boss! :)
I uploaded both before and after to Flickr, so you could flip back and forth. This link is for the before, and then you can just hit the Next button for the after.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mevanecek/5155532053/in/set-72157622920952839/
Thanks,
Matt