We are excited to announce that the winner of The Complete Lightroom Bundle is Cindy Palmer! Congratulations!
Efficiently add your Signature Style to images with the these items in the Lightroom Bundle: [···]
CreativeLive is our favorite resource for awesome online education for professional photographers. We are featuring our favorite courses in a blog series – we think they will help your art and your business!
In this workshop, Jared Platt will teach how to select and adjust your images in a fraction of the time, with better results and greater consistency. In addition to teaching you the keys for automating and speeding up your workflow with Lightroom 4, Jared Platt will provide image adjustment techniques and other tips and tricks in Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 and his favorite plugins. [···]
As a wedding photography editing service, we have the privilege of chatting with and learning more from professional photographers worldwide. Most successful wedding photographers have a unique “Signature Style” of their own. It is the personalized creative touch that they are recognized and known for, and one of the reasons clients decided to book them. How do you preserve that look and style if you choose to partner with a specialist for your post-processing? How does that Signature Style shine through? [···]
We live in a world loaded with information and innovation. Our lives have changed drastically in the past few decades with the increase in technology and available data. And nothing has changed more than the photography industry. On the journey from film to digital, everything from gear to capture to edit to share has gotten faster. At ShootDotEdit, we believe the faster we return your images as a part of our wedding photography editing services, the faster you can get them back to your client. The faster the client receives their images, the happier they will be, and the more your business will benefit. We believe “Fast is Best” for your wedding photography business.
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Most professional wedding photographers have a “Signature Style” to their images… a style that is unique and individual. This process that a studio goes through to take images from capture-to-client is typically very detailed and very personal. And, in order for a photography business to stay focused on the action items that produce profit (ie. shooting, marketing, and sales), a robust workflow solution is mandatory. Hence, the haunting question, how does a professional wedding photographer achieve both their Signature Style and sustainable/dependable workflow? We have the answer.
Enter the “90/10 Model”: A Specialist performs 90% of the robust workflow, the artist finishes the job adding their “Signature Style”, the remaining 10%.
Many photographers struggle with the decision to partner with a Specialist. A large part of that struggle comes from the notion that the photographers is the only one who can execute every element of the workflow. In reality, Specialists can help with the science of color correction – providing you with consistent images every time. For example, ShootDotEdit utilizes a Color Profile to accurately edit according to each photographer’s style preferences. These color corrections are complete and custom, allowing the photographer to focus on what only they can do: the artistic edits associated with their Signature Style.
Jared Platt, Lightroom Expert and ShootDotEdit Advocate, put it best when he said:
“90% of the editing work that we need to do can be done by someone else. We only really need to be involved in the 10% – the icing on the cake. That’s what 90/10 is.”
The best workflow for a photographer is one that saves time and maximizes creativity. The 90/10 Model lets ShootDotEdit handle 90% of the workload, color correcting images according to a photographer’s style preferences. This leaves the last 10% of the workload, the stylized editing that adds style, to the photographer.
90% (ShootDotEdit)
10% (Photographer)
Related: How can outsourcing editing for your photography business benefit you? Find out in this comprehensive blog post!
In the end, photographers retain their Signature Style, but without all of the tedious and time consuming parts of post-production!
While many photographers chose to add a Signature Style to the color corrected images, it isn’t required. ShootDotEdit delivers images that are custom color corrected and are ready to share. However, by utilizing a Specialist like ShootDotEdit, each photographer has the ability to do as much or as little with the images after color correction.
If you would like more information about how to integrate ShootDotEdit into your workflow, please access our Free Guide below!
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Are you interested in learning more about how to use Aperture in conjunction with ShootDotEdit? Download this FREE webinar, hosted by our President Jared Bauman and our Aperture Expert Sara France! In the webinar, Sara will walk through a job submission with the Aperture Workflow, showing you:
– the most efficient way to prepare, send and receive a job using ShootDotEdit
– how to quickly stylize your images and add your own special touch in minutes
– tips and tricks for Aperture efficiency
– Bonus Q/A at the end!
If you’ve ever wondered how to incorporate ShootDotEdit into your workflow, or have struggled with submitting your first job, this webinar is for you! Download HERE!
Lightroom is an extremely powerful tool that your business can use in conjunction with a wedding photo editing company, such as ShootDotEdit. We’ve put together Jared Platt‘s Top 5 Lightroom Tips – enjoy!
Jared recommends using one “Master Catalog” in Lightroom. With this model, you can work on multiple jobs at the same time within the same catalog. The other option is to have a separate catalog for each job, only allowing you to work on one job at a time. Having a “Master Catalog” is a much more efficient and time effective way to work.
The export function is one of the points where your version of Lightroom matters the most. While we can (and do) accept jobs from older versions of Lightroom, we recommend using Lightroom CC or Lightroom 5 because it allows for uploading speeds that are up to 30 times faster than in Lightroom 4. By using the technology of Smart Preview, it allows us to edit images that are not physically connected to our computers. Meaning Lightroom is able to package a job without needing the full RAW files, saving a ton of space. Jared uses the example of how an 8-hour overnight upload of a wedding has decreased to 15 minutes. You can’t beat that for time management!
After our color corrections have been received and uploaded back into the “Master Catalog”, many dive right into the Develop module to make their Signature Brand edits on top of our custom color corrections. If you choose to add these additional style edits, Jared suggests an alternative workflow to save you time: By staying in the Library module and using the Quick Edit or Spray Bottle tool to a group of images, you can make adjustments to all of the ones you have selected. You can also apply presets to the group of images in this way. The biggest benefit is that these changes are made relative to our edits, so you keep the neutral color and white balance that we strive to achieve and can add your signature style quickly and easily.
When you receive your email from us stating your job has been completed and the catalog is ready for download, Jared recommends that you SAVE IT IMMEDIATELY! Even if you don’t plan on pulling the files back into Lightroom and working on them at that moment, download the edited catalog and save it in your job folder. Preview images are not sent back with the catalog file, so the download is significantly faster than the upload. No reason not to pull it down and save it as soon as you receive it!
Even if it is already a part of your workflow to sync your cameras onsite, Jared recommends that you should still use Lightroom to check the timestamps and make sure they are the same, and to do this as early in the editing process as you can. When we receive images that are not synced, it slows us down in returning your images to you in the fastest possible way. This is why Jared insists it is easiest and fastest to sync the timestamps through Lightroom when you first upload the files.
Of course, we couldn’t keep it to just five! Jared Platt has some other great tips in the webinar, including information about Selecting a color profile (including dot previews & selecting for challenging jobs) and When and why you should rename your images.
Even if you don’t have the time to watch the whole webinar, but are looking to expand on a specific tip discussed here, topics are conveniently broken out by time markers below the video itself.
We hope these tips help, as they are just the beginning of a mountain of information from Jared Platt. For more tips on how you can improve your business this year, download our updated guide, How to Grow Your Wedding Photography Business: 2015 Edition!
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ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
Jared Platt has been traveling around the country for the past two years teaching his Lightroom Workflow Workshop. Now he’s bringing it to Las Vegas, during WPPI. If you have missed it in your city or just want a refresher, this is the perfect time to do it! Jared’s Lightroom Workflow Workshop will change your life! His techniques and methods will cut your post-production workflow in half. For more information about the workshop and to sign up go to www.thelightroomworkshop.com.
We have a LUCKY TICKET just for you! Visit our booth #1326 at WPPI and get your LUCKY TICKET to either session of Jared Platt’s Lightroom Workflow Workshop on Tuesday, Feb 22.
LUCKY TICKET DETAILS:
The Lightroom Workflow Workshop is $200 at the door, but we have LUCKY TICKETS that will get you in for $120, $60 or even for FREE. But you have to visit our booth #1326 at WPPI to get one! For more details, go to www.thelightroomworkshop.com.
