Post-Processing Backlog

[mcall]

Possibly a niche topic, but does anyone else find themselves with a backlog of photos to be edited?

I'm currently a whopping 3 years behind my latest shots. I'm not professional (just as well right?) and only do it for fun, but I am a perfectionist when it comes to editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. It's not that I over-process shots, rather that it takes time for me to be happy with the final look.

Between my 9-5 and other life commitments, I find very little time each week to edit photos, yet I always take them when I'm out and about. So naturally I get further and further behind.

How long on average does it take you to edit a single photograph? Are there ways to speed up besides presets?

It's both enjoyable to have a backlog (because there's always more to get to!) and frustrating at the same time.

Edited March 23, 2021 by mcall

[YOUTA]

1 hour ago, mcall said:

Possibly a niche topic, but does anyone else find themselves with a backlog of photos to be edited?

I'm currently a whopping 3 years behind my latest shots. I'm not professional (just as well right?) and only do it for fun, but I am a perfectionist when it comes to editing in Lightroom and Photoshop. It's not that I over-process shots, rather that it takes time for me to be happy with the final look.

Between my 9-5 and other life commitments, I find very little time each week to edit photos, yet I always take them when I'm out and about. So naturally I get further and further behind.

How long on average does it take you to edit a single photograph? Are there ways to speed up besides presets?

It's both enjoyable to have a backlog (because there's always more to get to!) and frustrating at the same time.

i think imagining how the result should be before starting to edit ,will speed up the process !. it's like the choice theory "when we have lot of choices ,we will take lot of time to choose the perfect one and when trying to choose fast with lot's of choices we end up not satisfied. but when there is less choices we choose the perfect one quick and we will be fully satisfied" , it's a theory talked about in business classes often . similarly when you start editing without fixed imagination of the resulting image , you will automatically try different looks and edits to see which looks better etc... and since you can make a image to look in a thousand different ways, you are having lot of choices in your brain ,so that makes the entire process extremely slow and since you are a perfectionist ,it will take even more time to decide the way of edits to finally get the look you liked from the picture !😇. so my personal idea is imagine the resulting image before even opening the editing software , i imagine before taking the shot itself , actually  due to that i take less shot's , because i think if it will look good before capturing ! ,also due to this thinking , i know what to do exactly while editing , since i don't have much to do tooo , since i was aiming for that look before taking the shot . besides you still have the raw files , to experiment with in your free time for different looks ! if you ever felt not satisfied later !. the longest time i spent editing an image is 30 minutes , also i don't edit often , i used to say myself that i am purist etc.. and use the jpeg from camera directly , until a few months ago , only recently i started tweaking the saturation in a image, even when i used to edit pictures for others since 2013. so i hope this helps ! have a nice day ahead ! and wish you good luck in speedy editing !

Edited March 23, 2021 by K PRETHVIRAJ

[Herco]

I think this is very recognizable for a lot of enthusiasts. What I notice in workshops and talking to photographers is that they view every image as important and spend roughly the same amount of time on every image. Let me give some of my thoughts on this. For my professional work I have a different workflow compared to my personal work. 

Professionally I shoot mostly tethered in the studio. With Hasselblad to Phocus software or with Nikon Z to Capture One (C1) in Sessions. C1 is setup to automatically apply the Style and some other editing tasks like Curve, Camera, Lens and sharpening/noise reduction. During the shoot we'll mark the images as 'keep/delete/don't know'. After the shoot the Art Director will make a final selection. Sometimes out of a 1000 images we only keep 4 or 5 for further processing. The editor or designer will work on those images remote. First the basics in C1, then the details in Photoshop. Each end shot easily takes 30-60 min of work.

For my personal work I do all the culling, editing and exporting myself. The import/culling process is the most important. Here you define how much work you'll end up with. I notice that amateurs rarely are selective enough. They tend to keep most of the images even though they have multiple shots of the same scene. You don't have to throw them away, just don't import everything. Be very selective. I often import only 5% of the images. Sometimes because they're technically not good enough, but mostly because they're lacking artistic quality. Of course you shoot for your own enjoyment, but while culling your images think: "what would a viewer think of this? Is it worth looking at?". If not, don't import.

At importing I use the Camera Profile, Lens Correction, Curve and Style that I want, so I don't need to revisit that. Then I'll revisit the images one-by-one and decide which ones I want to further work on. That is again a subset of what is imported. I only work on the images that will be exported for print or publish in my portfolio. The rest will stay there un-edited. When editing start with keystone corrections, cropping and white balance (WB can often be done in batch mode). Then I move to overall exposure, contrast and color and then the work that needs to be done in layers (like dodge and burn, color editing, vignettes and cleaning). Finally I have export recipes in C1 that almost automatically create the files for print or publishing. I rarely do a lot of sharpening and noise reduction. That is taken care of by the defaults in C1. Only the occasional NR for high-ISO images. Most of the work takes me about 30 sec per image unless I go into 'layer-work'. That may take 5-10 mins per image. It saves you a lot of time when you know what you want to do with an image and have a workflow. Moving the sliders back-and-forth takes a lot of time and isn't very useful unless you have a goal in mind. So, take some time to look at an image without adjusting. After editing, step away and if needed revisit a few days later. Just staring and trying usually doesn't make it better. 

There are excellent resources online to help you develop your own workflow. Scott Detweiler, Scott Davenport, Thomas Fitzgerald, Hudson Henry and Anthony Morganti to name a few. And of course the YT channel of your favorite raw editor.