Mass Editing.

Anyone on here have to edit mass photos ready for proofs, and eventually final prints?

and if so how long does it roughly take per photo?

Dan

I would suspect the time taken depends on how many photos -size of photo in meg pix terms-editing suite and computing power and amount of editing.
Mass editing is something that concerns me as not every picture needs the same edit, so I tend to avoid processing pictures in this manner.

Bazza

I just did some work for a client and managed to average around 2-3 minutes a photo, which I thought was the best I could do. 3 minutes a photo - 340 odd photos equates to nearly 17 hours of editing... that wasn't even to final print standard.

The client tells me they usually edit for final print in 4 hours, including editing blemishes and nose debris etc..

needless to say I wont be getting work from them again, I just don't see how it can be edited to final print in around 1m 10 seconds a photo..

What they don't tell you is if its the same picture taken many times over such as a portrait with slightly different lighting. So working on one photo would transpose to the rest to obtain one good one out of a batch of maybe 100. I do wonder why they sent out work if they can do it so quickly themselves ? I think I may know the answer relating to quality.

Bazza

It depends on what needs doing Dan. Sometimes we heavily modify photos, sometimes they require no editing at all - but we do print and web design so obviously work with much fewer photos per job.

Unfortunately these days a lot of agencies out-source to places like India and so get used to cheap(er) rates for such tasks.

I'd recommend getting a full brief/spec beforehand and try to build in time for editing in your quote - if you think some clients will take the make, add a limit on editing time and bill extra if you go over due to their requirements.

Cheers guys, its only a small setup of 2 people doing children nursery photography. I failed to ask them what size crop they needed, and apparently my levels were all incorrect, I also failed to meet deadline so it was truly a failure. I suppose it was a learning curve.

First step, my screen obviously needs calibrating as they looked spot on, on screen.

I recently bought the Spyder3Pro - it's pretty good for the money

But definitely, get your screen calibrated and do some light tests after too.

I've recently discovered my university has calibration gear so taking my laptop in to have it done.

Doing work for other people I should imagine requires a detailed brief from her client as to what they want and expect. Compare it with the clothing industry, someone goes in and asks for a suit to be made, only to come back later to find its the wrong size/shape/colour/design. Obviously the customer is going to reject it. Same with accepting photographic contracts you have to know exactly what the ustomer wants.

Bazza

Laptops Dan are not the best with regards to photographic work, a proper desktop computer can do the job far better. I don't thing trying to calibrate a laptop will help much but worth trying anyway.

Bazza

I have Color Munki Photo calibration which you are welcome to try on your laptop if you have no success at UNI. This calibrates from computer to screen to printer. As you are in the Midlands and Iam in the West Mdlands you may not live that far away from me.

Bazza

Which laptop do you have Dan? Do you know what type of LCD panel it has?

Easy test - look at your screen from an angle... does the image darken? If so it is probably a TN panel. (Which are not great for colours.)

Getting it calibrated will help, but you'd be better off buying a good monitor and hooking that up to it (and getting that calibrated too).