Digital Post Production Workflow for Weddings

Mar 13, 2010 | Business, Wedding | 33 comments

Now that the wedding season is under way I thought I’d spend a bit of time sharing our system of picture management with you. It’s all too easy to add hours or even days of work to each and every wedding for little or no reward. There is not just one correct workflow and the system you currently use may suit you better than ours, but there are many bad, inefficient workflows out there and a lot of life is wasted in our industry.
Digital ‘post-production’ is a standard procedure for wedding photographers, but because image manipulation and enhancement can be beguiling, it’s easy to get too involved – leading to wasted time. What you need is a good ratio between time in and value out. Every minute spent in Lightroom or Photoshop must be rewarded with a corresponding income.

Question everything you do, measure the time it takes you to complete tasks, assess the finished results and ask yourself,  ‘Could I charge more for my pictures if I spent more time working on the files in post production?’ Equally valid is the question, ‘If I cut the time in post production, would it affect the amount I can charge for my prints, albums or discs?’ There are obvious ‘no value added’ stages in any workflow that need careful scrutiny to achieve optimum efficiency. When you are dealing with a thousand or more files with each job, it’s easy to waste time on non-essential or duplicated tasks. You need to protect the integrity of the files, back-up the right data, and avoid repeating the same tasks on the same image. Time is money, or in some cases, the difference between ‘having a life’ or not.

As for the more mundane jobs, there are many ways to do most of the picture editing or sorting tasks. But you need to ask whether the methods you use are the quickest and produce the best results? Explore alternative systems rather than just sticking to what you know. Having an open mind will lead you to time-saving opportunities like programming the function keys on your keyboard and Wacom tablet or using actions and scripts more effectively.

Here is the definitive Lovegrove workflow for a wedding shoot:

Before we set off for a wedding, Julie and I synchronise the clocks on our cameras. I shoot with a Canon 5D mk2 and Julie shoots with a Nikon D700. We access the date and time menus, set the date and hour values to be the same and with the cameras set face down on a table we advance the clocks to the same minute at the same time and press the SET button together too. This ensures that when we combine the pictures later we can sort them into the correct order by choosing ‘sort by time taken’ in Lightroom.

Our cameras are both set to record only RAW files, our picture styles are set to STANDARD and our colour spaces are set to sRGB. File naming options are left at the default settings too. We shoot on 16Gb SanDisk Extreme CF cards. We both have 2 cards available for the day and there are a couple of extra 8Gb SanDisk Extreme CF cards in the car too.

During the meal at the wedding, Julie and I set up a MackBook Pro with a CF card reader and a LaCie 250Gb portable hard drive connected using FireWire 800. We open a pre created Lightroom catalogue on the LaCie and import all the pictures that have been shot up to that point in the day. The files are stored on the same disc in a pre created folder.
LaCie Wedding Drive >> Weddings >> Smith >> Smith Raw files
It is important to label the folder with the clients name together with the words raw files so it is easy to find in the list of folders in the Lightroom catalogue. Those of you who are familiar with Lightroom are well aware of the importance of getting things right at the import stage.  In addition to using well chosen keywords and selecting the correct file location we have set up automatic import presets that set the colour space and camera calibration settings to pre determined positions depending upon the camera serial number that originated the pictures. Because we shoot with different cameras, I shoot with Canon 5D mk2 and Julie shoots with a Nikon D700, it is vital to get the resulting pictures normalised automatically on import, this saves loads of time later and ensures greater print consistency.

Matching the pictures from different cameras
The trick is to take identical shots in the same light at the same time of the same person, both in a tungsten lit environment and a daylight environment. Use the Lightroom profile options, camera calibration sliders, and others to get both cameras shots looking similar. Match the contrast, acutance or edge sharpness, noise suppression and skin tone look. Save the settings and select the option in Lightroom to automatically apply the settings on import. If you want to go to the next level you can edit or create your own camera profiles using the free DNG profile editor by Adobe. You don’t need to shoot in DNG, just follow the instructions on the Adobe website.

It takes about an hour for Julie to import the 800 or so pictures we have shot so far that day. Once the majority of pictures have imported and we have had a chance to relax a bit Julie will start the selection process. Julie uses the 3 second rule, if after 3 seconds she is still undecided if a shot should make the set, it gets rejected. 800 pictures will become 200 in about 45 minutes or so. Julie uses the ‘P’ key on the MacBook Pro to pick each keeper in turn. By the time this process is done the speeches are usually imminent.

Top tip: Never show your client more than twice the number of images they will buy. If you expect your client will buy between 100 and 120 pictures for their album, select down to 200 or less pictures. Any more than this will be counter productive because; the set of pictures will become weaker, your client will like fewer pictures than they dislike, the overall number of pictures sold will drop, the client will find it harder to choose the best ones, the atmosphere at the viewing will be less exciting, and here’s the biggie: By selecting less pictures, you will spend less wasted time post producing pictures for no reward.

After dinner is over and the speeches are beginning we have the 2 CF cards containing our pictures in my pocket, and our pictures on an external hard drive left in our laptop bag with the concierge. From this point on it is important to have two copies of the images in separate places. We put fresh 16Gb cards into our cameras and prepare to shoot the last shots of the day.

I typically over shoot a bit from this point because I really get into the swing of the party and have had a glass (or two!) of champagne. At the end of the day we have about a further 200 or so pictures to download to the same folder as the first set.

On Monday morning, Julie opens the Lightroom catalogue on her iMac back at the studio and spends about 45 minutes to finish the first selection run through. By using a separate hard drive it is easy to access the files on any computer. The next step is to reorder the picked files by choosing the ‘sort by time taken’ option in Lightroom and selecting the file folder and not ‘last import’ from the navigation list in the Library module.

Julie then spends a couple of hours going through all the picked files in their new order to refine her selection. She can drag and drop the pictures to change their position, crop some or straighten them as required. No tonal or colour changes are done at this stage.  Then they are batch renamed with Smith001.dng to Smith341.dng etc. (Our clients usually choose between 150 and 200 pictures for their album) At this point the Metadata is saved to the files and a DVD backup is burned. This disc is saved off site with the 300 or so others at a relative’s house. The Camera CF cards can then be formatted ready for another job and our data is secure. We have four 16Gb CF cards and four 8Gb cards in total as it can be a few days before Marko is scheduled to post produce the pictures and we have many shoots to do throughout the week.

Julie then passes the LaCie hard drive to Marko together with a set of notes for head swaps and changes etc. Marko copies the client folder onto his Drobo,  opens them in the Drobo Lightroom catalogue and he converts all the files to dng.  Each of our drives has it’s own catalogue and eventually all pictures end up on the Drobo with it’s 8Tb of storage arranged to give us 4.7Tb of protected space. Marko will whizz through the files in Lightroom at a rate of about one a minute knocking them into shape. This process takes about 4 hours and produces fantastic looking pictures with the skin tones and dresses matching throughout. A consistent colour, contrast and look to the pictures is achieved entirely in Lightroom.

Marko Exports the pictures from Lightroom as 8 bit Tiffs into a new folder called edited high res files in the client folder on the Drobo. He then combines the files that need ‘head swaps’, does any cosmetic changes required and add the finishing touches to each file in Photoshop. Any effort put in at this stage to improve the pictures is reflected in the value of the whole set. Having a consistently good set of images at the viewing will result in a big order. We never show a picture that is not flattering, so cosmetic changes always get done before the viewing. As in Lightroom, this process takes about 60 seconds on average per image. Once the pictures are suitably polished a set of viewing files are made using a Photoshop action. This action outputs the files as sRGB jpegs at quality 10 with the maximum pixel dimensions of 1400 x 1050 to match our projector. A white stroke is applied to each image and a small amount of sharpening is applied too. The sharpening level is the optimum amount for our projector to make the shots look their best in our viewing room and is 35% at a radius of 0.8 pixels without threshold. Each viewing file is between 1Mb and 2Mb in size. These small files require less processing by the sales computer when making slideshows on the fly than full resolution pictures. This allows both smooth transitions and fast full screen previews during the viewing process.

Our client folder called Smith in the parent folder on the Drobo called 2010 weddings now has three sub folders, Smith raw files, Edited high res and Smith viewing files. The viewing files get transferred to the sales room PowerBook over our network. Julie loads the pictures into Microsoft Expression Media, rebuilds the large thumbnail previews, creates the catalogue sets in readiness of the viewing session. In Expression Media it is posable to assign a picture to any number of catalogue sets. Unlike tagging, catalogue sets allow each image to be in as many places as you want. We may have as many as seven sets after a viewing:
• Bride and groom’s album
• Bride’s Mum’s album
• Bride’s Dad’s album
• Groom’s parents’ album
• Multiframe for the kitchen
Folder prints for thank you gifts

Programmes that rely on flagging, labels or star rating are more limited in this respect. Expression Media is colour managed too and allows us to show the pictures without any windows on the viewing screen whilst having the main programme on the laptop screen.

So to recap, Julie takes up to five hours to download, select and rename the files. Marko then takes about eight hours to get the pictures looking fantastic and the pictures are then ready for viewing. The unselected RAW files still exist on the small LaCie drive and will be deleted after the viewing assuming all is well.

Any additional editing requested by the clients at the viewing will be carried out on the high-resolution files. Occasionally there will be requests for Marko to do his magic: straightening teeth, dropping dress sizes, putting hair back on the men, or taking years off the bride. This, along with other editing Marko sees fit, will be done prior to creating any album designs. Marko will only do further work on the files that have been bought.

Marko now designs the albums for the clients using Jorgensen Album Designer. Once the layouts have been created he emails the clients with PDF versions of the plans for approval. After any required changes to the album plans have been made, Marko uses JAD to output the printing files as complete sheets for each page. The pages go through another Photoshop action to prepare them for print by our lab.

Once all the printing is complete, the job goes through to the album and frame construction phase. Kate, does our gluing and sticking to ensure a fine finish as her handy work is meticulous. Marko has seen, checked and approved every print prior to the album construction and any prints that were not quite up to scratch get reordered. It is the attention to detail at this stage that adds hundreds if not thousands of pounds to our product value.

The digital files for each years weddings finally get archived on 2Tb hard drives. Once full, these drives have Lightroom catalogues made of their contents and are then stored away in cupboards at our home. It is worth noting that we still have our last 50 weddings on our Drobo and this is enough to ensure smooth running of the daily demand of reprint orders.

We archive the following files:
• The selected DNGs
• The edited high-resolution Tiffs.
• The Expresion Media catalogue from the viewing.
The JAD album designs.

Marko and his team are available to bring your pictures to life for a remarkably low fee. Free yourself from the computer, get a life, and become a photographer again, with Picture Editing Services from Lovegrove Consulting. See here for prices and information.

What have I missed? What time saving tips do you have? Please share them with us below.

33 Comments

  1. Den

    Hi Damien , how do you calibrate your camera LCD to match what you will see back in the studio (calibrated monitor). I calibrate the monitor and then set the luminance on the camera to match, to ensure my exposures are more accurate.

    I have a top end IPS panel fully calibrated and compared to my 5DMk2 screen – I have to set the manual brightness to one notch down from middle position to match the luminance I see on the big monitor.

    I think you said somewhere you keep your 5DMk2 LCD in the middle setting. Do you notice the shift in exposure from camera to Lightroom as a result?

    I just thought this might help some others if they find there shots consistently look underexposed once imported.

    Thank you
    Den

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Den,

      I use this technique to calibrate my camera screen.

      Best wishes,

      Damien.

      Reply
  2. Maui Weddings

    I have found your wedding pictures are very beautiful and fantastic and Digital pictures are very clear and quality.

    Reply
    • damien

      Thank you Maui :)

      Reply
  3. Fiona Campbell

    Thanks so much Martin for the DVD explanation. At last all is suddenly clear!

    Reply
  4. Dudley Williams

    I too wondered about the choice of sRGB. We are repeatedly told to use Adobe RGB then process in Pro RGB (which Lightroom uses by default). What’s your take on it please Damien? Thanks

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Dudley,

      The colour depth and space at capture is limited by the plastic filter on each pixel site. sRGB is about all that can realistically be captured but in post production we have the opportunity to stretch the captured colours and increase saturation, reduce luminance and altogether go way beyond the sRGB space and even through the Pro RGB space although you screen wont display the changes you make and it will let you screw up the file without you knowing it. Don’t tweak beyond what you can see. The best screens out there display the full Adobe RGB space and not much beyond so this is considered by many to be the ideal working space. Photographic paper cant reproduce more than sRGB so there is no point sending more than that to a lab. Ink Jet can go further because of brighteners and fluorescence in inks so Adobe RGB is best for ink jet output.

      If you capture RAW then the colour space used to make your image in the first place will be determined in Lightroom and not in camera. The in camera setting affects the jpeg produced and used to be selected as the default by RAW processors before companies like Adobe started mapping the profiles of sensors themselves.

      The thing that is most important to understand is there are no rules and there are many different ways to achieve great looking pictures. If your system works really well then stick with it. Ours is perfect for our needs and has changed somewhat since I wrote this blog post.

      I hope this helps,

      Damien.

      Reply
  5. martin

    Fiona: unfortunately the DVD market has not consolidated around a single writeable format. If you are sending image files on DVD to be read in a computer its not an issue. Buy the cheapest format that works in your drive. But if you are sending movie files, like a slideshow on DVD some domestic DVD players will play one format successfully, others won’t. The -R format seems to give the least trouble in domestic players, but even if you use that expect to get a few “it doesn’t work” complaints. They are usually resolved by sending the other format (+R) in that instance.

    HTH

    Martin

    Reply
    • damien

      Thanks Martin, for your timely and spot on reply to Fiona’s DVD question. Will the situation get easier with BluRay or will everyone ignore that format for another one that’s yet to appear? We shall see.

      Cheers, Damien

      Reply
  6. Fiona Campbell

    Great post which I need to read, learn and inwardly digest! May I ask you, do you know about DVDs. I am just preparing to order a batch from 7dayshop.com who have a great selection of cheap supplies, and I was bewildered by the sheer number of different types of DVD. What, exactly, is the difference between a DVD-R and a DVD+R?? These DVDs are mainly used to send out to clients, so I would love to know what you have found to be best for this purpose.

    thanks!

    Fiona

    Reply
  7. Pat Bloomfield

    Great article Damian,

    Your discussion of backing up data is a hot point with me now as I thought I’d got it sorted by moving to a RAID 0 setup, with the intention of archiving off onto another USB drive after about 12 months.

    I stopped using DVDs as their reliability can be suspect and they need re-backing up on a regular basis.

    Anyway I was feeling quite pleased with myself until a friend who I know from the IT industry pointed out I wasn’t protected against fire or theft.

    Hard disks are hardy and may survive a fire but theft is a real issue.

    My friend introduced me to http://www.livedrive.com/ that offer unlimited storage at under £40/year! My friend has multiple terra bytes of data, so it really is unlimited.

    I’m currently uploading my critical data to my ISP storage but will need to move to http://www.livedrive.com/ at some point in the future.

    Anyway I thought this may interest you. It is probably cheaper than DVDs and ultimately safer. Just getting the data up there is the pain – but it only needs to be done once :-)

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Pat,

      Thanks for your tips. I’ve always kept half an eye on the online backup storage options but have yet to find 8Tb of secure online storage for anything like the figure you have mentioned. I’ve always questioned what happens to my data if the company stops trading? How safe is the data from theft? How do they back up servers? And I’ve come to the conclusion that if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Upload speeds are typically too slow with ADSL to shift this kind of data volume around. The easiest least hassle system is to use a set up like Apple’s Time Machine that does incremental backups to a networked drive (Wifi is fine). Place this drive out of sight and out of mind. You could put it in a plastic pedal bin in the utility room or even in the garden shed. Each quarter you could then dump all your sensitive data to a 1Tb external drive and store it off site. Four drives like this costing less than £70 each per year is my preferred choice.

      Kindest regards,

      Damien.

      Reply
  8. Martin

    Great article…

    “Time is money, or in some cases, the difference between ‘having a life’ or not.”

    SO true I had to chuckle, I think we’ve all been guilty of this.

    Reply
  9. ed

    Hi Damien

    great article, just out of interest I was always told to shoot in RGB and not sRGB as apparently has a wider gamut etc, is this a personal preference or does it not matter?

    many thanks

    Reply
  10. Steph Reid

    I was wondering if you can offer advice. I am in the process of buying a macbookpro and I really need to know what woud be preferable – glossy or antiglare… I believe the antiglare is better for colour calibration and the glossy to saturated. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Steph, We use the antiglare screens but I’m not sure what the effect of editing on the glossy would be. I rarely edit pictures on my laptop so I can’t say really. I would expect the glossy screen to be able to be calibrated in exactly the same way as the anti glare. I’d go with what I thought looked the nicest. Sorry to be vague. Damien.

      Reply
  11. Christie

    Hi Damien, Thanks for this great article. Really enjoy your blog.
    – Speaking of memorycards, I actually had a 8GB failing at the wrong time due to an error in fabrication which my camera (Nikon D2X) didn’t detect ……………..managed to save……….2 pics!
    Only use 4GB now. Regards/Christie

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Christie,

      I remember the D2x issue. You were not alone. Always use cards that are contemporary with your camera is my advice here. If a card manufacturer uses write acceleration architecture in the design process you need your camera to be able to use it. Also a professional data recovery service can usually recover far more than the freeby software that comes bundled with the CF cards.

      Damien.

      Reply
  12. Kevin Mullins

    Thanks Damien – really useful as ever. Just a quick one re Tiff files. Do you always just use 8bit. I do because the 16bit files are huge but just wondered if that ws the only reason for using 8bit? Thanks, Kevin

    Reply
    • damien

      Hi Kevin, if you do the majority of image adjustments in Lightroom prior to exporting the files then 8 bit is enough. If you are going to shift the tones around in areas of an image then use 16 bit for that one image and drop down to 8bit ASAP. Damien.

      Reply
  13. Tim Hind

    As usual a great and informative article, thank you for posting them!

    Reply
  14. Tom Chapman

    Just a thought, if you forget to change the times on the cameras (as I have done), just take a picture at the same time (could be as simple as manually pressing the button with the lense cap on) and then use that to change the time on the images on mass once in lightroom.

    Tom

    Reply
    • damien

      Thanks Tom, I’ve never time shifted 1000 frames in Lightroom but if it works then fine. Thanks for the tip.

      Reply
  15. damien

    Hi Barry,

    We convert to DNG to reduce the 600 or so files (Inc xmps) to 300 and to tidy up the mix of NEFs and CR2s. Converting to DNG gets rid of the originals and therefore it’s a tidy up stage.

    Regards, Damien

    Reply
  16. damien

    Hi Craig,

    Great observation. I used to shoot 35 weddings a year with Julie and it was vital that we had an effecient workflow. Even at our peak my work was done once I’d pressed the button because Julie and Marko take over from there on. Now that we shoot just a couple of weddings a year my diary planning is completely different. I have one day a week set aside for creative writing, the time is shared between magazine articles and this blog.

    A few years ago at the end of our last full season of shooting weddings I wrote my 45000 word book on wedding photography. Unfortunately the chapter on workflow is now well out of date so this article is an update for my book. It is also the basis for next months column in PhotoPro magazine as well as a good read on my blog.

    I do try to maximise the returns of my effort and provide my photographer clients with this free but valuable asset to tap into.

    Kindest regards, Damien.

    Reply
  17. Barrie Spence

    What is your motivation to convert to DNG? If Lightroom is holding the original proprietary raw files, is this not just a redundant copy?

    Barrie

    Reply
  18. Craig Dempster

    Your article basically revolves around getting wedding photographers some of their life’s back yet you take the time and effort to write a 2,500 word post on the subject for us!

    I am always amazed and always very grateful.

    Craig.

    Reply
  19. Darren Bell

    Thanks for sharing damien. Love reading your articles…

    Darren

    Reply
  20. damien

    Hi Dermot, Thanks. Damien

    Reply
  21. damien

    Hi Will and Nic, I use big cards because they are safer. They don’t get lost as they are always in the camera until downloded, one big card is less likely to fail than one of four smaller ones. The only failures Ive had in 10 years have been on small cards and I’ve always been able to recover all the pictures bar 2 or 3 at the worst. I wouldn’t shoot weddings on the older Extreme 3 cards when there are newer and more robust cards available at such good prices. There’s nothing worse than running out of space or having to change cards in a rush at a wedding except perhaps bending a pin in the camera when shoving a new card in.

    I hope this helps. Damien.

    Reply
  22. Nic Box

    Was thinking the same thing as Will. We use smallest cards possible, which is generally 4 gigs these days. I can’t break away from that ‘what if’ feeling, and I have had cards fail (sandisk extreme III).

    Reply
  23. The Big Picture Studio

    Great article Damien! Thanks for sharing.

    Great to see how someone else does it and very useful.

    Dermot.

    Reply
  24. Will Pateman Photography

    Why do you use larger cf cards like 8 and 16gb when surely 2 and 4gb would be safer if a card fails..not that they often do

    Reply

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