Processing Time

[Jay Gould]

Having just completed three terrific workshops with Jim Neigher, James Shadle, and Jack Graham a question has arisen during each of the workshops regarding how long the pros - as compared to us rank amateurs - spend in post processing.

Hey Pros - how long do you generally spend processing you various images that you are displaying on your websites for print sales?

Do you spend a different amount of time if the image is a specimen bird in flight or on a perch as compared to a landscape?

Thanks in advance; perhaps a poll type thread could be created??

PS: I have had a wonderful time with my instructors including spending several hours at Best Buy in Tampa with James buying a new computer to replace my 13" BSOD ex-Dell. Now I have a 16" and today I finally was able to load Lightroom and CS4.

I will definitely be posting images in the coming weeks.

Cheers,

[Lance Peters]

Hi Jay - dont consider myself a pro - but I would comment - the more you get right in camera - the less you have to try and fix later.
Most of my posts have minimal PP - Some levels maybe and some sharpening and cropped if necessary - makes not a lot of difference what the subject is.

IMHO the secret is getting as close as possible in camera - that is if you dont want to spend heaps of time in front of a computer :)

[John Chardine]

With Lance on this one, and I can say that the more photography I do it seems the less processing I need to do- "blame" BPN for that one!

Also, as you develop a portfolio of images you tend to become more selective with the new ones and dump rather spend the time to process.

[Roger Clark]

Jay,
I'll agree with John. As I've accumulated more images, I'm more selective and that reduces processing time.

I usually do cropping, levels, curves some selective dodge and burn and sharpening. That and creating an image for the web site and adding it to my web site totals about 30 minutes. I do less dodging and burning on wildlife and more on landscapes with complex lighting. I often also do mosaics and assembling those can take a lot more time, especially if there are moving subjects. Dodging and burning to compress the dynamic range for printing can take a while. Some of my large format images (4x5 film or large digital mosaics) I've spent many hours on. I recall about 8 hours on some landscapes. I don't spend time adding or removing things (the few times I have done it I note it in the captions); I just move on to another image.

Roger