mass editing (event photography) help needed

suggs

suggs

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Name
Harry
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi all

i now shoot motocross on a weekly basis and the last month i have started to sell a fair amount of my images via my website and facebook etc, its getting to a stage now that i can take 500-1000 shots in a day and sometimes i get out twice a week so need to come up with a editing/processing plan.

My website is part of smugmug so the images need to be fully edited before i load them to the site as when a download is sold its then an instant transfer to clients computer, smugmug dosent at this time have a delay option on the download side of things so whats on there screen is what they get..

I currently have Lightroom 3 and iphoto on my Mac, ive been using Lightroom and selecting all images and doing a mass sharpen then i go through them one by one and do presets and after short time i end up with 5 or 6 presets which i then use to edit all the rest ie try each preset and select the one that works best on each image one by one whilst deleting any pics that are not good enough, i then save and convert to jpeg then open in iphoto where i flick through and crop any i think will improve them, and any images that i think really stand out i may give another little tweek if they need it before sending to my website for the riders to view and buy..

i did think about just doing a mass sharpen/lighten/levels etc but this will i think just lead to many shots being too light or too dark etc as a 1000 odd pictures are not going to have the same levels straight out the camera..

other thing i thought is shoot Jpeg and play with the in-camera settings to try to have a usable image that might just need a sharpen and crop straight out of the camera...

so chaps i need help and advice on this, maybe some software that does a batch smart fix ?


thanks for looking
Harry
 
This will depend on how many you sell

Bin smugmug and get your own website
Shoot jpeg
Download files from card to pc and backup writing IPTC details at the same time
Flick through them binning OOF and unsellable shots
Resize and watermark and upload to website

This way you only edit images when they're sold
 
admirable said:
This will depend on how many you sell

Bin smugmug and get your own website
Shoot jpeg
Download files from card to pc and backup writing IPTC details at the same time
Flick through them binning OOF and unsellable shots
Resize and watermark and upload to website

This way you only edit images when they're sold
Click to expand...


yes dropping smugmug and only editing after sales has crossed my mind, its a pain smugmug doesn't have this option, i emailed them recently bring it up and was told its a common request yet they haven't sorted it yet other than a delay option on print sales :bang:

i will go down my own site route at some point and i already have the domain name registered but its early days for me in the sales department and smugmug works well for me other then the above, it could be the fact im only showing fully edited pictures that im getting the sales..

think i will shoot jpeg now though, i did yesterday and does save time in the editing and uploading..
 
Last edited:
do a rough crop and straighten in LR, deleting OOF along the way. get med/low res jpg out onto your site for viewing (maybe use photocart).

disagree about shooting jpg though. been doing equestrian events with 1000's of images in RAW for years never saw any benefit to jpg as it all had to go into LR anyway.
 
It soundls like you need to try and get your exposures right in camera (or as near as possible) when your shooting in one location at the same position they should be more or less the same exposure, are they varying a lot? what mode are you shooting in?
 
Hi

i shoot mostly full manual, i do move around a lot as shooting MX is pretty unpredictable at times and the different colours of the riders kit from dayglo orange to drab camo does effect things and one second im shooting down in to the mud and the next straight up in the air but im not far out exposure wise straight from the camera. im prob to critical of the end result to be honest as most riders wouldnt notice much difference i guess..
 
Shoot jpeg for mass shooting. Always ;)

When I used to do this I had a couple of presets on the camera that would give me nice pictures (basically, up the sat a bit and sharpness quite a bit, also a custom contrast curve).

For large volumes of pictures fast very little can beat Photomechanic plus some smart use of LR.

Use PM to cull images BEFORE you load into LR (that avoids building previews for delete). If you like you can also use the colour flags to decide which of your presets you want to use (red for preset 1 etc). Then in LR filter by colour tag, select all and hit preset button. Tidy up.

It's perfectly possible to cull and polish 1,000 images in an hour.....
 
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