Having raised my actuation count by almost 500 from just a wedding ceremony alone, it requires a lot of time and effort to go through and process; like everything though if you have some sort of workflow the pace picks up and the work is considerably more consistent.
My initial attempt at processing the photos was to find photos I liked and process them individually, however whilst they looked fine alone none of them really fit in with each other; the white balance was completely different, the colours were punchy in some and muted in others and the overall mood of the photos were wildly varying.
Needless to say I soon realised I needed to process them all in the same manner...
So first things first, I needed to work out which were the photos to use, and which to bin. Shooting in burst (which in the digital day and age I completely condone) means you'll likely get 3 or 4 blurry photos, and 1 or 2 usably sharp photos, so I load up all the photos and remove the blurry ones, then I remove the inevitable awkward photos where someone has their eyes closed or isn't looking their best! Sooner or later you should end up with the best photo from each burst.
Next is to adjust the curves, these have to be done on a per-photo basis, however it's best to do all the photos one after another in order to keep things mostly consistent.
Next is the white balance; trying to keep skin tones and dress the same shade throughout all the photos is key here and again is likely to be a per-photo basis.
Next is the colour adjustments; do you want vivid colours or muted? Maybe you want to vary it a bit, I usually keep the colours relatively muted however let loose if the formals are taken with a very green background like in a park.
Finally the 'style' adjustments, these are the ones which I apply to all the photos and which define my 'style', these should be specific per photographer.
So with all that done the photos are pretty much ready for the bride and groom to view right? Well I do a little more work on all images, the finishing touches! If the images are overly noisey I'll drag them into Photoshop and run my Noiseware batch, and if they contain people I'll run them through Portraiture to smooth the skin out.
No doubt over time this will evolve as I'm sure there are better, faster and more accurate methods around but this is just how I'm working now.
My initial attempt at processing the photos was to find photos I liked and process them individually, however whilst they looked fine alone none of them really fit in with each other; the white balance was completely different, the colours were punchy in some and muted in others and the overall mood of the photos were wildly varying.
Needless to say I soon realised I needed to process them all in the same manner...
So first things first, I needed to work out which were the photos to use, and which to bin. Shooting in burst (which in the digital day and age I completely condone) means you'll likely get 3 or 4 blurry photos, and 1 or 2 usably sharp photos, so I load up all the photos and remove the blurry ones, then I remove the inevitable awkward photos where someone has their eyes closed or isn't looking their best! Sooner or later you should end up with the best photo from each burst.
Next is to adjust the curves, these have to be done on a per-photo basis, however it's best to do all the photos one after another in order to keep things mostly consistent.
Next is the white balance; trying to keep skin tones and dress the same shade throughout all the photos is key here and again is likely to be a per-photo basis.
Next is the colour adjustments; do you want vivid colours or muted? Maybe you want to vary it a bit, I usually keep the colours relatively muted however let loose if the formals are taken with a very green background like in a park.
Finally the 'style' adjustments, these are the ones which I apply to all the photos and which define my 'style', these should be specific per photographer.
So with all that done the photos are pretty much ready for the bride and groom to view right? Well I do a little more work on all images, the finishing touches! If the images are overly noisey I'll drag them into Photoshop and run my Noiseware batch, and if they contain people I'll run them through Portraiture to smooth the skin out.
No doubt over time this will evolve as I'm sure there are better, faster and more accurate methods around but this is just how I'm working now.
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