The hardest part is deciding to begin. After that you just make it happen.
https://www.seo-bookmarks.win/14-businesses-doing-a-great-job-at-wedding-photography-wichita-falls
When doing a wedding, you may not get your settings right every time. Luckily, technology these days makes it very easy to correct things afterwards.
The most important thing when editing your photos is consistency. Clients will choose you based on your portfolio and they will expect similar results from you when you photograph their wedding.
If you have a specific style then you want to try and stick to it. Your style may evolve slowly over time but you need to be as consistent as possible.
If you have ever followed a good photographer online you can probably tell a photo is theirs just by looking at it; they have a certain way of editing that lets you know it is them. This is what you will achieve if you follow the advice in this lesson.
Screen calibration
The first thing you need to do is make sure that your computer or monitor screen is calibrated properly. If it isn’t you may find that the way you are editing is not accurate when you see your work on different screens or prints later on.
Search online (‘how to calibrate your screen’) for simple and quick instructions for your specific operating system (e.g. Windows, Apple, etc).
How to edit consistently
Let’s say you are wanting to edit the couple photoshoot from a wedding. If you already have a portfolio, it is likely that you have a few favourite photos; ones where the colours are just right and that you think typifies the style that you are aiming for. If you don’t yet have any photos that you love, search online until you find one that has the kind of style that you have in mind. Whether it is one of your photos or one you have seen online, you are now going to use this photo as a reference while you edit.
This is how you will edit from now on and this is how you will maintain a good level of consistency.
Organising your workflow
Before you start importing and editing it is important to organise your work. If you don’t, you are going to make it very difficult to find things later. In years to come, after you have done hundreds of weddings, you will from time to time want to go back and find a certain photo that you took. It will be so much easier to find if you have always arranged things well from the beginning.
Organising your folders:
● Create a folder on your external hard drive and give it the name of the year.
● In that folder, create another folder called ‘Weddings’.
● If you do engagement photoshoots you can have a folder for that too.
● In the Weddings folder, call the first wedding ‘a101 - Clients names’. And the second wedding ‘a102 - Clients names’. And then ‘a103 - Clients’. And so on.
The reason to use ‘a101’ is so that ‘a’ will be the first year. In the second year of your business you could start by calling them b101, b102, etc. This will make it easier if you’re searching for folders later. The reason to use 101
instead of just 1 is because if you are viewing folders, and they are sorted by
name, if you call it just 1 then when you get to 10, 11, 12, the computer may put them ahead of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. So by using 101 it should keep them in order,because it is unlikely you will do more than 100 weddings in a year. If you think you will then you could call them 1001 and so on.
● Inside each couple’s folder, have 3 folders: Lightroom, Large and Small.
● The Large folder will be for edited photos that will be saved at the full size.
● The Small folder will be for edited photos saved smaller for online use.
● The Lightroom folder is where you will store all the original photo files from the wedding (unedited). This is the folder that Lightroom will import from. In the Lightroom folder create new folders for each part of the wedding (1. Getting Ready, 2. Ceremony, 3. Family, 4. Couple, 5. Reception). The reason the folders are numbered is so that if they are sorted by name they will stay in the correct order. You can name your folders anything but the important thing is that all the main parts of the day are now divided up.
● At the beginning of each year, you can create a new folder.
You don’t want to have to create all these folders every time you are about to edit.
To save time, create it once and then copy and paste it and save it somewhere on your computer. This will now be your template folder for organising your wedding photos. That way, when it comes time to edit your next wedding you can just copy and paste the template folder into your external hard drive and rename it.
If you don’t know how to copy and paste or rename folders just do a quick search online to learn how to do it on your specific operating system (e.g. Windows, Apple, etc).
● It is recommend that you also creating a portfolio folder. Within that folder create folders for each part of a wedding (e.g. Getting ready, ceremony, etc).
Every time you finish editing a wedding copy and paste your favourite photos into these folders. This will make is so easy for you when you want to update
your website’s portfolio page or print a book with all your best photos. You can just refer to this folder to find all your favourite photos instead of having to browse through every single wedding each time.
Now you must divide all the photos from the wedding and place them into their respective folders in preparation for importing to Lightroom. For example, put all the getting-ready photos into the Getting Ready folder that you created.
Here’s a quick summary of how to organise your photos:
● When you arrive home from photographing a wedding, copy and paste the template folder onto your desktop. Rename the folder.
● Divide all the photos up by placing them into their respective folders.
● Copy & paste this wedding onto two different devices such as external hard drives. These will be your backups. Store them in different locations (E.g one in the house and one in the car).
● The folder on your desktop will remain there until you have finished editing.
● When you finish editing and exporting to the folder on the desktop, you will then update the backup folders on the external hard drives so that they also include the edited versions. But, that will be explained more later on.
● Only after you have backed up the wedding onto the external hard drives can you then remove the wedding from your computer.
● Whenever you close Lightroom it will give you an option to ‘Back Up Catalog’.
What this means is that you can do a backup of all of the editing that you do in Lightroom. If you ever switch to using a different computer then you can import this backup file and all of the editing that you have done will be saved there. So, to do this, all you have to do is ‘Choose’ a location where you want
the backup file to be saved. You should save the backup file onto your external hard drives. The backup option will look like this…
Importing into Lightroom
● Open/start up Lightroom.
● Select ‘File’ from the top left menu and then ‘Import Photos and Video’.
● Navigate to the folder you saved on your desktop.
● Click on the folder and then select the ‘Include Subfolders’ button. This will import all the photos and still keep them organised in their respective folders.
● Select the ‘Check All’ button to import all the photos into Lightroom.
● Select the ‘Import’ button and then wait for Lightroom to import.
● The imported photos will now display in the main window.
● In the left side panel you will see the folders.
● You can select the folder you want to begin with and then only the photos in that folder will appear in the main window.
● You are currently in the ‘Library’ section.
● Select ‘Develop’ to switch to the editing section.
Now, the reference photo that you chose; your favourite photo or one you found online, you are going to refer to that photo as you edit so that you can match/edit your photos to be similar to that one.
The great thing about using Lightroom, or any photo-editing software, is that even if the reference photo was taken using a different camera to yours you will be able to make adjustments to get the edit to look similar.
Editing using a reference photo
The following is an example of how to go about editing a photo using a reference photo. You will not have the same photos to edit as the ones used in this example, however, you can follow the exact same process in order to edit your photos.
Editing is a formula; you will be using the same tools each time to produce the desired results. So, let’s edit the first photo....
Here’s the reference photo…
Here’s the photo about to be edited…
You can see why the reference photo was chosen; both of the photos were taken at sunset and in similar surroundings.
● Now, you want to be able to see the reference photo and the photo your are editing in Lightroom on your screen at the same time. Adjust the sizes of the photo’s window and the Lightroom window so that you can see both on the screen at the same time. To do this, click here...
and then adjust the sides of the Lightroom window to resize it…
and do the same to resize the window that your reference photo is in.
Your screen should look something like this...
Now it is easy to make adjustments while seeing the reference photo.
● The first thing to do is adjust the ‘Exposure’. You can clearly see that the unedited photo is darker, so we push up/increase the exposure...
...and already it looks better; similar exposure in both photos.
If you aren’t editing using a reference photo, there is a really easy way to know how bright you should make your photo: push the exposure up until you think it is too bright, and then just bring it back a little bit.
● The next thing to do is adjust the contrast; increasing it makes the blacks blacker and the whites whiter, or less so if you reduce it. You can see in the reference photos that the blacks are darker, so we increase the contrast...
Here’s what we have so far…
The main difference now is that the edges of the reference photo are darker. The reason for this is because some lenses produce what is called vignetting, which basically produces a darkness around the edges of the photo. It is quite a desired effect because it brings the viewers’ attention to what is in the centre of the image.
Luckily, it is something that can be added using Lightroom, so it’s easily replicated.
● Scroll down and open the ‘Effects’ tab to adjust the amount of vignetting.
And, we move it back/decrease it to make it darker...
It was done very subtly here but it makes a difference.
The next thing you may notice is that the skin of the people in the reference photo is a little brighter.
● Scroll back up and under the ‘Basic’ tab you will find the ‘Shadows’. This does what the name suggests; it darkens or lightens the shadow areas. Increasing it here to +10 lightens the skin a little bit more...
Pushing the shadows up will likely make all of your photo seem brighter. If you think it has made the photo too bright you can just bring the ‘Exposure’ down a bit.
The next thing you may notice is that the reference photo seems a bit warmer, the colours are a little bit more golden.
If you think that your colours aren’t matching, but you aren’t sure how to fix it, there’s a really easy way to get it right.
● To alter the colours of your photo, play around and adjust the ‘Temp’ and the
‘Tint’ levels under the ‘Basic’ tab…
Here’s what we’ve got so far…
The vignetting could be a little bit darker, if you wanted it to be. Remember, it doesn’t have to match exactly, and you may not want it to. It just has to be similar.
Here’s the before and after…
You can see what a big difference a little bit of editing makes.
You will have noticed lots of other settings you can adjust. The best thing to do is play around with them to see what difference they make and whether you feel they are necessary. But, what you have seen here is really enough to get the job done.
Here are a few other useful tools/settings…
● If you are not happy with the framing of the photo you took, you can adjust the crop…
● If you think the photo isn’t sharp enough you can adjust the ‘Sharpness’
under the ‘Detail’ tab...
● If you only want to adjust certain areas of the photo, you can use the ‘Brush Tool’ and select ‘Sharpness’ from the dropdown menu. You will then be able to brush over the areas that you want to be sharper...
● If you want to make the all the colours richer or make the photo black and white you can adjust the ‘Saturation’ under the ‘Basic’ tab...
Using a reference photo is how you achieve consistency throughout your portfolio.
They don’t have to match exactly, the main thing is that the colours and exposure should not be dramatically different.
● You may want to apply these settings to the next photo you are editing, select ‘Copy’...
If you want the next photo to have the same brush effects that you added and/or the same cropping adjustment that you made then make sure to select them on the copy settings. If you don’t, make sure not to select them.
● When you are happy with the copy settings select ‘Copy’.
● Go to your next photo and select ‘Paste’...
The copy settings might not be perfectly suited to your next photo but it may provide a good starting point for you to then make adjustments from.
If you want to save these settings to use later, you can create a new preset. Select the ‘+’ icon in the left side panel next to ‘Presets’.
Then give the preset a name and select elements you want to be saved.
Select ‘Create’ and your new preset will be saved. And, you can now access it in the
‘Presets’ panel on the left side.
When you have finished editing the photos in this folder and you want to edit the other photo folders from the wedding, you can click back to the ‘Library’ to select the next folder of photos. And, then select ‘Develop’ to edit them.
Exporting and resizing for printing and online use Once you have finished editing your photos you are going to want to export them in two different sizes: one full/original size and one smaller for using online. The reason you would want to resize them for the internet is because when you upload an original full-size photo onto Facebook, did you know that Facebook resizes the photo automatically? And, when you allow Facebook to resize they seem to do it in a way that reduces the quality and the photos often don’t look as good.
● If you want to export one photo at a time, click on the photo you want to export. If you want to export all your photos, go to ‘Edit’ in the top menu and select ‘Select All’.
● To export your photos, go to ‘File’ in the top menu and then select ‘Export…’.
To begin with, you will be saving the photos in their original size:
● Choose a location for your photos; the ‘Large’ folder that you created in the wedding’s folder on your desktop.
● Give the file a name. If you are exporting a single photo you could name the photo something descriptive like ‘Bride and groom laughing’. But, if you are
exporting multiple photos then you won’t be able to describe them all at once so you may want something more general like stating their names, the wedding venue and your business name.
● Scroll down now to set the remaining settings.
● Under the ‘File Settings’ tab select ‘JPEG’ and make sure the quality is set to
‘100%’ to retain the original quality of the photo.
● Under ‘Image Sizing’ make sure the ‘Resize to Fit’ box is unchecked because you don’t want to be resizing right now. You can set the ‘Resolution’ to ‘300’
and just leave it at that all the time - it seems to be the required resolution for printing.
● This is all you need to do so you can click the ‘Export’ button.
● Lightroom will export and you can view the edited photo(s) in the folder that you chose to save them in.
Now you can export the same images again, but make them smaller this time.
Begin with doing the same thing as before:
● Choose a location for your photos; put it in the ‘Small’ folder that you created in the wedding’s folder on your desktop.
● Give the file a name. If you are exporting a single photo you could name the photo something descriptive like ‘Bride and groom laughing’. But, if you are exporting multiple photos then you won’t be able to describe them all at once so you may want something more general like stating their names, the wedding venue and your business name.
● Scroll down now to set the remaining setting.
● Under the ‘File Settings’ tab select ‘JPEG’ and make the quality is set to ‘75%’ -
this setting retains the quality while reducing the file size to make the images load quicker online. You can keep it at 100% if you want or experiment with different amounts if you are not happy with the end result.
● Under ‘Image Sizing’ make sure the ‘Resize to Fit’ box is checked this time because you want to resize now. In the dropdown box, select ‘Longest Edge’.
Enter 1920 into the box below and set the measurement dropdown box to
‘pixels’. Keep the ‘Resolution’ to ‘300’.
Setting your photo to 1920 pixels on the longest edge should make them good enough quality, and big enough to be used as full-screen images on your website.
You can try saving them at a larger size if you are not happy with the results.
● This is all you need to do so you can click the ‘Export’ button.
● Lightroom will export and you can view the edited photo(s) in the folder that you chose to save them in.
Backup and sharing
You have the folder on your desktop. In that folder there is the ‘Lightroom’ folder with the original unedited photos. You also have the ‘Large’ folder with the full-size edited photos inside. And the ‘Small’ folder with the ones to be used online.
Now you must update your hard drives to include the edited photos. You can simply replace the Large and Small folders on your hard drives with the new ones.
Don’t skip this step because if something happens to your computer and you lose the edits you will have to do all that work again if you haven’t backed them up.
When you give the photos to your clients, you can give them both the Large and Small folders so that they can use the large ones for printing and the small ones online. If they use any of the photos online always request that they mention your name and when possible give a link to either your website or social media pages.
This way people will know who the photographer is.
Lesson summary
Editing your photos to be consistent will provide you with a portfolio of photos that represent the style that you are aiming for with your photography business. It will help to inform prospective clients as to what the they can expect when they book you to be their wedding photographer.
Remember, as you are editing you should only ever make changes to the photos that actually improve them; don’t just make changes for the sake of it.
If you are unsure what change to make, play around with the tools/settings that were featured in this lesson; increase and decrease each setting so that you can see what impact it has on the photo. You will quickly see if it is improving it or not.
Always backup the photos that you edit onto at least two different devices and store them in different locations.
Congratulations! You have completed this book.