[Mach]

What are the chances that a 'perfectionist' is going to be satisfied with the results of someone else editing their photos? The 'perfect' version of your photo, as you see it in your mind, is quite likely very different from another person's version of perfection. And different still from Adobe's algorithms designed to deliver their automated versions of perfection.

If you are a perfectionist, digital darkroom is your friend, and it should be you at the controls.

Some people who hate Lightroom spend a lot of time learning how to tweak their camera settings to get their vision of perfection straight out of the camera. And that is doable; a valid approach. But for me, I'd rather not spend my shooting time trying to dial in the perfect color balance while judging the result on my camera's tiny screen. I can do a better job of it on my computer screen at home.

For the average photo, I probably spend 2 or 3 minutes fine tuning it in Lightroom, including the time it takes to write captions and assign keywords.

By the way, if you go the SmugMug route, there is an excellent SmugMug plugin for Lightroom that makes it easy to create, upload and manage your SmugMug albums from within Lightroom. If I upload a photo to my SmugMug website, then later decide I need to edit it in Lightroom, with two clicks I can re-publish the image so the edits show up online.

As you probably know, it's not trivial figuring out how all this stuff works, expecially if you are stressed for time. I really struggled for months learning how to use Lightroom, setting up my SmugMug site, etc. But if you put in your time, it gets easier.

Do have a link to tour smugmug?

I'll look into the plug in.

[dsmithhfx]

I really enjoy PP, and consider it integral to photography, much as darkroom developing and printing used to be -- and still is for some (I personally find digital PP gives way more control and flexibility). I shoot film, and scan it to 48bit (color) / 16bit (b+w), adjusting each frame in the scanner for ballpark output. Then I bring it into photoshop and run some actions that set up the image with a high-pass overlay (for sharpening), and non-destructive channel mixer (for color), exposure, and curve adjustment layers; tweak settings as needed, then run a second set of actions that flatten and down sample to 8bit color for both color and b+w shots. Then I usually bring it into GIMP and do some more PP stuff to further tweak contrast, color and saturation with layers, using layer masks to control shadow & highlight clipping. Some images come out of the scanner only needing ~10-minutes PP, others I might spend an hour on or (rarely) more. This is not at all frustrating to me, because I am 'discovering' what I originally saw when I made the capture, how best to communicate that idea. I especially like applying this process to shots that have me scratching my head: WTF did I take that?

[jeallen01]

@Mach
One thing you don't appear to have told is which camera body (bodies) you use as some "consumer" ones have "scene" modes, whereas the "more advanced" ones typically don't - that might help us to suggest how to get the best out of what you have with the least PP.

In that context, some bodies seem to take very striking shots with little adjustment and without using scene modes - that's certainly true of the my K-30, and would also seem to include the K-50 now that the K-30 is running the hacked K-50 firmware.

BTW: there's a newish member of our local U3A Digital Photo Group who produces some absolutely cracking wildlife and landscape shots using a Canon DSLR ( ) - after our "promo" table at the main local mtg on Monday, we were talking about camera techniques and how to approach action shots, and then it turned out that he has never taken the Canon out of Programme mode!!!!!!
PS: I think he uses the free "FastStone ImageViewer" s/w for any PP that he does - as do I for a quite a lot of basic adjustments as they are VERY simple and quick to do (only basic thing it can't do is perspective correction - converging verticals, etc.).

[Mach]

I have a K1

I use to travel lots so I started taking pictures. Over the years I got more involved with photography and paying attention to framing my shot to tell a story. A mystery is the greatest story. Cities and landscape are what I enjoy. I love backpacking and the K1 is a boat anchor but I still take it. I have a carbon fiber manfrato tripod that is excellent.

With photography I started seeing things different. Instead of a building I started seeing lines. A smashed window started to be a story. Hawaii mountains where my escape. However PP is my hell. Maybe its because my career involves computer work for 10 hours a days. At this moment in time I don't want to sell photos or anything like that BUT it could be the side hustle I'm looking for?

Thanks for everyone's input.

[BigMackCam]

I have a K1

I use to travel lots so I started taking pictures. Over the years I got more involved with photography and paying attention to framing my shot to tell a story. A mystery is the greatest story. Cities and landscape are what I enjoy. I love backpacking and the K1 is a boat anchor but I still take it. I have a carbon fiber manfrato tripod that is excellent.

With photography I started seeing things different. Instead of a building I started seeing lines. A smashed window started to be a story. Hawaii mountains where my escape. However PP is my hell. Maybe its because my career involves computer work for 10 hours a days. At this moment in time I don't want to sell photos or anything like that BUT it could be the side hustle I'm looking for?

Thanks for everyone's input.

You have a really wonderful camera (I'm sure that fact hasn't escaped you ), and it sounds like you have creative flair.

I completely understand the lack of desire for post-processing, but without it you're simply not getting the best from that K-1 and - given your creativity - anyone else doing your post-processing would take away from the purity and personality in your photography, IMHO.

Although I no longer have Lightroom (I switched to Linux as my operating system), I used it for quite some time. I used to spend ridiculous amounts of time with my post-processing, until some of the good folks here guided me towards creating and using my own presets. As a result, in my last year with Lightroom I doubt I spent more than a minute or two tweaking each of my photos, and most needed no tweaking at all... I simply imported them and applied my own presets.

A preset could be as simple as applying camera profile, automatic lens corrections, a hint of contrast and clarity (+10 on each, or thereabouts), default colour noise reduction (+25 if I remember correctly), and a little sharpening if you like that. You could name that preset as "Mach Basic" and apply it to every raw photo you import, and I reckon most of your photos would be in a fit state to export right away. You might need to tweak exposure, but only if you get it wrong in-camera; and if you were shooting JPEG, the same would apply. Or, you could include auto-exposure in your preset if you wish. Of course, you can make your presets far more involved, and I had several I'd created for different purposes, cameras, etc. But that's not essential... just a choice. You can keep it really simple.

So, you really don't have to get into all the bells and whistles of Lightroom if you don't want to. Having setup a basic preset just once, that really might be all you need to apply most of the time. There are folks here who would happily assist you in doing that, I'm sure (I would have done so in the past, but as I said, I no longer use Lightroom)...

[runswithsizzers]

Do have a link to tour smugmug?

I'll look into the plug in.

SmugMug's home page <smugmug.com>

Unfortunately, like so many webpages these days, they have tried too hard to make their home page stylish, and not hard enough to make it informative.

You will need to pick a plan - the features of each plan here: <What Comes With SmugMug? View Our Features Here.>

I chose the "Power" plan because it offers a few more options for customization, but there are quite a few options "Basic" users can choose, too.

You can look at my SmugMug page <here> but I am hardly suggesting mine is a show case for what can be done with the tools SmugMug provides. Mine is pretty basic; probably too crowded and unfashionably outdated.

Oh yeah, I believe the link to download the Lightroom plug-in can be found <here>

[R. Wethereyet]

Hi Mach,
Just a couple of questions and a suggestion or two
Q: How many photos are we talking? 20 or 2000 :-)

Suggestion If you want a quick and easy adjustment software try the free Fotor out (https://www.fotor.com) The Auto function is amazingly useful (even for someone who hates "auto").
Suggestion: Take a look at www.dropbox.com. I see you shoot with a K-1 but if you do the post processing then save the images in a reasonably reduced JPEG file, you should be able to keep within the volume limits of the free version of DropBox. You can then specify who has access to which folders and they get an email with a link to the images and can download at their convenience.


Cheers,
Dave

[Mach]

Hi Mach,
Just a couple of questions and a suggestion or two
Q: How many photos are we talking? 20 or 2000 :-)

Suggestion If you want a quick and easy adjustment software try the free Fotor out (https://www.fotor.com) The Auto function is amazingly useful (even for someone who hates "auto").
Suggestion: Take a look at www.dropbox.com. I see you shoot with a K-1 but if you do the post processing then save the images in a reasonably reduced JPEG file, you should be able to keep within the volume limits of the free version of DropBox. You can then specify who has access to which folders and they get an email with a link to the images and can download at their convenience.


Cheers,
Dave

I was looking at 10 to get the ball rolling. I wanted to hire someone so I can "get started".
I did create a smug mug and I put 11 photos i edited months ago. The plan is for family to have access to them but to slowly gain focus and momentum to sell.
I have lots going on.

[R. Wethereyet]

The plan is for family to have access to them but to slowly gain focus and momentum to sell.I have lots going on.

Mach, Thanks for your response. It is good to get the "Big Picture" as that allows us to provide more specific suggestions for you. :-)

If you are planning to slowly expand your "client base", then SmugMug is a good platform to start with. There are a variety of sites that would provide similar services (Zenfolio, Squarespace, PhotoShelter, ...) and overtime you can do some due diligence on which would work best for you.


I can relate to working on a computer all day and not being thrilled to sit down at night and work on the computer some more to "develop" your digital images. The end result can be very satisfying but the process ... not so much. That being said, there are some excellent resources online that you might find helpful to reduce the pain of prost-processing. For example, John Greengo has a YouTube video on using a rule of thumb that he calls, "One third of too far". In Lightroom, move your sliders until you the image on the screen makes you feel uncomfortable & then set the slide value to 1/3 of where you felt that you had gone too far. - great tip. Also, B&H Event Space YouTube channel has a great variety of videos on getting the most out of Lightroom. Most are about 1-2 hrs long so there is a time commitment but no cost. I usually speed the videos up to 1.25 or 1.5 speed to shorten the time while still keeping the speaker understandable.

Good Luck!

Dave

[micromacro]

Thanks, I have a few presets but I'm really not into post processing. I never printed any of my photos.

I haven't thought of a budget. I wasn't sure if freelancers might be a choice and where to find them. I was going to reach out. These are not fine art but something someone could print from walmart or another place.
I know this seems simple for some but it seems cumbersome to me. I'd like to find someone with a better eye than me.

You already have good camera and LR. You can do lots of decent editing even in LR itself, just invest a bit efforts into it. What I don't like about LR is their healing and cloning, I do that in PhElements. "Cleaning up" faces is photoshop job as well, I use frequency separation technique. As for printing, you don't have to own printer. When costco had a lab, I could not upload their printer profile, so I adapted to print small 4x6 samples and then I figured out how to adjust pictures for their printer.
Also, check labs around your area, they will adjust images for you before printing.
Hope it helps.

[micromacro]

In case you've not seen this!

This is Why You Don't Hire a $0.25 Photo Retoucher

[Mach]

In case you've not seen this!

This is Why You Don't Hire a $0.25 Photo Retoucher

I thought the Goth look was in?

Thanks. I was looking to do 10-20 photos. Figure it out from there. I have no idea what a rate would be.
I'm also looking for critiquing my photos so there won't be much editing here on.

[manishved]

I do know someone in India that has the resources to manuall touch-up/edit large numbers of images - perfect for processing thousands of vacation/event/wedding pics

[dcpropilot]

I use retouchup.com