Another gorgeous shot of Miss Presley!!

I think its time to share some information that I get asked about quite frequently.

Do you edit the pictures you take? If so how long does it take to edit, and what do you do?

These are the types of questions that I get asked all the time. How it works is this; All the images that I take I spend a good amount of time “Editing” them. Well this can intale many things.  I’ve really been trying to speed up the process and find ways to get your images to you quicker, so I’ve found the most efficient way is to only select a handful of my favorites, and do all my really cool editing to them, and the rest are delivered as “proofs” with just basic editing done to them.  Then if/when you make an order or ANY kind, so wether its prints, albums, cards or anything, I always ALWAYS retouch those images, at no additional fee. Now I am not talking retouching like Making someone appear skinnier, removing huge pieces out of the image. These are just minor retouches such as smoothing acne, removing stray hairs, whitening teeth, sharpening eyes. It just would take me WAY longer then you want to wait, and would cost you more then you’d want to pay if I spent that quality time on every image! Think along the lines of I shoot about 200-300 per session of say seniors, families, kids.. Weddings, think 1000-2000.. Thats alot of time!! So thats why I focus that time only on the images that A) I show you as a preview, those are the best of the best and B) that you are going to print or get in an album or card.

So what I’m going to show you is four different images. One is called Straight out of the Camera or (SOOC) in photographer acronym. This is what I take in the camera at the time of exposure.

Not too bad, still has beautiful lighting, and it just looks a little drab, well yes it does, reason is since I shoot “Raw” although when I show you the image on the back of the camera and it looks all awesome and fully saturated, when I bring it to my computer and import it into Adobe Lightroom, it strips away all the adjustments that you made in camera so you can have full creative functionality to see it in full screen and apply the editing it needs. So thats why I have to give it some “OOmph” you might say and add some contrast, boost saturation, etc.. Well those type of edits come with EVERY photoshoot, I NEVER send an image out to a client SOOC, I just can’t, I know some photographers do, but I don’t like to do that. I spend a little extra time to do “Basic Editing” to make sure you have a nice image. The image below is after some minor exposure adjustments in lightroom, these are super fast. See the image below, then compare the two.

SOOC Basic Editing

Next you’ll see the difference between the “Basic Editing and Retouching” This is the type of retouching I do when the image is either bought for print or album. Or I do charge $100-$150 for hourly retouching, this will be anywhere from removing of eyes, switching heads, removing people in backgrounds, slimming, retouching body parts etc. Inquire if you would like this type of editing and I can get you a quote. This retouching below like I said before is minimal, stray hair removal, eye retouching, some acne retouching.

So the final image that I would use for printing would look like the following:

I hope I didnt confuse you guys like crazy! Just a little thing I wanted to discuss and thank you Presley for being my model! 🙂