first photoshoot now what?

Foxtrot_01

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hello,
I know its a stupid question or questions and I have tried to find the answer everywhere and I have come across so many possibilities that I am overwhelmed so this is my question to the experts.
I just did my first photoshoot on monday, gorgeous girl, her first shoot as well as mine, we did indoor with two off camera 285Hv, one of them was not working all the time, we took around 1500 pics, of course not all of them are good enough so that is why I took so many.
Now I have to browse through and pick the best ones, I shot in RAW with a copy in JPEG(dont know if its normal when I look at both pics, the RAW is on focus and the JPEG is out of focus, same pic, is this normal?)

I am using DPP(Digital photo professional) that came with my Canon 40D.
I have photoshop too(I think I have the one before CS2 on my computer, I have CS4 but my hardware needs an update.)

Bottom line, I have a whole bunch a pictures in Raw and I dont know what to do next, there are some pics that I have to smooth the skin(cover some little imperfections), I noticed some wrinkles on my backdrop(dont know how to clean this to get a nice background).

any ideas where to start? any links?
can I work with the raw pics in photoshop or do I need DPP for anything at all.
 
hello,
I know its a stupid question or questions and I have tried to find the answer everywhere and I have come across so many possibilities that I am overwhelmed so this is my question to the experts.
I just did my first photoshoot on monday, gorgeous girl, her first shoot as well as mine, we did indoor with two off camera 285Hv, one of them was not working all the time, we took around 1500 pics, of course not all of them are good enough so that is why I took so many.
Now I have to browse through and pick the best ones, I shot in RAW with a copy in JPEG(dont know if its normal when I look at both pics, the RAW is on focus and the JPEG is out of focus, same pic, is this normal?)

I am using DPP(Digital photo professional) that came with my Canon 40D.
I have photoshop too(I think I have the one before CS2 on my computer, I have CS4 but my hardware needs an update.)

Bottom line, I have a whole bunch a pictures in Raw and I dont know what to do next, there are some pics that I have to smooth the skin(cover some little imperfections), I noticed some wrinkles on my backdrop(dont know how to clean this to get a nice background).

any ideas where to start? any links?
can I work with the raw pics in photoshop or do I need DPP for anything at all.

editing so many photos on just photoshop csX will be quite hard AFAIK.
Choose the best ones with DPP and open the RAWs in photoshop.

As a great must have and a recommendation is to get Photoshop Lightroom.
It's very easy to view, choose and edit a lot of pictures with that program.

Maybe don't even hesitate and get the trial version.

Looking forward to see the shots!
 
Go through, trash the bad ones.
Go through again, select the best 10
Edit those
Go back and look if there are any more.
 
1500!?

Bloody hell. I've done weddings with only around 300.

I suggest you spend more time working on the compostion of your shots that way you will save a lot of time and you will become a better photographer.
 
I know it sounds like a whole lot, we were shooting for several hours and she had like 7 or 8 different outfits that she wanted to try.
I will try lightroom and possibly upgrade my computer to install CS4.
thanks for all the advice, like I said this is my first photoshoot ever and she was quite a trooper.
any links on tutorials for photoshop will be great! thanks to everyone for your help.
 
You need to figure out your workflow.

A usual first step is to back up the files, although you may want to delete the obvious duds first, to save space. Then you may want to go through and rate/tag/cull them. Some people keep all or most of the images. Some will rate and sort them etc.
What I do, is go through and cull (delete) the duds right away. Then I go through and find the best ones and flag them. Depending on the program, there are different ways to flag, tag or rate the images. Flag, color, 1 to 5 stars etc. I think it's too much if you try to rate each shot, and really, if you are rating on a five start system, are you really going to use shots that are good enough to be 3 or 4 stars, but not quite fives? So I just give the best ones a flag. The idea being that you don't want to waste time processing images that you won't use or need. The more critical you are in this stage, the less work you will have later.

I usually make several passes though the images, maybe spread out over a couple days. This gives me a chance to look though the images with a clear head.

Then it might be a good time to do some 'batch' processing. For example, if you have a group of shots that were taken under similar lighting conditions, you can set the White Balance for all of them. I'm not sure how easy this is with DPP, but with Lightroom it's a breeze.

You will typically make the RAW adjustments at this stage, because really, RAW files aren't images yet, they are just camera files. So things like brightness (exposure), contrast, WB, saturation, etc. Then you 'output/convert' the RAW images into an actual image format. You might choose TIFF, or JPEG or PSD etc. These are the files you can then open in Photoshop for further editing.

Once you have your 'cooked' images, you can open them in Photoshop and do whatever you want....skin smoothing etc.

If you plan on doing a lot of editing, you may want to save these 'working copies' of the photos in a format like TIFF or PSD. Firstly because they are lossless formats but also because you can save the Photoshop layers in them. That way, you can come back at any time and continue to fully edit them. The problem is that these files types make for large files, especially if you save the layers. If you save them in JPEG format, they will loose some info/quality every time you re-save & open them...so maybe not the best choice for 'working' files.

Once you have that done, you can save-as to get your finished files. You should optimize the file size & resolution for your use. For example, you should have the same files for web viewing as you have for printing.
So by the end, you may end up with several copies of the images, each for it's own use. (you can avoid much of this with software like Lightroom).

The point is that you will need a 'workflow'...and you have to find what works best for you. It's usually something that you need to work on, and most people will constantly be trying to improve & streamline.

HERE is an article about a photoshop workflow as an example.
 
1500!?

Bloody hell. I've done weddings with only around 300.

I suggest you spend more time working on the compostion of your shots that way you will save a lot of time and you will become a better photographer.

You do weddings with 300? I'm assuming you aren't doing this as a full time pro...or the weddings lasted a few hours.

I can see formals and such being a few hundred, but when you get into the candids at the ceremony and reception, 300 is really really low.
 

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