The Fine Art Of Self Editing

[Mike_E]

OK boys and girls, say some one has 200K images and is wondering what to do with them.

Say someone else like Anne Leibovitz says that their photography didn't really take off until they learned how to edit photos.

Let's all get together and do everybody a favor and learn/teach editing!!

Who's first, how do you do your's??

 

[Alex_B]

I have four groups of images:

1. Images too poor, too unimportant, to be shown to anyone. I usually do not even develop the RAW files of these. The really bad ones with bad technical flaws are deleted straight away.

2. Images I want to keep since they document something, a trip, an event, or maybe just serve as a reference for later comparison.

3. Images I consider worth something by their own. Which work as a stand-alone.

4. Images I consider 'art', which I would use for a portfolio, or for an exhibition if I ever had one.


The further I progress, the more rigorous I get, the more images I kick into category 1., Category 2 is not really about photography, but still I tend to show them to people, I posted a lot of my category 2 images here on the forum, it is by far my largest category. In category 3 there are much less images, and in 4 just very few.

If I was serious about photography, probably no one ever would see images from group 2, and only selected one from group 3 and all of 4.

 

[Bifurcator]

Let's all get together and do everybody a favor and learn/teach editing!!

Who's first, how do you do your's??

I think you're talking about several VERY thick books on tool usage and technique.

And after we have the editing chops we realize every photo is a special case - not to mention the infinite number of possibilities in each photo's potential range of "looks".

The "typically" applied basics are pretty obvious to me and I would hope to everyone who reads here on even a semi-regular basis:

• Noise removal when needed,
• Sharpening when needed,
• Color Correction when needed,
• Tone remapping when needed,

And then any of those or their opposites, used for a desired look.

If someone really has 200K images Alex's #1 really needs to be considered and executed!

 

[Alex_B]

I think editing in this thread refers not to manipulation of the image itself, or processing, but to the selecting of images, which ones you use/show, and which ones you discard, since with 200K images this is the most important task.

 

[Bifurcator]

Oh... sorting... That would make more sense. There's allot of good info in this thread:

http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=129347

Most of the entries include the sort process.

 

[Mike_E]

Yes, Alex B has it right.

Also how to quickly recognize a good photo and the garbage and the ones that with the right crop/process will stand up by itself and speak but are sometimes hidden.

 

[Alex_B]

Also how to quickly recognize a good photo and the garbage and the ones that with the right crop/process will stand up by itself and speak but are sometimes hidden.

That can be a problem. I mean the real garbage, that is easily identified. But then there are often images in category 2 or 3, which really belong into 4, just I do not see the way to crop it, to process it to make it happen.

Also the other way round happens, in particular when I am too biased towards a shot, when I see my intention just because it was my intention, but it is not really in the image. Then I might think an image is really outstanding, but it is not.

To minimise those problems, IMHO it is best to re-edit categories 3 and 4, maybe also 2 after some time ... long enough time so the images are somewhat new to you again. At least your mind and ego should be detached from the moment of creating the image then, to get rid of that bias. It is sometimes amazing how different and clearer you see things then.

My best editing I do one year after I created the images!!

 

[Bifurcator]

I agree... One man's art is another man's trash - and visa-versa.

Plus what we know how to do with an image editor potentially changes every image's usefulness.

 

[Alex_B]

Plus what we know how to do with an image editor potentially changes every image's usefulness.

Translates as ... you can ruin even the best image

 

[Bifurcator]

LOL!!!

 

[Joves]

Hell I have only like 10K in images and, really need to sort before I think about anything else. I need to take a day a classify them into subfolders. Then I will worry about PP later.

 

[Mike_E]

Has it occurred to anybody that we may be doing ourselves a disservice in viewing our photos on a monitor one at a time?

In the not so old days you printed to a contact sheet and were able to look at several at a time. Could it be that by viewing them in comparison to each other the winners and losers could be better judged?

Taking a year to choose is well and good for your personal work but what about a collection for someone else. Either commercial work or a group of portraits for instance. What about the wedding photographer, how they choose from among the hundreds or even thousands of shots they take?

 

[craig]

Excellent thread. I should mention that I use Lightroom to edit my photos. The options for flagging photos is 1-5 stars and then color codes. I love the film strip view and compare mode.

If I am shooting a model my technique varies according to the success of the shoot. Meaning if the subject and I really clicked (which happens about 8 times out of 10 I'm proud to say) then I will go with a 2-5 star system. 5 being the strongest of course. I choose that method because they change the "look" every frame and it is generally under studio light, so most the shots are "good". If the shoot only went ok I go with a 4-5 star deal. That is because the subject stands their for 2 or 3 frames and does not switch it up until I tell them to wake up. Once the subject has chosen their faves they get a green rating.

My commercial work either gets a 5 star or a green. That is because the client and I generally shoot 3 exposures of each shot chosen. Client gets 2 exposures for arguments sake.

My personal work varies, but only gets a green. Usually I do not bracket to save time and energy. This where the filmstrip view comes in really handy.

Alex B: I'm glad you chimed in with the coming back to it theory. I have only recently started to practice it. Finding it effective in my personal work.

P.S We need to start posting contact sheets for some honest critiques! That way we can see the photographers thought process!

Love & Bass

 

[Alex_B]

Has it occurred to anybody that we may be doing ourselves a disservice in viewing our photos on a monitor one at a time?

In the not so old days you printed to a contact sheet and were able to look at several at a time. Could it be that by viewing them in comparison to each other the winners and losers could be better judged?

Of course it is easier if they were all printed, but I do compare several images at a time on my screen, my screen is large enough to do that.

Taking a year to choose is well and good for your personal work but what about a collection for someone else. Either commercial work or a group of portraits for instance. What about the wedding photographer, how they choose from among the hundreds or even thousands of shots they take?

I was talking about identifying art in your own images, not so much about commercial work. Depending on the commercial work you need to identify everything which is at least in category 3. This is much easier than identifying all of those very special category 4 images.

In other words, for for a wedding it is not so much about finding all outstanding images that would make it to a magazine or into your portfolio or into an exhibition, but it is about identifying the 20% best images which the client would like.

The group of portraits is a bit harder and will take more time, even if it is less images than you shot on the wedding. But still it is easier since you need to identify the best of the set, or the best of each face you shot. You do not need to select those super-special shots of which there might be none or quite a few. All this commercial is about sorting/ranking images against each other, whereas what I talk about is more about deciding about images individually if they are special.

If an image is special, it is special no matter what the other images you shot on the same day look like. There might be days without any special image. Still those days have some top ranking images of that day.

The ranking I do by giving stars in my raw converter. First screening I give one star, then comes the second screening where I only look at the one star images and give some of them a second star, then I do the same again with the third star. Since the group I have to screen gets smaller each time, this is quite fast.

 

[mrodgers]

Lightroom is great for sorting through images. It also has flags (white and black) as well as the stars and colors.

Very first thing I do is download them from the camera to a folder called "Sort". I look at them briefly with a thumbnail viewer to add to their file names a description. I add the date, a name description, and keep the filename given by the camera on the end. Something like this... 2008.09.30_BAMS_FunFly_2008_DSCF1257.jpg. A batch file renamer is useful for this, which many thumbnail viewers have.

Next, I have a 2nd folder called "Photos". Within this folder, I have categories such as Landscapes, Automobile, Animals, Floral, Family, etc. I move the images from my "Sort" folder to the appropriate folder in "Photos". This is their final resting place for the original photos. From here, I import the folders into Lightroom.

My problem with sorting is that I want to sort for 3 categories, print, web, and both. I still haven't come up with a system to stick with, but I think with Lightroom, having both the stars and the color tagging could help out for me. I could use the star system for web sorting and the color system for printing. Something like this....

Initial sort, flag black or white to eliminate really crap shots. For some reason, I don't delete stuff when I first download from the camera/card to the computer. I should.

Next sort, give a 1 star rating for images I want to upload to the web and/or a color rating (red) to sort for what I may want to print.

3rd sort could either narrow the selection down further with 2 star and yellow color ratings, or just start the editing process.

At some point, I want the ratings to show that the images have been processed. I like to crop and adjust exposure in Lightroom. Something like when you reach 4 stars/4th color, the image has been cropped and exported to a TIFF file (I only have JPEG option of shooting) for Photoshop processing.

After processing in Photoshop, go back to Lightroom to give a 5 star/top color rating stating that the image has been finished and uploaded or printed.

Having 2 different rating systems (the stars and the colors) for web and print is because I do not upload photos of the kids and there are plenty of shots that I want to upload and display on the web, but not necessarily print. Also, it allows me to know at a glance whether that image's processing has been finished with either of the upload or print that I want to do. Sometimes I am just wanting to get some stuff uploaded to post in a forum or my gallery (I'm working on the gallery thing) and sometimes I want to upload a bunch of photos to print and not worry about uploading them at the moment.