Here’s how to edit a FULL wedding gallery in under a week! Yes, it’s possible!
I’ve been shooting weddings for over half a decade now and I can tell you that the thought of outsourcing my editing has crossed my mind many, many times. However, I have such a fast turnaround for my weddings that many editors can’t match it.
Plus, I’m really picky about my images, and I know that I would probably touch up all the photos once they came back anyway. So, let me ask you a question!
How long does it take you to edit a wedding from start to finish?
If you’re struggling with editing and having a fast workflow, I’ll show you how I deliver my clients’ galleries while they are still on their honeymoon! Oh, and I also have two little ones at home as well that only allow me to work during nap time. Yep! #TrueStory
Alright, so here are the steps I follow to deliver each gallery in under a week!
STEP 1: Cull using Photo Mechanic
If I shoot a wedding on a Saturday, I quickly cull through all the images on Sunday. And I say “quickly” because I use Photo Mechanic for my culling process. It is so much faster than Lightroom because it literally has no lag time. While in Lightroom you have to wait for an image to load, in Photo Mechanic you can go through the images as fast as you want without having to wait for them to load.
Bonus Tip: Instead of deleting the images you don’t want to keep, pick the ones you want to use instead. This will ensure that you don’t end up with thousands of images after your first round of culling and is also a more positive process overall since you are keeping the good images, rather than tossing the bad ones.
— This process takes about an hour.
STEP 2: Cull twice!
After I finish culling through all the images from a wedding, I usually end up with about a thousand keepers. From there, I go through the pictures again and pick the best ones, the ones I want to include in the blog post.
— This process takes about 15 minutes.
STEP 3: Edit the blog images first
On Monday, I go in and edit all the images I picked for the blog with my Bright & Clean Presets. Once they are edited, I export them and prep them for the blog using Blog Stomp. Later that day, I write the blog post and have it all ready to go live on Tuesday morning.
Bonus Tip: I have all my couples fill out an online questionnaire before the wedding. One of the things I ask them is to tell me a little bit about their story, how they met, where they got engaged, any fun facts about themselves, and future plans. Then I use their answers to write my blog post. This helps if you stumble into a writer’s block.
— This process takes about an hour and a half.
Step 4: Sync the rest of the images with the blog photos
You’ve likely already edited images from each portion of the day for the blog. Syncing the rest of the images in Lightroom should be fairly easy. Make minor adjustments to each image if needed and you’re good to go :)
— This process takes a few hours.
Bonus Tip: In Lightroom, sort your images by “Capture Time” before you start editing. This way they’ll appear in the order they were shot in, meaning your pictures and your second shooter’s will be mixed up. I recommend doing this because you can make sure the colors in your images and your second shooter’s match and the pictures look cohesive. You do NOT want them to look like some photos were taken by camera one, and the rest by camera two.
The second reason I recommend sorting the images by capture time is because if you and your second shooter have shot the same image from a similar angle, you may want to only keep one image instead of five.
Remember in STEP 1 I said that after I cull the first time around I end up with about a thousand images? By deleting some duplicates in Lightroom while editing, I end up delivering between 600-700 final images to my clients.
This is how to edit a full wedding gallery in under a week! Want to edit the easy way? Grab my Bright & Clean Presets!
SHOP THE BRIGHT & CLEAN PRESETS
