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How much are you retouching your photos?


5 years 5 days ago #640801 by Ira Weber
Perhaps it me, but I find I spend a lot of time in post.  I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which makes it a big challenge for me at times.  It would be great that I could just take a photo, and out of camera it would be perfect.  I could spend easily 30 to 90 minutes on each shot.  

This can turn out to some extremely late nights and little free time left over.  

To manage your time, are you setting a limit on how long you spend per shot? 
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5 years 5 days ago #640804 by Nikon Shooter
30 to 90 is about right… seconds that is!

I am very strict in terms of rendition — clients oblige — but
if I'd need your time in pp, I couldn't make a living.

If I get thing right prior to SR, that will reduce pp time. I do,
however, spend hours on photocomposition when necessary.
Light is free… capturing it is not!
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5 years 5 days ago #640817 by garyrhook
From what I have observed, aside from street/journalism, "getting it right in camera" tends to mean dull photographs.

Any perception that "in the old days they just shot and moved on" is naive. A lot of work would be done in the darkroom. Research Ansel Adams if you want to see what he put into his images.

That said, what matters is your vision. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to create representational images that may or may not have layers of interest (a la street), or are you creating art work? (Yes, I am well aware that those two definitions overlap.)

If the former, think about your workflow, and how to streamline so that you are leveraging style/process/cropping decisions from previous work.

Me, I do both of these things. But most of my edits take 10 minutes or less. Complex masking and tweaking increases the time, as do more elaborate manipulations. General stuff should take less than 5 minutes in Lightroom, and even less if I can copy/paste settings.
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5 years 2 days ago #641149 by Randy Shaw
I try to spend no more than 15-20 minutes per photo.  Otherwise, it's a time vacuum. 
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5 years 2 days ago #641168 by Troponin
You will read/hear that some folks don't edit at all. They are looking for maximum efficiency and will run the camera set on jpeg. This is for extremely large venues when editing is just too time consuming. 

Then you have the in between, which gets a quick color adjustment for better dynamic range, highlights, shadows, and exposure, sharpening, and that's about it. Takes about 1-2 mins per image. 

Then there are photos that I want to really pop and they are photos I might sell, enter in to contests, etc. These are my "Trophy captures". These take anywhere from 2-10 mins, depending on how complex the color and lighting was. This is how I do most of my shots because I don't do large events and I want a bit more from each of my photos. 
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4 years 11 months ago #641932 by Overread
Really depends on what the image is being used for.  I have a few under 3 minute edits that most of my shots will get.  And then some will get upwards of 30 minutes spent on each.  
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4 years 11 months ago #642908 by Jerrid
Quick edits are under 3 minutes each if even that! 
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4 years 11 months ago #642923 by Shadowfixer1
I do a quick run down the tabs in Lightroom which takes just a few seconds each then I spend the majority of my Lightroom time in the HSL panel. Once that's done then it's into Photoshop for a quick micro contrast adjustment and any cloning if required. It's very quick. I do know of one guy in a local club that spends an average of 3 hours on each image he wants to enter into competition. I consider that crazy and when I competed, I regularly beat him. He is good but his final images look nothing like the original. It's not worth it to me. I do get into some composite images creating art type fantasy images that take a bit of time but that's another category all together.
www.betterphoto.com/?ramshots
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4 years 11 months ago #643162 by Inez Villarin
My own photos?  Depends.  Most part under 10 minutes.  And even that seems long.  Client photos, are to say. This depends on the client and how much work needs to be done on images.  Under 15 minutes each. 
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4 years 11 months ago #643291 by Brody Kross
Very little, less than 5 minutes, but so much to learn for me. 
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4 years 11 months ago #643428 by JoanaN
It depends. Usually I make quick edits that are under 3 minutes. Basic color adjustment, brightness and contrast adjustments. 
But sometimes I add effects in Photoshop like sunlight, flare, fog, snow and so on. These edits take me about 10 minutes.
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