Digital Deliverables:


If you choose the basic package I’m expected to deliver 25 fully edited photos. You will get 25 photoshop-edited photos AND the photos that were not selected to be edited. I simply color correct those in lightroom to my liking and load them into a separate folder in your gallery.

The photos that are chosen to be fully edited can be chosen in one of three ways using the example of the basic package.

1.     You trust in my ability to discern which photos are the best and I choose all 25 to be fully edited.

2.     I fully edit 15 of the photos and place them in the feature photos portion of the gallery, you select the remaining ten photos you want edited from the folder labeled not selected.

3.     I make basic corrections to all the photos, and you select all 25 photos to be edited.

When all is finished, you receive both the fully edited photos AND the remaining photos. It simply doesn’t make sense to not give them to my clients.


Why We do it this Way


One way you can classify photographers is by how they edit their work. There are photographers who use Adobe Lightroom and there are photographers who use Adobe Photoshop (or the various other equivalents like Affinity, Capture One, Luminar, GIMP… etc.)


I know some outstanding lightroom photographers, but by and large, most lightroom photographers wind up slapping a filter across all their images and delivering it to their clients. Ultimately, that isn’t much different than applying an Instagram filter to a cell phone photo.

To me, editing with Lightroom is like editing with a sledgehammer, and Photoshop is like editing with a surgical laser scalpel. A photographer who solely uses lightroom typically does so because photoshop is extremely complex and they simply haven’t learned how to use it.


In Photoshop, I use techniques that simply are not possible in Lightroom. I use the same techniques photographers who shoot for any high-end publication use. I’m an expert at skin retouching techniques like frequency separation. Even if someone requests to not be retouched, I still use dodging and burning, luminosity masking, and a variety of other tricks to give the photos a feeling of depth or drama.

I’ve noticed a trend in the number of photos photographers supply to their clients and it doesn’t make much sense to me—especially if they are lightroom photographers. They tend to limit their clients to an arbitrary number like 25 or 40 photos and the remaining photos just sit on their hard drives or they are deleted. It just doesn’t make sense why they wouldn’t give the remaining photos to you, especially since they can slap a filter on it and copy and paste it across the images before going through and giving them one final tweak.

               

My concern isn’t the number of photos I supply to my clients, it’s the amount of time I spend editing. A simpler photoshop edit on a single photo may take me 20 to 30 minutes, A single composite usually takes me around two hours, but can easily exceed four hours for a more complex edit.

Did you know you can auto edit in lightroom? You select all the images and color correct all of them within minutes, apply a series of filters using copy and paste to all the photos in another few minutes.

That aspect of the industry bothers me immensely. It’s dishonest and it’s why I deliver the photoshop-edited photos AND the photos