Creating a Foundation
When we first started our business, time wasn’t really an issue. We had plenty of it. Even though Jon was working a full-time day job, we still found time to run our business on the side, and time management really wasn’t a priority. But we knew that in order to grow a successful business, it meant that we needed to take the time to lay a foundation and process that was scaleable. Just because we had a limited client base at that time, didn’t mean we were content to keep it that way. So we started being intentional about learning from some of the best and working on developing a process that would facilitate growth. It seemed a little silly at the time, especially when we really got in step with a streamlined process, but we realized quickly that it was incredibly beneficial even with the small throughput we had.
The Problem: Culling in Lightroom
One of the biggest time savers we implemented was the method we used to cull our photos. Our original process was to copy every image from our SD card onto the computer and import them all into Lightroom. We would then cull as we worked through editing the catalog. It worked, but it was painfully slow. It also ate hard drive storage space like nobody’s business! We knew that this method was inefficient and slow and simply wouldn’t be practical both in terms of storage space and time as we got busier.
The Solution: Photo Mechanic 5
We were both attending a two-day photography workshop when we were fist introduced to a solution! A simple piece of software that would save our hard drives and our time! Photo Mechanic 5 was the lifesaver we found and it’s saved us a TON of time since. The program allows you to preview the images and tag the keepers. The image previews load super fast and allow us to cull a full SD card (about 1500 images) in less than 20 minutes. If you pause on a photo because you question whether it is in focus or not, you can zoom the image with one keyboard stroke to check it and move on! We then copy and save only the tagged images to the folder and import them into Lightroom. As a bonus, if you rate your images, you can rate them as you cull, and the metadata will carry over into Lightroom for you from Photo Mechanic 5!
The software itself was a life saver, but it also introduced us to a new workflow concept. Instead of culling as we edited photos, we could cull first, then edit only the images we wanted to keep! It’s cut our post-processing time easily in half and has created a workflow that works for us no matter how busy the season is.
After all, we want to LOVE our jobs, not be a slave to them, right? Any one sign up to be a photographer to spend hours in post-processing? We certainly didn’t, and this tool has helped us claim that time back!
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