Early this September I photographed a wedding on a Saturday and a styled shoot on a Sunday. I took over 2500 photos over the two days. I sent out sneak peek galleries within 24 hours to each of the vendors and couples. On Monday, I delivered the full wedding gallery with 745 photos, and on Wednesday I delivered the full styled shoot gallery with 593 photos. Within 5 days, I delivered 1338 photos. The best part? It only took me a few hours.

I know what you’re thinking.

HOW?

Or, IMPOSSIBLE.

It’s possible. And today I’m going to show you how.

You can watch me do it here, or continue reading:

The Old Editing & Delivery Process

It used to take me days to edit and deliver a portrait session with only a couple dozen photos. I spent hours culling, editing, and uploading images, and I started to resent the process. It was a labor that took up too much time and energy, and soon it starting taking up my love for photography.

This was the process I did for YEARS:

Import all photos directly into Adobe Lightroom. Wait a few minutes.

Select them all, then click Generate 1:1 Previews, which pre-loads each photo so you don’t have to wait for it to load when you zoom in. Wait hours.

Go into the Compare view so I can see two images at a time and compare them. One by one delete out of focus shots, duplicates, or bad photos. I would do this twice to get down to the good ones. This would take hours, even days.

Edit each photo one by one by what I thought each photo needed. Days of editing.

Publish to my gallery site.

It would take me HOURS, my photos were inconsistent, and I was not happy. But this was my process, and this was how I ran my business. I was fine.

I wasn’t fine. There was a breaking point, and that’s when I opened myself up to help. I did research, I asked fellow photographers, and finally I found a better process.

The New Editing & Delivery Process

Now, I deliver wedding galleries with hundreds of images within a few days. I deliver senior or engagement sessions either a few HOURS after the session or the next morning. Editing has become a joy. I can relive the best moments and make them perfect for my clients for years to come.

This is the step-by-step process for how I do it.

Culling

Plug in my external hard drive and my card reader. Create a folder on my external hard drive in my labeling system: Date + Session (for example, 20200905–Liv & Hannah’s Wedding). Within that folder, create another folder labeled “To Edit [Session]” (ex: To Edit Liv & Hannah’s Wedding).

Open Photo Mechanic, the best program for culling images. It loads images so that you can go through them, zoom in, mark, and label images at lightning speed. There are so many other things you can do with Photo Mechanic, but this has saved me hours of work alone. It has a one time fee of $150 and you can try it for free before you buy, but I promise you’ll want to buy it. I’m not sponsored by them and won’t get any affiliate money for you clicking my link or anything, so you know this is 100% unbiased honesty.

Import photos from my card reader into Photo Mechanic and into that session folder. It takes a few minutes.

Open up the first images to full screen, then press the right arrow key quickly to go through the images however fast I want to. When I see a great photo, I press the 1 key and it highlights it. Culling becomes a much easier and faster process when you’re picking out the best of the best, not slowly deleting the bad. With this process, I can cull a session in 5-10 minutes and a wedding in 15-30.

If I’m editing a session, I skip the sneak peek process. If I’m doing a wedding, I look at all the highlighted images and star one or two favorites from each part of the day and drag them into the “To Edit” folder.

Editing

Open up Lightroom and import the sneak peeks. Upon import, I have it set to apply my home-made preset on import and generate 1:1 previews. I’ll talk all about my custom preset another day, but I made it after learning how to edit in a free webinar a few years ago and personalized it to my style, and now I apply it to almost every photo I take. Depending on how many images I imported, this could take a few minutes up to an hour. This is when I normally go take a shower or eat dinner.

Once it’s ready, I edit the sneak peeks. This is where I spend a lot of time trying to get the exposure and colors right, and making sure the image is exactly what I want. Because I applied the same preset to all the photos, they look cohesive and like the rest of my photos.

I rename the files, then export to my hard drive or publish to my online gallery system directly from Lightroom. This can take a few minutes up to an hour, depending on how many photos.

Once this is done, I import the rest of photos into Lightroom with my preset and generate 1:1 previews. This can take up to an hour or longer depending on how many photos, so this is when I normally get ready for bed and wind down my day.

Remember in the sneak peek how we edited one or two photos from each part of the day? Copy the settings from the photo you edited and apply them to the photos around it with similar light or composition. I used to edit the first photo, then one by one press Ctrl+Alt+V which pastes the settings from the previous photo onto the current one. It took a few seconds every time. I still do this sometimes, but this mass pasting of settings has saved hours of time. Do this for each part of the whole gallery and it will only take a few minutes. Didn’t send out a sneak peek? That’s ok! Just edit the first photo from each section and paste the settings to the following photos that are in the same location or type of light.

Then I start at the beginning and edit each photo one by one, but each photo normally only takes a few seconds with few exceptions. At this point I’m only cropping or making minor adjustments because the main editing has already been done by pasting the sneak peek edit onto each photo. This can take as long as you wish, but normally takes me 1-2 hours for a portrait session or 3-5 hours for a wedding. I work with a lot of natural landscapes which can take up more editing when compared to buildings with even light.

When I’m done editing, I go through the whole gallery and star the ones I want to turn into black and whites. I make duplicates of these photos, then one by one turn them into black and white with a preset and edit them as needed. The timing of this depends on how many photos you’re editing.

Then I rename all the files and export or publish them. This can take a few minutes up to an hour or two depending on the number of images.

Tips For Success

And that’s how I do it! I went from taking a week to edit a portrait session to consistently delivering full wedding galleries within a few days. As with all skills, you get better with practice and confidence. When I was less comfortable shooting in manual mode or hadn’t yet nailed down my editing style, this process took a lot longer. With time you will be able to get better and faster and you and your business will thank you for it.

For now, here are some tips to make the process better for you!

1. Get it right in camera. If you are comfortable shooting in manual mode and can properly expose your images as you’re taking the pictures, you will naturally have less to do when you edit. If you over or under expose images or leave ugly objects in frame, you will spend more time later trying to fix the light or manually remove the objects in post-processing. Get it right when you’re taking the picture and it will save you time when editing.

2. When culling, you need to change your mindset so that you’re only delivering the best. If we’re agonizing over a few photos to see which one is better, just pick one with your gut or take them both. Don’t narrow down the best by getting rid of the bad ones, pick out the best of the best and only edit and deliver those. That way, every image in your gallery is a “wow” image and you have less to edit.

3. Work on nailing down your style. Find a preset you love or make your own and use it to edit your photos. It will make all your sessions look cohesive and will make editing way easier. If you’re not sure how to find your style, check out this blog post!

4. Practice practice practice. It’s important enough to say again. Every skill needs to be practiced so you can master the process and could do it easily in your sleep. It gets easier over time.

And that’s it! Good luck with editing and let me know if you have any questions! The best places to reach me are through my contact page, the comment section on the YouTube video that goes along with this blog post, or my Instagram!

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