If I had a magic wand and could go back in time I would have told my newbie-business-owner self about my current three favorite programs. I have learned most things about my photography business through trial and error and I think that is common for most people. Every year I get busier (yay!) and I needed a way to streamline my post-processing better. SO, here are my three favorite programs that I can’t live without…
I can cull a wedding in less than an hour with this program! Culling means going through all of your images and picking the ones you are going to edit and deliver to the client. I plug in my external hard drive and import thousands of images in Photo Mechanic and I can easily scroll through all of my raw files and tag the good ones with just one click! It’s awesome. From there, I move all of my tagged images into a “culled” folder and import that into Lightroom to start editing. BOOM! It’s so easy and fast! I tend to overshoot, so narrowing the best images is hard for me!!
2. Lightroom
Before switching over to Lightroom, I used to edit EVERY SINGLE image in Photoshop and it was a nightmare! Photoshop is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but Lightroom has faster editing capabilities. I can easily create a preset that adjusts contrast, highlights, and exposure with one click. I can also easily tag photos with keywords which can help my SEO in the long run. Score! I still use Photoshop if I need to remove a blemish or something like that, but 95% of my bulk editing happens in Lightroom.
3. BlogStomp
PHOTOGRAPHERS! Stop what you are doing and go buy this program. It will literally save you so much time when you are trying to prep your images for a blog post or social media! I import the photos and adjust the image size based on where I am posting the image. I created two types: one for Facebook and one for my Blog images. Facebook and WordPress have different image dimensions so I try to keep them separate. You can also add keywords too! It’s great. I click the “Stomp It” button at the bottom and all the prepped images are put into a separate folder on my hard drive and then they’re ready to use!
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