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Question: Help ASAP!.!.!.When u do a wedding how many images do u digitally retouched!? !?
OK, so me and my husband do fashion photography and kids and family portraits!. My friend got married and she ask us to be her photographers so we did it for free as a gift to her!. But we r only giving them to her on a CD and she will do the printing!. We shoot over10 hours and we have more than 800 pictures!. How many should I digitally retouch!.

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Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Retouch as in removing blemishes, glare from glasses, warts, moles, slimming!? Very few, if any at all!. But if you mean adjusting levels and fine tuning the color and sharpening, all of them!. But first edit and remove the duplicates and any that may have technical problems or bad expressions etc!. That will give you fewer to process!.

After you deliver the CD, if the B&G pick out some for special prints that need a bit of retouching, you can offer to do just a few!. It doesn't take long to remove a pimple, but multiply that by 800 prints and you would be putting in quite an amount of time!

BTW, throw in a few free prints that you have made!. You want to be sure she sees a good print, and I would offer her suggestions on where she should have her pictures printed!. You don't want her to get green prints from WallyWorld and blame the poor images on the photographer!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

The goal is to not retouch any!.

In reality the formal photos just after the cerimony usually need a little retouching !.!.!. you can use something like the GEM plug-in to do that!.

Generally after you do your first edit (sort) and have about 300 to 400 "best of the best" sorted, then you can usually expect less than 40 of them to be printed in something larger than 4x6

But I have never heard of any shots taken during the reception being retouched unless requested by the client !.!.!. this is why the shoots are billed separately from the prints!. The $65 5x7 can include a little retouching from a third-party!.

My colleagues who shoot weddings bill form $2000 and up for doing the shoot and then after doing the final edit, produce a watermarked CD of all the images they want the client to see of 600x400, 72 DPI image files with a nice big watermark across them!. The client then chooses the ones they want printed and there you have it !.!.!. sometimes a slideshow is requested of the reception and as I recall that is billed at around $250 with some kind of musical background !.!.!. or not!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Retouching is fairly rare and limited to the formals or posed shots and I am using the term broadly to include special processing for effects if requested!.

If I do my job right, I generally batch process everything for sharpness, contrast and saturation before I even look at them!. All the shots that aren't of the ceremony or formals don't receive any more processing than that!. Bad shots, people closing their eyes, etc!., and redundent shots or just plain uninteresting shots are weeded out next and the remaining casual shots are finished at that point!.

Like Fotoace says, that leaves about 40 shots eligible for further post processing such as soft focus, vignetteing, conversion to B&W, etc!., according to whatever the B&G's wishes are - though the Groom never seems to have an opinion!

Most of the people I know who specialize in weddings (I don't) have a similar workflow!. Hope that helps!.

VanceWww@QuestionHome@Com

I shoot over 1400 during a wedding!. I don't retouch any shots!. The only digital enhancement that I do is color balance, lighten/darken, vignetting, sepia, black and white, crop, maybe do some special effects!. The get to see only about 500 to 600 online (because guests might want to order some prints) but they only get about 250 professional quality proofs!. (mpix!.com) I don't do Sam club!.

In terms of retouching blemishes and what not!. Like others have said!. It's not done!. It is what it is!. Unless they specifically ask for that particular to be done then do that!. Otherwise, your main goal is to make sure exposure is good, color balanced and saturation looks good!. You might want to separate the ones that you think is the best out of that shoot!. Put them on one CD!. Have them concentrate just on that CD for prints and the rest on a separate CD!. Looking thru 500 and trying to choose from them to print is a daunting task!.

You did it for her for free!. To do anything else beyon that I think is more than enough!.
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First edit out any of the "dogs"(delete those)
Then go back through and keep the best (don't delete anything yet)
All digital photos need some sharpening and the color saturation pumped up a bit!. Do that to the best you have chosen!.
Go back through the ones you have left and again pick out the best
and repeat the above process!. The idea being that you only want the B&G to see the best photos!. I try to narrow it down to 50-100 photos to put on cd or in an album that tell the story of the day!.
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