Photo Culling Service is the first step in the post-production phase. Whatever the style or type of photography – it’s a process that almost every photographer has to go through. (unless you outsource it, but more on that later). After the photography gig, you often come home with hundreds and sometimes thousands of pictures on your drive. Each image is not a masterpiece, but should ultimately be what you provide to your clients. And for that, you have to go through every photograph you take. Furthermore, editing takes time and effort. So in a way, Photo Culling saves you from wasting time editing photographs which is worthless. Want to know more about photography and why it’s an essential part of your post-production workflow? Then we have the answer for you.
What Is Photo Culling?
Photo culling is the process of reviewing your photos and choosing the best ones so you can edit them and then share them or send them to your clients. Before editing, you must first cut the files from your photo session.
This is a necessary step in the process because we cannot keep, edit and share every image we create. This will be irresistible for both our photographers and clients.
Why Do We Need Photo Culling?
- Photo Culling saves storage space: You may have a 2TB external hard drive (like I do), but when you’re shooting several sessions and trying to keep all your RAW files, you’ll find that it fills up much faster than you imagined. If you cut out images that you don’t need, you’ll be able to use that hard drive for much longer.
- Photo Culling saves time and money: About 400 image files were created in my last session – and let’s be honest, not all of them were winners. Can you imagine how long it would take for all the photos to be polished, edited into a shareable image? I either have to charge accordingly for the time spent and pay ten times the price of my work, or I have to exploit the value of the time lost. None of this is a good option for my job.
- Photo Culling makes life easier for your clients: you don’t want to go through hundreds of files, and neither do your clients. Downloading, viewing, and selecting from a huge file gallery takes a lot of patience. It’s not how they want to spend their afternoons, so don’t do it with them.
- Photo Culling helps you show off your skills: let’s say 10% of your pictures are great, 40% are pretty good, and the other 50% are not equal. If medium or iffi shots are not presented without removal, the client will feel that your work has really been hit or missed. When a properly cut and edited gallery is presented to the client, they will see you as a true professional.
Why Do Product Photographers Need To Cull Their Images?
Photo culling is a useful service regardless of your photographic specialty, but it is especially important when it comes to product photography. Unlike family portrait clients who usually see beauty in every frame and expression, clients of the product choose the necessary photos considering the direction of selling their item. That’s it. Do you need to cull out of a product shoot?
Picking “bad shots” from a session where people can be the main thing is quite easy. You can go and confidently remove eyelids, hair across the face, unprepared expressions, etc.
But with product photography, photo culling is a little more subtle. Of course, there are easy picks to move like duplicate shots or lighting test images, but when you pass that step, you’ll enter the “These shots are all right” area …
And that’s when it starts to get tough.
- With product photos, you need to compress them based on every single aspect of the image.
- Do you like highlights here … or here?
- Is it better to read the shadow like this … or like this?
Of course, you can avoid a lot of this by shooting slowly and intentionally, but even then, you still have to spend time choosing which pictures are best.
How To Cull Photos
Many photographers cull their pictures in the Lightroom and many use ACR. Still, others use programs like Fast Raw Viewer to preview their photos and delete them directly from the card. Photo Culling is very helpful and necessary for photographers and product dealers, no matter which program you use. But it can also be tedious and time-consuming.
It can take a few hours to finish a single session, and as I mentioned. It’s worth reviewing a lot and asking yourself “is it or is it?” Again and again. I don’t know about others, but I think it’s better to spend that time shooting business or marketing.
First Photo Culling, Then Edit
Going backward in the same step does not help anyone. Instead, it makes the process more complicated and tedious. So we suggest that you first cull the photo and then edit. Doing both without your full attention not only loses the purpose of doing it in the first place but also makes it more time-consuming. So before you put on your photo editor hat, go through all the photos and select the ones that need to be edited. Read more about Photo Editing
Be Very Specific
One of the most challenging things about culling your own photos is that they may seem good to you, making it difficult for you to decide which ones to reject. However, in order to provide the perfect perfection to your clients, you have to be strict and rigorous. You can even pretend that you are culling for someone else. Be very precise about what you choose and at the same time, don’t think extra. Remember your purpose is to choose the best from each scene set.
Streamline The Process By Selecting A System
There are different ways you can choose to cull and there are different photo culling software that you can use. However, in order to streamline everything, you must stick to a process that works for you. It takes time for everything when you’re doing it for the first time, but if you’re stuck with a process, you’ll get used to it and it may even seem to get easier over time. The same goes for the process of culling pictures. Flagging, star ratings, and color labeling all work different things for different photographers. Find out what actually works for you and stick with it. That way, culling will not feel like a new or tedious process whenever you do it.
Final Words
Photography can be time-consuming and tedious, but as much as you want to avoid it at times, it is an essential part of post-production and something that saves you a lot of time. However, if you want to speed up your post-production workflow and move forward in delivering photos to your clients, then photo culling is very important. After taking any kind of pictures, they need to be edited but editing all the pictures is time-consuming and expensive. Photo culling is an important service for solving such problems.
Photo editing is the next step in Photo Culling Service inside photo post-processing. Clipping Amazon offers the best and highest quality photo editing service at a very low cost. In addition, through the Free Trial service, you get the opportunity to verify the work and then deal. So feel free to Contact Us without delay.
