Wedding workflow – Part 2

The second phase of my wedding workflow starts where my last post finished, which is as soon I’ve finished a slideshow of about 100 images from the day and sent that to the bride and groom.   At this stage what remains is for me to post-process the rest of the images that survived the edit-in process, create monochrome versions of everything, archive images, burn a disk for the bride and groom, and create a password-protected web album of all the images.  More detail on each of these stages below.

After the slideshow

I tend to think in terms of stars during post-processing, and at the start of phase 2 I have three sets of star-rated images:

• A set of 5 star images (a mix of colour and black and white) which made the slideshow, and are also tagged slideshow.  These have all been processed, but there are cases where one or two need tweaks before being finished – more on that below.
• A set of 4 star images, which are the slideshow alternates – colour versions of mono images and vice versa.  At this stage these are rated as 5 star images.
• A set of 3 star images which have survived the edit-in process, but not yet been post-processed.  It is these that I start with.

Batch-processing similar images

Where possible, I will batch process similar images – typically a shot in the slideshow (5 stars) will have neighbouring 3 star shots, which were taken in the same light with the same subjects. As a first cut I will lift the adjustments from the relevant 5 star image and stamp them onto the similar 3 star images to get me a first cut of post-processed versions of these shots.  For 90% of them, this will be sufficient post-processing.  As each shot gets processed (always in colour) it gets upgraded to 4 stars.

I repeat this for all the 3 star shots, and at the end of that process I will have most of the hard work done.  There can be many many groups of images like this over the course of the day so this is a slow phase.

During this work I will also “flag” (an Aperture 3 capability – previously I keyworded them) images that I wish to work on in more detail – this may be something I foresee as an album cover type shot, or simply something where the exposure, composition, mood etc would benefit from some individual treatment.

Eye-opening

One issue I consistently come across when processing the formal family shots, especially for larger family groups, is the problem of blinking subjects (or sometimes talking subjects), but there is an easy fix due to taking precautions at the time of shooting – namely taking multiple shots in quick succession (usually three). These shots require more attention to solve this problem – for instance the shot that almost always makes the cut is the one in which the bride and groom look best.  But in this shot I may find that the mother of the bride is blinking, so I’ll need to lift her open eyes from a neighbouring shot (taken in the same light and processed in the same way) into this selected image.

In Aperture I identify the images that I need to do this – both the chosen image which contains the “blinker”, and the alternate which has their eyes open – and apply the keyword “merge”.

All images tagged as merge are exported and cloned in PS, before the merged image is reimported into Aperture and tagged as 4 stars.

Monochrome conversion

At this stage I have about 100 images in black & white and colour, and the rest just in colour.  All black & white images are rated as 5 star, as they resulted from phase 1.  I now select only 4 star images (which will all be colour), I duplicate them and apply the same monochrome conversion as used in phase 1:

• Red – 65%
• Green – 35%
• Blue – 0%

Plus a 10% sepia.

At this stage all 4 star images (both colour and black and white) get rated 5 stars.

Burning the discs

Up to now all RAW files are stored on my laptop, on my RAID1 disk array, and either on the CF cards or on a portable hard disk.

The adjustments are all in the Aperture 3 library, and that’s backed up every hour thanks to Apple’s Time Machine software built into Leopard, and sits on the laptop with the backups on an external Time Capsule hard disk.

Now it’s time to export full-res versions of all the 5 star images and burn two discs of colour and two discs of monochrome images.  One set of discs will go to the bride and groom, the other is kept as an archive.

To delete or not to delete

One question that I was asked in the comments to the previous post was if I deleted “bad” images – and the answer is no.   I almost never delete images on the camera (and for weddings, as a rule, absolutely never).  There’s too much risk of deleting the wrong image, and CF cards aren’t that expensive.

I also never ever delete an image that I’ve taken off the camera.  I can hide it from view through the rating process in Aperture, and like CF cards, hard disks are relatively cheap, so keeping it doesn’t bother me, and again I’d rather avoid the scenario where I accidentally delete something.

I was also asked about my storage all being on-site, which is true, except that I do endeavour to keep one set of RAW files off-site as much as possible.  This is the reason for keeping images on the CF cards (which are easily transported) or a portable hard disk until the DVDs have been burned. The spare set of DVDs that have been burned will be kept off site, and it’s also a consideration that the bride and groom gets a set of DVDs with high-resolution post-processed files, so in a worst-case scenario I would be able to make copies of those DVDs, should it be required.

Beyond Phase 2

What remains to be done, depending on the bride and groom’s requirements, is to create and print for an album – that is a post in itself, which I’ll deal with at some point in the future.

And it’s worth noting also that there are almost always variations to this workflow that have to be made as I work through a wedding, but this is, I guess, the ideal scenario and the template that I start with as I bring a wedding shoot from RAW files to client-ready fully processed images.