Whilst on photography commissions there are weeks I shoot over 4000 images. This means I have to put in some serious hours behind the computer.
I don’t love culling and editing my photos. I love taking them, I love printing them, but editing is time away from what I love.
Over time I’ve developed habits that help me get through the edit more quickly and happily. I thought I'd share them here incase they help you with yours.
Positive culling
When deciding what images to keep and delete, I always pick out the photos I want to keep, not the ones I want to delete. Instead of focussing on images I don’t think are good enough, I force myself to focus on the ones that are.
This has a psychological benefit: I leave the edit feeling good about my work. I don’t delete anything at this stage, I filter images out. I always do a second pass of the reject pile to make sure I didn’t miss anything the first time.
Drink water
I know it’s an obvious point. But when I caffeine crash due to necking coffee all edit, it isn't conducive to my best work. Try to take on plenty of water and switch out every other drink for something decaffeinated.
A water filter jug kept in the fridge with sliced cucumber or lemon in it can make H20 a bit more enticing.
Turn the screen brightness down and the ambient light up
There is a danger of getting so sucked into the screen of your computer that you don’t realise the sun has set. You end up sat in a dark room staring into a bright screen for hours. Thus damaging one of your most precious assets as a photographer: your eyes!
If your computer has an evening mode that reduces blue light output, try it out. Most importantly, work in natural light as often as possible. Try to make sure that the energy saving bulbs in your workspace output a decent amount of light.
Pro tip: If calibrating a monitor with a tool such as the X-rite i1 Display, you can take an ambient light reading for your workspace. This will adjust the screen brightness for optimal viewing in your environment. You can even take a reading for daytime and night-time and save them as two profiles that you can switch between. To switch between daytime, night-time and monochrome profiles I use the remote that came with my BenQ SW27I.
Music
Music is essential for me. I struggle to edit without music and that’s true for many of us. I love podcasts and radio, but find speech distracting whilst editing, so an eclectic mix of tunes is my go to.
Check out my editing playlist on Spotify. I will update it every so often: usually before a heavy period of editing. Soundtracks also make great editing music as there are often no words to distract you.
Whilst editing I like to listen out-loud as often as possible. Using speakers doesn’t tire out your ears over many hours of listening like headphones can. However for editing on the go a good set of earphones can’t be beaten. I recently wrote a post detailing my recommendations for earphones. From bang-for-buck in-ears to audiophile headphones with dedicated amps.
Learn keyboard shortcuts
Whether you edit in Capture One, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop or something else, shortcuts save you time. Here are a few of my favourite Mac shortcuts for Capture One.
Alt + Mac (CMD) + Left or Right Arrow = Move Tab (This allows you to move between windows, from colour editing to processing and file management etc)
Numbers 1 through 5 = Star Rating (Give your image a star rating with numbers one through five)
Mac (CMD) + Z = Undo (essential)
P = Loupe (Need to check focus, open this digital magnifying glass to check)
Pro tip: If you find yourself often repeating tasks whilst editing, create your own shortcuts within the software preferences. On a Mac it is also possible to create saved automations known as AppleScripts. Applescripts allow you to automate repeated sequences of keystrokes with a single click. Best of all it works across different software packages!
Rounding off
Thanks for reading. If you read this blog to procrastinate from photo editing, get down to it and good luck with it! Grab a glass of water, pop on some great music and learn a couple of new shortcuts before you get sucked in to that screen.