Andrew Jade Photography: THE EDITING: REVEALED

As we are continuing to work on Aaron & Lauren's pictures from their BIG DAY (They should be done now in just a couple more days), we decided to let you in on our little secrets. *GASP* As many of you know, one of the most important parts of a photographer's finished product is the EDITING. Yes, we need good cameras and good angles, and good lighting, and good exposure, and just the right amount of posing and direction, but we also need good editing. So for any of you that may not know how it's done, let me (Emily) show you our process!

During each wedding we take UNLIMITED photos! We never stop shooting pictures until the bride & groom disappear for their honeymoon. Usually we take around 4,500 pictures give or take. Then we upload all the pictures to our awesome MacBook Pro that we both adore! At the moment, we upload the pictures into Adobe Lightroom (an editing software tool) and we prepare them to be ONE STARRED... What is "one starred"? Well, let me tell you! We go through EVERY single one of the pictures and decide if we like it or not! We "one star" only the pictures that turn out good and we leave the rest "unstarred" (poor unfortunate little pictures!) Usually I (Emily) do all the "ONE STARRING" because I have a good (and quick) eye for what is good and what is not.

Here is what Lightroom looks like:

Here is a picture that has been "ONE STARRED"... the black circle is around the "ONE STAR"... you get the idea!

I try to get the pictures down to about 1,500 "ONE STARRED" images. Then I turn over the pictures to Andrew and he takes over from there (After all, I have a baby to look after! :)) He goes through and "TWO STARS" and then "THREE STARS" until he has found the BEST of the BEST which usually consists of anywhere between 350-500 images and he starts the editing process!

Right now he does his basic editing in Adobe Lightroom (changing the lighting and contrast and clarity) and then he sends them over to Adobe Photoshop for more artistic editing. (I know EVERYONE has heard of Photoshop! Eventually, we will switch to ONLY usually Photoshop, but for now we just cannot get rid of Lightroom. We have MASTERED Lightroom and are comfortable with it, and are still working on figuring out ALL the odds and ends of Photoshop.

In Photoshop, he also uses this TOTALLY AWESOME software called TOTALLY RAD ACTIONS that our TOTALLY COOL friend BOBBY EARLE told us about! If any photographer is not using it, It is a MUST. :) Check out the link! So he finishes all the editing, stamps it with our copyright mark and TA DA!! We have our finished product! (For those of you wondering, the whole editing process starting with uploading the photos onto our MacBook Pro all the way until we can hand our clients their disc takes anywhere between 15-30 hours PER wedding. THAT is why we often quote our wedding clients between 4-6 weeks until they received their finished product. Can be alot of work, but thank goodness Andrew LOVES being artistic and taking time on the editing!)

Anywho, here is an UNedited picture that I shot of Andrew in action capturing a good shot...