Editing. What is it? We all know it takes a while to get your photos and videos back from your photographer or videographer, but what are we actually doing?! I can’t speak for everyone else, but here’s a little insight into what I’m up to after your wedding when I’m prepping your pics for you.

On a wedding day I’ll take anything from 3000-6000 images. It all depends how many hours I’m with you and what you’ve got planned for your big day. On one wedding I took 10,000 frames…that was a big ol’ wedding!

Once I’m home, I’ll back your images up. Nothing happens with your pics until they’re backed up into at least 5 different locations, including a cloud backup. Gotta keep ‘em safe!

Next up, culling. I’ll spend hours going through each individual image and culling away what isn’t needed. There will be several similar frames in the set, and you won’t need them all! In some of them someone might be blinking, looking away, someone walks in the middle of the frame, it’s a little blurry, the light doesn’t quite land right…but then the next frame along could be perfect! So it’s a bit of a painstaking process, but I’ll go through every one of the frames and pick out the best of the best, and only these ones go through to the main edit.

Right, the actual editing process. All of the remaining RAW files will go through to the editing software where I’ll apply my edit to them. I then go through all of them individually and tweak them all. Whether it’s the exposure, the contrast, the vibrancy, the crop, or even just completely redoing the whole edit. They’re all individually edited and checked over.

Everyone will do things in their own order, and this might seem like the wrong order to some photographers, but once I’ve finished the main edit and I’ve exported all of the images and turned them into JPEG’s, it’s only then that I’ll start taking things out of the background and cleaning the images up. So I go through every remaining image again, scanning them and checking them for things that need taking out or tidying up. Fire exit signs, fire extinguishers, road signs, pints of beer, or anything that distracts your eyes away from what should be the focus of the image. 

We’re nearly there! One last cull. I go through everything one more time to make sure everything is ok. I want to make sure there aren’t any doubles, any wonky pics, and dodgy edits, or that I’ve missed anything in general. Annnnd finally, I’ll run your images through a sharpening tool that will also resize them so that they’re optimised for printing, and also a set that is optimised for social media. It’s only then that I’ll start uploading the images to your online gallery for you.

And that’s it! Each wedding can take up to a week, depending how big it is and how many photos I take on the day. So why does it sometimes take 8 weeks to get your photos back? In the height of wedding season, when you’re shooting 2-3 weddings a week, things stack up quickly. You’ll always get a small preview of your pics fairly quickly, but the bulk of the photos will always take that bit longer.

Like I say, everyone will have their own way of working. Some photographers will be a little quicker, some will take a little longer. You won’t need to find out exactly what they’re up to when they’re editing, but it’s good to find out a rough turnaround time for your images before you book them. And if you’re currently waiting for your images but feeling a little impatient, that’s fine! But remember how much work goes into your pics, and before you send that angry email…cut your photographer a little slack 🙂