Archive
The Great Pricing Hoax
No sales? Hard time hooking clients? Your deep-discount pricing could be choking your reputation.
It’s not uncommon to offer your services at cut-rate discount with the hope that you’ll snap up eager bargain-hunters. But is this really the right approach?
Successful Pros agree that raising your pricing may not necessarily scare away potential clients – in fact, it’ll do a body good. Here’s why.
That sounds backwards…
Photo by Adriana Klas Photography
“Cheap” sets bad expectations for your clients. If you’re a cheap photographer, clients wonder how you’re cutting costs so much, and if it’s worth it for them to take the risk. They question your ability to manage expectations and communicate with them. Will you effectively guide them through an important experience, or will you simply fire a few snaps, hand over a CD and call it a day?
“Cheap” makes you look as though you don’t think you’re any good. Any business owner who doesn’t think their brand’s the best is probably in the wrong business.
How to Not Be Expensive
Photo by Adriana Klas Photography
Right about now you’re probably worried about scaring away clients by being too expensive. How do your clients really know what “expensive” really is? It’s all about pricing and a concept called anchoring – meaning that they have to compare the value of something new with something familiar.
In English: Clients will be able to better grasp the value of your work by judging their interaction with you.
Here are some tips to help you prove that your work is worth every penny:
- Create a unified brand. A clean website. Clearly placed information. A custom domain and email address goes a long way, too.
- Be professional. Be prompt, cordial, and friendly. You provide a quality service, which is worth paying for.
- Look and act the part. No one is going to pay $5k to a schlup wearing ketchup-stained t-shirts, particularly if they show up late and forget to bring the paperwork!
How to do the “Free” Thing (the right way)
Photo by Sphynge Photography
Just because you should be paid fairly for your work doesn’t mean you can’t cut clients a break, or even do the “free” thing once in a while. Samples are a great way to give clients a nibble of what you do do without giving away the whole farm. Some quick ideas of how to work this into your model:
Model 1 - Waive your session fee, but be sure to charge for prints and digital downloads.
Model 2 - Apply the sitting fee towards the purchase of digital downloads, making the first (X number) free.
On SmugMug, it’s so easy to offer a few deep discounts by creating a custom Coupon to hand out. There are five different types, making sure that you can keep changing it up and keeping it interesting. How to use Coupons.
Get it? Got it? Good.
Calculate Your Costs to Avoid Going Broke
Photo by Sphynge Photography
The reason most photography businesses don’t survive is because their owners didn’t properly calculate their costs. And as the old adage goes, time is money. Don’t forget that your time and expertise are more precious than replaceable objects like paper and gear; you can hire assistants but they aren’t you. (Yes, it’s our mission to make you feel like a million bucks!)
Here are our suggested guidelines for calculating your costs:
- For prints: Your pricing should be not less than 4x your hard costs, including packaging and shipping. Seem like a lot? It’s not – about half of your balance goes towards taxes, 1/5th of goes towards the base cost of the item and the rest goes towards (ta-daa!) your profit.
- Albums and multi-photo goods: Your pricing should be no less than 3x your hard costs, which may include design work as well as the physical cost of the product.
- For Downloads: Price your larger-than-web-sized digital downloads at no less than the cost of ten prints. Giving away images at any printable size means you have to make it worth your while: They will use that file to print lots of prints, and you also run the risk of having your brand diluted if your client opens Photoshop and makes their own digital adjustments. Check out our resolution chart to find out how big they can print.
The Bottom Line
Don’t be afraid to charge a fair price for your work. By understanding your costs and charging more, you’re sending a stronger message to your clients and ensuring that they value you, too.
If you’re already in business and think your prices needs a kick, remember that it’s simple to adjust your pricing using Pricelists. Look here to see how they work, and don’t forget to ping our Support Heroes if you get stuck.
Wanna keep talking about pricing? Never forget that our photo forum, Digital Grin, has a whole section dedicated to the art of turning your photos into money. Check out our Mind Your Own Business section here and post away. Or just voice your thoughts in a comment below.
Good luck and stay tuned! We’ll be sharing more tips and “best practices” for you, soon.
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Links you’ll love:
Photog Tip of the Week: Five Tips for Dramatic Adventure Photos with John and Kelsey of Azimuth Photo
John Borland and Kelsey Gray of Azimuth Adventure really know how to get the adrenaline going. They’ll climb anything that stands still, which can provide truly incredible and unique perspectives for photography. Since summer is quickly approaching and you’ll soon be planning your own outdoor thrills (maybe free climbing in Yosemite!), we thought a few tips might come in handy.
Rock climbing and photography go hand in hand. By its very nature, climbing puts a person in a rare position with a unique perspective of humans interacting directly with the earth itself, pushing limits and performing amazing feats while often surrounded by some of the greatest scenic views on the planet.
It’s not easy though: getting in position for the shot often requires technical skills and experience only acquired by many years of practice and instruction. To keep this short, we’ll forgo the knot tying and anchor rigging and just stick with a few of the simple tips and tricks that will make it a little easier for readers to bring home a fantastic piece of adventure!
#1: Be There and Have the Gear
The single most critical tip for getting great climbing photos is simply to put yourself through as many adventures as possible and ALWAYS have your camera on your person and accessible, no matter how difficult the terrain or weather becomes.
A small dedicated camera bag is perfect for this. Every climber’s preference is different, but between the two of us our favorites are a fanny-pack style bag large enough to hold a body and a lens or two, or a small lightweight backpack style that can be unslung easily to access your gear. Whatever you use, make sure it has a rain cover and is durable enough to take the abuse that will inevitably come.
#2: Get High and Think Ahead
Getting above or at the same level as the climber is critical to avoid the dreaded “butt-shot”. Additionally, positioning yourself with a perspective that puts the action in front of a beautiful backdrop or some interesting rock features and textures will immediately set the stage for a great shot.
#3: The World Is Not Flat
Get creative with your composition. Often a slight rotation to shift the “horizons” of the cliff and ground is just what is needed to add a sense of depth. The unconventional framing can also emphasize a tiny detail that would otherwise be missed.
#4: Climb, Climb, Climb
The more you get out there and perfect your own system of rigging and shooting in vertical terrain, the easier it will be to take more winning photos to bring home.
#5: SHARE!
And finally, we’ll leave you with perhaps the most important part of climbing photography, and one which SmugMug helps with enormously: Share your photos with the world!
- John and Kelsey
Photog Tip of the Week: Color Calibration with cabbey
Today’s Photog Tip of the Week is presented by cabbey, landscape & fine art photographer, and one of SmugMug’s back-end engineers. He’s usually up to his elbows in the code that sends your orders to the labs and your profits to your bank, but this week he’s sharing a tip for all you photographers who want to be sure you’re getting the best possible prints. It’s easier than it sounds, so take a look below.
But it looked good on my screen!
Let’s say you take a picture of your son and the camera does everything perfectly in terms of white balance and exposure. You used Ann’s tips from a few weeks ago to make sure the image is properly exposed, something akin to the image on the left below.
Next, you downloaded that image and loaded it onto your computer. But your computer’s monitor is NOT calibrated, and like many monitors your photo suddenly looks too red and way too bright. As a result, you saw that your image look a bit off, like the middle image below.
To correct this, you fixed it in Photoshop until it looked good again, back to looking like the original image. When you were done, you uploaded it to SmugMug and ordered a print… and received something that looks really dark and weirdly tinted a blueish green color (cyan here), depending on exactly what your monitor came from the factory like, it could be anywhere along the blue to green area of the spectrum:
Why did the lab ruin my image?
They didn’t! The problem is that monitors are generally made for office tasks, not photography. The manufacturers give you the brightest display possible with the most punchy red they can produce.
As a result, any time you process your photos on an uncalibrated display, you’re making your image considerably darker and turning down the red cast, skewing everything towards cyan. The third image above is what your finished photo actually looks like and the lab faithfully printed exactly what you sent them.
Why calibrate?
You’ll get better prints and happier customers the first time and every time without having to fall back on SmugMug’s 100% print guarantee. The top 3 correctable problems that land in our Help Desk inbox are:
1. The prints are too dark
“In my experience, most of the monitors I’ve calibrated, new or old, are about 2 stops too bright.” — Tyree, SmugMug Color Correction Hero
2. The prints have a weird color cast
“That was a white dress!!” — Unhappy Mother of the Bride
3. Their skin looks too red
“Why does my father-in-law look like a lobster?!”— Furious Husband
There is a great help page about return rates that shows what gets returned and why. The top 6 reasons are all solvable by using a properly color managed workflow.
How do I do it?
Exactly how you do it depends on what gear you buy. There are a number of different choices, but the leaders of the pack are: Datacolor’s Spyder and X-Rite’s ColorMunki or i1 line.
In general, you’ll need a colorimeter or spectrophotometer (fancy words, but they basically mean a special device you can put on your screen and plug into a USB port) and a piece of software which usually comes bundled with it. The software will put your monitor through its paces while you have the meter on it, then it uses the information to build an output profile for your screen.
With that resulting profile, any software that cares about a properly color managed workflow can properly display accurate colors on your screen. Since monitors’ color accuracy varies over the lifetime of the display, it’s important to update the profile periodically, at least every month or two. Most of the above programs will remind you when it’s time to re-profile your display.
I usually just kick it off and then go to lunch. When I come back, it’s done and I don’t have to worry about it for another couple of months.
Don’t forget that you can also get a calibration print right here. With that print in hand, you can bring the calibration image up in your editor of choice and see just how much closer a calibrated workflow makes it look on your monitor. The closer it is, the closer your images will be when you’re editing them.
Bay Photo Color Correction: One click to save them all
Pros can always print through Bay Photo, whose color correction services are always done by hand. It costs just a little more but it can save you time at your desk, or headaches if you just don’t feel like fiddling with your computer.
Find that option on the Set Prices area, in the upper right corner of the pricing box.
Go the bargain route
Most operating systems have a sort of “eyeball” calibration you can do that will at least get you started. They aren’t as accurate and they depend on your eyes making decisions, so be aware that this may not work for everyone.
On a Mac, use Spotlight to launch “Display Calibrator Assistant”. (Hit ⌘⃣–space to get spotlight, then start typing that name.)
Once it opens, just follow the steps:
On Windows, search in the control panel for “display calibration” and, again, follow the steps:
Welcome to the (accurately) multi-colored nirvāna that is a calibrated workflow! Remember that even if you don’t get everything set perfectly, we’ve got a 100% guarantee on every print order and our Color Specialists are always happy to help you out.
— cabbey
Photog Tip of the Week: Cleaning Your Lenses with BorrowLenses.com
Three things you’ll need:
Compressed air - We use air compressors from Home Depot (<$100) but the smallest compressor you can find is likely up to the task. If you don’t want to splurge on a compressor, there are the ubiquitous cans of compressed air available at any computer store. When using these cans always keep the can level and upright to avoid blowing its liquid propellant onto your lens elements. These chemicals can do weird and potentially harmful things to lens coatings, so please be careful. If you want to avoid chemicals all together, get a bike pump style canister that you pump up then use, or try a simple manual pump like a Giottos Rocket Blower.
Lens cloth - Our favorites are cheap, Promaster-branded microfiber cloths. You’ll notice that some types feel very slick and smooth against the glass and others gain some traction and drag more. We like the kind that has some drag and feels sticky against clean glass.
Cleaning fluid – You shouldn’t need any cleaning fluid except for the most stubborn and difficult cases. Again, we like the Promaster brand because it’s cheap and cheerful. The stuff we use comes in a clear plastic bottle with a pump atomizer spraying attachment.
Your lens is dirty. Now what?
It’s now time to touch the front element of your lens and clean it. If you are worried about rubbing the coating off, don’t be. We’ve never seen it happen, ever.
To clean a lens’ front element all you need is a set of lungs and a lens cloth.
1. Breathe on the lens enough to fog the whole element, then wipe the lens with a good amount of force in a circular fashion. You’ll likely be left with a smudge where your wipe stopped and some junk around the edge where the glass meets the body.
2. Make a little point with the cloth, breathe on the lens again and wipe the edge in one 360+ degree motion. Now you should be left with a mostly clean lens.
3. Now repeat the wipes, but with ever decreasing pressure. The last few swipes should be done very lightly. The trick is to buff the lens, which will pick junk up rather than moving it around forever. Keep rearranging the cloth so that you are using a virgin bit of material and not re-contaminating your almost-clean glass.
4. The final step is examining – and cleaning – both front and rear caps thoroughly before affixing them to your now-clean lens. A dirty cap will undo all your hard work in an instant, so examine both caps closely, blow on them from many angles with compressed air and only when you are certain they are clean can you affix them to your lens. If you use a UV filter, also make sure it is clean before you put it back on.
And with that, we’re finished. If you enjoyed that you should consider working for BorrowLenses.com – You could be cleaning gear all day long and getting paid to do it!
Photog Tip of the Week: Talking to Your Clients with Tyree Phillips
This week’s Photog Tip of the Week comes from Support Hero, print specialist, Lightroom whiz and studio photographer, Tyree Phillips. Lots of Pros love to shoot in the wild but sometimes the idea of getting a client comfortably into your space can seem a daunting task. Here’s some guidance to help you get your gigs off the ground.
Start them off at ease
Whether your client is a family, model, high school senior or musician, the most important skill a photographer can possess is how to speak to your client. This process actually starts long before the shoot, beginning with the very first contact you have with the client.
Making them comfortable before the shoot goes a long way to ensure the session will go smoothly and great images can be shot. When you first talk with your clients, listen to what they are saying and tailor the conversation to their needs. Present your product in a concise but informative manner. This isn’t about selling yourself to the client; they’ve already contacted you to book the session! Make them comfortable so they know they’re in good hands.
So, how do we do this? I have found the more you can describe the session to the client, the more at ease they are when they arrive at the studio. Taking away the unknown or the mystery of the photo session helps put the client at ease because they now know what to expect.
Find out a little about the client and what their interests are. Use this information to place the client at ease. You can ask them to think about their kids, spouses, pets or anything else they have said to you. You’ll notice a relaxed client with a natural smile and body language which will make for a more natural looking and less posed image. These little things can really make a difference in your images!
Having a shoot list is a great way to go. This is nothing more than a outline for the session and should include the number of changes or ‘looks’, how long each look will be photographed, the types of poses, and props to be used, if any. This helps to keep the session moving and on track in terms of time.
You’re the director
When the client(s) arrive, I like to take them through the studio and show what happens when strobes fire. Some folks won’t be used to this so it is a good idea to let them hear and see the strobes and get used to the environment.
Usually wardrobe and backgrounds are discussed before they walk in the door, so the studio should be set up and ready to go for the day of the shoot.
Once the client enters the set, direct them with simple commands. Commands like tilt your head, chin up or down, rotate, smile, and show me teeth, are commands that are understandable to most folks. Go over the commands you plan to use when the session starts. The client doesn’t need to remember them, but they will perform better if they are made aware of the types of commands you plan to use.
You would think photographing musicians that are used to being on stage would be a breeze, but they can be most difficult subjects to photograph away from the stage setting. Having props on the set from guitars or saxes to a full blown keyboard rig or drum kit helps to put those clients at ease.
Clients like models that are used to being in front of the camera respond to visual poses. I find myself posing them by doing the pose in front of them, and then they can visually copy the pose. You can have fun with this because the client will surely laugh at you posing… but it takes away their anxiety, makes them less self conscious and you’ll get the shot you were looking for.
Stay confident!
Always tell the client they’re doing well, even if you’re not sure they are. Use adjectives like “great”, “wonderful“, “gorgeous“, “very nice” or “awesome!” to make the client feel good about what they’re doing. You’ll find that by staying positive, any apprehension they have decreases.
Developing good communication skills keeps the session light and fun and – most importantly – ensures the client’s experience is enjoyable. The images will be great and they’ll book you again.
- Ty
Photog Tip of the Week: Shooting Sports with Steve Mills
Spring has nearly sprung, sports fans! If you’re a fair-weather photographer, you’ll soon be blowing the dust off of your gear and heading to the track, course, court, or diamond. We’ll offer some tips we hope will make your photos a home run. Today’s Photog Tip of the Week comes from Master Support Hero and sports pro, Steve Mills of Downriver Photography.
What makes a great sports photo?
In a word: Drama! With today’s amazing digital cameras shooting in excess of 10 FPS, it’s tempting to be a ‘machine-gun-mama’ holding down the shutter release anytime there’s action, rattling off shots from your dSLR Uzi. Fight the urge and use it sparingly! After your memory card stops sizzling and your batteries return to something below 500 Kelvin, you’re almost certain to have some ‘keepers’. You’ll likely capture the bat hitting the ball, but it takes practice, restraint and discipline to look beyond, to the player’s wide eyes and the self-satisfaction of their first home run and capture the shot you really want. Drama.
Know your sport!
For great sports photography, it’s essential to know your sport so you can anticipate the decisive moment. The swing on the pitch, the slide to home, and the frustration of a strike-out are all important decisive moments not only to anticipate the action, but the emotion of each. If you’re not sure what a flag on the field means, or what a feat running 100 yards in 9.4 seconds is, you’re sure to miss some drama.
Isolate your subject(s)
One rule of composition says, ‘If it doesn’t contribute to the scene in some way, it’s best left out’. This is especially true in sports photography. Nearly every sport has tons of distraction. From refs, to spectators, to sponsors, they all compete for attention in your frame. Don’t let a screaming spectator steal the scene from your slugger. Use a respectable telephoto lens to fill your frame with drama and adjust your aperture to control the depth of field, blurring out the blight. If most of your shots show the whole infield and cause viewers to hunt for the action and drama, it’s time to upgrade your lens.
Get a Proper Exposure
Most cameras have a number of different exposure modes including spot metered, center weighted, and evaluative metering. Most are pretty reliable if you understand how they work. I’ve often heard, “It was such a bright, sunny day, but all my photos came out dark!” followed by cursing their camera. Regardless of the exposure mode you choose, the camera will look at the metering area you defined (a spot, the center, or the whole scene) and crunch some numbers to come up with a value for that area. That value will be considered the middle value for the scene. This means if your metered area consists mostly of bright clouds, sky, or player uniforms, the camera will now consider them the mid-tone! This turns your bright whites into something near middle-gray, and your whole scene turns dark. To combat this, add exposure compensation to let your camera know, ‘these whites should be white!’ then check your camera’s histogram for proper levels (see Canadiann’s histogram tips from last week).
Optimize Camera Settings
ISO: The old standards still hold relatively true with 50-200 for bright sunny days, 400 for overcast, and 800-3200 for downright gloomy, with even 6400+ for twilight sports. Newer dSLRs can handle high ISOs with surprisingly little digital noise so don’t be afraid to push it.
Shooting mode: Just say ‘No’ to sports mode! AV (Aperture Priority) is my favorite for outdoor sports. It allows you to control the depth of field [depth of focus], and lets the camera worry about shutter speed. Consider bumping up your ISO for a faster shutter speed if needed.
Shutter speed: How fast is enough? This depends on three things: Mood, Sport, and Lens.
- Mood: A fast shutter speed will freeze action. If you want to convey motion or speed with some motion blur, a slower shutter speed will be required. (1/60th of a second will blur most bat swings, where 1/250th will freeze most)
- Sport: Formula-1 racing will require a faster shutter speed than badminton, to freeze action.
- Lens: For hand-held photography, your shutter speed should exceed the focal length of the lens to prevent camera-shake. Example: With a 200mm lens, you’ll want to shoot at a minimum of 1/250th. Many cameras and lenses now have image stabilization that compensates for hand jitters that cause camera-shake, which allows you to shoot at even slower shutter speeds without noticeable blur.
I hope these tips inform, inspire, and encourage you to get out there and get shooting. We’ll be looking for all your action-packed artistic drama on SmugMug!
-Steve Mills
Photog Tip of the Week: Love Your Histogram with Ann McRae
Today’s Photog Tip of the Week is presented by Ann McRae, longtime Canadian Smugger, Pro shooter and Support Hero extraordinaire. If you’ve never received an awesome help reply from Ann, you’re missing out! Your histogram can make or break your image. Knowing how to read your histogram will dramatically help you get it right in-camera… which will improve the shots you take and increase your number of keepers. Here’s the scoop straight from a pro who knows.
What’s a Histogram?
The histogram is a graphical representation of the brightness of your image. It shows the amount of dark areas on the left and the amount of bright areas on the right, which means that you can make decisions about the settings you’re using to shoot a scene.
The histogram is your key to getting the very best possible photograph in-camera.
The good news is that almost every digital camera released in the last few years has the ability to display a histogram on the LCD. You may be surprised at the difference between the information in your histogram and the JPG preview of your images on your camera’s LCD. Many folks overlook the fact that the LCD screen is backlit, which makes the image look much brighter than it actually is. Watch the histogram instead and don’t be fooled!
Expose to the Right… but Not Too Much
The “ideal” histogram shows mid tones that are evenly distributed between the darkest and lightest points in the scene. But remember that a histogram is just a graphical representation of the data in the photograph, so there’s no real right or wrong!
The following two photos show properly exposed scenes but the histograms in the upper right corners look dramatically different:
In the above photo, there is a broad range of colors and therefore the data is distributed across the whole graph.
On the other hand, almost all of this above scene is bright white snow so most of the data is pushed to the far right. Kelso is properly exposed and you can see plenty of detail in his face.
Why You Should Get it Right
Don’t overexpose the scene. The histogram for this kind of shot looks like it has a big hump on the right, possibly even falling off the right side of the chart. Some cameras display blinking areas on your LCD preview image to warn you that your images are too bright. Data in the overexposed areas is lost and will simply be flat white with no details. Here those areas are shown in red:
Don’t underexpose the scene. A histogram with the majority of the information to the far left (dark shadows) is underexposed. When you do this, you run a higher chance that prints made from this photo will turn out dramatically darker than you expect. This is because you’re processing and editing your digital photo on a backlit monitor or LCD, which is much brighter than a physical print that is lit with reflected light. You may be able to pick out details in the shadows when looking at an image on a monitor, but those details will be lost in a print.
(Bonus: Find more technical reasons for exposing to the right explained over at Luminous Landscape.)
Here are two versions of the same shot with completely different exposures. See how the histogram sits in each one?
Histograms for Effective Post Processing
Of course, once you have a well exposed photograph you may still want to do some post production work to be sure that you are getting the most out of the data that you have.
Bumping the exposure, fill light and tone curve of this example image just a tad pushes the bump from the middle of the histogram to the right, and really does a lot to enhance the image:
Once again, watching your histogram really pays off. Learn to love it and use it!
- Canadiann
Photog Tip of the Week: File Management in Lightroom with Wade Heninger
Importing images into Lightroom can be a chore. What is a benign process when you shoot a few hundred pictures in a portrait session can become unwieldy when you come home with 15 CF cards full of files from a big event.
First, consider that Lightroom has always imported from only one card at a time. The standard process is as follows:
- Insert CF card .
- Configure the Import options and hit “Import.”
- Wander off with the intention of coming back when its done.
- Forget you were importing for an hour and then realize it.
- Wander back in and go back to step 1.
Repeat 10 or 15 times. And 8 hours later I’m good to go. A whole work day and I’ve not edited a single photo yet. Ouch.
This just does not work for me. I’m a ballet photographer and work routinely involves shooting several thousand photos of a single performance that need to be quickly imported because the next performance is 2 hours away and the cards need to be cleared and ready. That is some serious file management and little time to do it.
So what does the enterprising photographer do?
Photo Mechanic for Easier Photo Imports
Some years ago I bought Photo Mechanic solely because its Import tool was pretty darn good. Much better than Bridge. Of prime importance was the fact that it would import images from all mounted cards in order. If you had the card reader for the card, it would do the right thing. The rest of Photo Mechanic is inconsequential (and a bit ugly) with Lightroom, but this one feature makes worth the purchase price. I have 5 or 6 card readers, so I can really chew off a bunch of cards in one fell swoop using this little tool.
So for the past few years, I would use Photo Mechanic to import the files onto my Drobo and *then* run an Import in Lightroom to get them in and previews built. This was a two step process that had to be done serially as well: 1) import with Photo Mechanic 2) turn Lightroom loose on the big folder with everything.
Somewhere in the Lightroom 2 cycle I’d worked on a redesign of the Import dialog and as part of that I’d suggested the whole multiple cards thing as a way to speed our customer’s workflow. Sadly, we didn’t get it any of this for the release of version 2. So when Lightroom 3 was released, the first thing I looked at was the new Import dialog and if it could do what I needed. Unfortunately, no.
So recently, as I returned from another photo shoot with 12 cards in tow, I was all set up to dance the same waltz with the same klutzy partners.
But something clicked this time. Call it a Lightroom Epiphany of sorts, but all of a sudden I realized a possible solution had been sitting under my nose all this time.
Lightroom’s Auto Import Feature
Lightroom has this somewhat obscure feature called “Auto Import” that watches a folder and then imports any images therein. As I recalled, it was mainly Lightroom’s way of dealing with tethered capture before we had a dedicated module for such. Anxiously, I clicked on the File Menu to see if it hadn’t been deprecated due to the new Tethered Capture features. Huzzah! It was still there.
Giddy, I clicked on the Auto Import Settings and set it up to watch the folder I was going to use Photo Mechanic to dump them to.
From Photo Mechanic to Lightroom to SmugMug
So, I setup Auto Import and chose the import directory. So far so good.
I then went into Photo Mechanic and dumped all 6 cards to the aforementioned directory.
It worked! Photo Mechanic dumped all the cards to the directory and Lightroom then imported it and built a preview for each image. It took awhile, but not nearly as long as I was used to. And it did it in one fell swoop.
So, so awesome.
I did notice that at one point there were over 500 processes going at once in Lightroom – one for each import and preview build it was working on. But it didn’t seem to bother it much.
The result is that I’m in business more quickly than before. I was able to import all those cards and have Lightroom ready to edit, with all files imported and previews already built.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Since that ah-ha! moment, I’ve dramatically cut down my file management time, which lets me get to the important parts faster. SmugMug makes uploading directly from Lightroom dead simple with their integrated publishing service, so I can get photos into my galleries and start making money.
- Wade
More on Streamlining Your Workflow
The Help doesn’t stop here. Check out these additional resources:
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