wingnut1956 Loc: chicago

Just a curiosity question..I'm wondering how much time is generally spent editing an average raw photo. I'm pretty new to messing with "raw" photos and have found it can take a LOT of time with all the things you can play around with. I subscribed to Adobe and have access to both lightroom and photoshop..so far have been playing mostly with lightroom, mostly because I found some great tutorials online. Still, I find myself spending more time than I seem to have available and have a real hard time deciding what's "right" and knowing when to stop

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I'm not making money or entering contests with my images. I just want them to look good enough for me. That doesn't take too long. I've never spent an hour on one photo. I get the lighting, color, and sharpness the way I want them. Then I correct any distortion.

gwong1 Loc: Tampa, FL

wingnut, I spend a lot of time in PP. I entered a contest and won a blue ribbon, and spent perhaps 10-12 hours editing one image. Of course I was learning some Photoshop techniques along the way. If quick edits, I will batch process to speed up my timeline. Of course the process gets quicker with time. Gary

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

I have an import preset that makes my photos look decent as they come into lightroom. Then I tinker with the ones that need cropping or other edits. Usually 2-5 minutes for a photo that needs more than the preset. But because I like post processing I fiddle around in photoshop and plugins to varying degrees to create other more artsy versions- anywhere from 5 -30 min on a photo. This is my relaxation time, since I don't do television. Lightroom makes it easy to keep multiple versions. If I don't like them I delete them. I have deleted lots of the edits from my early days of photoshop. I look at them and wonder what I was thinking- but I was learning even while I was making a mess. Have fun!

Cdouthitt Loc: Traverse City, MI

Depends on how badly I screwed up the photo in the camera. It could be 10 seconds to 10minutes. Being able to use presets and easily copy and paste in LR saves a ton of time. I'd say on average I spend less than 1-2min per photo.

Treepusher Loc: Kingston, Massachusetts

That's like asking how long it takes to cook a meal. It depends on the photo and what I want from it. Some might take a couple of quick adjustments. Some might take hours.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Perfect! :thumbup:

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

Best case = 20 seconds

Worst case = 2 or 3 minutes

this assumes a normal amount of screw up in camera and not going to Photoshop for any reason.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Ideally, none. I shoot a lot of pictures when I am taking something apart of working on a project - just for reference. they really come in handy, and no post processing is necessary.

chiya Loc: Wellsboro, Pa.

and learn, as I am in the learning stage of photography I save even my bad ones to use for practice in learning pp

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

I average between 30 seconds to a minute per image. Now its rare that I try to save an image or create something unusual but I have in the past.

amehta Loc: Boston

Way longer than I want to. I only do it occasionally, but a portrait can easily take 15-30 minutes, between adjusting lighting and adding digital make-up.

les_stockton Loc: Eastern Oklahoma

I shoot approximately 100 shots per hockey game. I get home, upload my photos and then import them into Lightroom.
I do an adjustment on one of them, and then do a "sync" to the rest of the 100 (or so), which takes a few seconds (less than 5).
For the most part, I'm done.
I then spend time going through each photo individually to see if I want to keep them, or improve them in some way, crop, align, etc, as well as adding tags and captions.
For the most part though, the develop adjustments are done within that first 5 seconds.

anotherview Loc: California

Good morning. I do my best to get the image right in the camera. Doing so minimizes image development time.

I do most of my image-editing in Adobe Camera Raw. ACR looks simple, yet it has powerful features and functions for developing images. It pays to learn ACR.

Scott Kelby puts it this way: Fix it in ACR, and finish it in Photoshop.

Note that Photoshop Creative Cloud now enables access to ACR as a filter while in Photoshop. My workflow includes returning to ACR as necessary.

In more direct response to your question, I spend the time necessary to bring out the potential of a given photograph. I begin in ACR and then move to PCC. This effort may last 15 to 20 minutes for a photograph that benefits from my basic workflow. But I have spent an hour or more on a single photograph to correct its defects.

In fact, for some photographs, I have worked on them divided into two days. A fresh eye the second day helps to steer me to a finished photograph.

Let me say, though, I have recently begun writing off a photograph if it seems not worth devoting to it a lengthy development effort. I prefer working first on my worthy photographs that require less attention.

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

In his book, Understanding Exposure, Bryan Peterson uses the phrases "technically correct exposure" and "creative exposure" to differentiate between an exposure that is correct and one in which the photographer attempted to add some creativity.

I believe the same concept can be applied here, to a degree. To get my photos to a point where they look good (i.e. white balance, contrast, brightness, color are correct) doesn't take long in Lightroom. Maybe 30-45 seconds per photo. To do something creative with a particular photo will take longer, especially if you pop it over to Photoshop.

As an example, I recently did a shoot at High Bridge Kentucky. Interesting spot in the middle of nowhere. (Google it, and you'll see what I mean). Unfortunately, nearly every shot of the bridge included power lines running through it. There was no way to escape them, during composition of the shots from the primary shooting location. So, on every one of them, I popped them over to Photoshop to remove those lines. Took considerably longer to process that set of images than I would normally have to spend.