The Best Editing Tips for Wedding Photographers

I’m sharing the best editing tips for wedding photographers on this blog!

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Manage Your Time

First, you need to know that time blocking is your friend. Since you have a list of weddings to edit and deliver to your clients, you must prioritize one at a time. Rather than approaching each day without a structured plan, you can block your time in your calendar. Schedule the time for each wedding you want to edit in the day. You can plan this out at the start of each week! Allow notifications from your calendar so you know where you are at time-wise. As you continue to work with this process, you will be able to add more or less galleries to your day and adjust your timing accordingly. 

This method keeps you focused which ultimately makes you more productive! When you own a wedding photography business, editing is not the only thing on your plate. If you set aside the time for this important task, it won’t get lost in your work days. You might consider selecting full days in the week for editing depending on how many galleries you have to edit. When you have a workflow in place even when life gets busier, you will still be able to remain on task!

Stay Organized

A major part of managing your time is staying organized. Do you have all of your memory cards and photos readily available? Is everything clearly labeled from each wedding? You need to be able to access your photos for editing without jumping through any hurdles. Also, you will want to keep the space you are editing in organized. Make sure your desk is clean and your office space encourages productivity. Your workspace should inspire you! While you clean and organize, you can choose to add some decor that sparks your creativity and brings you joy. 

Outsource an Editor

As your business grows, you are going to need help with editing!  Honestly, I could argue that in order for your business to grow, you need to accept help with editing ASAP. Outsourcing a trusted editor will help you focus on the higher-level tasks the CEO of a wedding photography business needs the time for. This can also provide you with more room to take on more weddings or other creative projects. Speak to your network about their recommendations for this individual. 

If you want to bring on an editor as a part of your team, check out my advice on hiring new employees for your business after reading this blog. 

Use AI Softwares

While you search for your editor, or if hiring an editor isn’t right for you and your business, I 1000000/10 recommend using AI editing software. You will be able to make the majority of your adjustments faster so you can still save some time. Here are my favorite softwares:

Imagen AI is my favorite photo editing software. They learn your editing based on the lightroom catalogs you upload into a personal profile. As you use Imagen for editing, make your tweaks, and re-load your final galleries, it learns your style even better. I barely have to make any revisions these days and it’s cut my editing time down to a quarter of the time it used to take me. My eyes, back, and shoulders are SO grateful to not be stuck behind the computer for so many hours editing away anymore!

Imagen AI has also come out with a culling software but the one time I used it, it cause my external hard drive to corrupt. This also happened with a friend of mine- it was in the summer of 2023 so hopefully they’ve fixed that but I wanted to give a fair warning to anyone giving it a try! Make sure ALL of your work is backed up on MULTIPLE hard drives before trying Imagen AI’s culling software! For editing, they’re the cream of the crop though.

Aftershoot is the culling software I use. It does the first cull for me and can learn your preferences so you barely have to cull down after it takes care of your first cull! They’ve also come out with an editing component so if you’d rather stick to one company, you can try aftershoot’s editing too. I’ve heard good things!

My tried and true though is photo mechanic. It’s a one-time purchase (can I get an “AMEN!” for that in this day and age??!) and I use it for aligning multiple cameras to the same time and re-naming images. It’s been well worth the initial investment and is something I see being in my workflow forever, even for personal work.

If you found this post helpful, find out what to pack in your photography bag next!