Portrait photographers are certainly among the busiest in the photography industry. Apart from covering major editorial or fashion photography projects, they are also often called to do prenuptial sessions, family sessions and other portrait styles. As such, the uninitiated can only imagine the meticulous planning and organization required for their photography business.
At least on the workflow side of things, there are now software and digital tools designed to make the process easier. Among them is AfterShoot, an AI-based photo culling software that promises to be the fastest and easiest way to automatically select, rate and find your best photos. That’s definitely a boon when you have to go through hundreds of snaps in a photoshoot!
Jacklyn Greenberg and Chris Brown of JAGstudios are among the wedding and portrait photographers who are now using AfterShoot as part of their workflow. If you’re also a professional photographer looking to improve your culling process, Jacklyn recently shared with us her insights on their AfterShoot experience.
“When we first found out about AfterShoot, we were slammed with six same-day portrait sessions a week — crazier than it had ever been for us,” she began. “Being able to shorten our days with a faster culling time between the shoot and the reveal was life-changing!”
“We upload directly into AfterShoot as soon we are done shooting and let it do its magic. We take this time to put away gear, chat with our clients, and order lunch,” she said on how they typically use the software. “Then we review the cull, swap out a few selections, export, edit in Lightroom Classic and prep for our same-day in-person reveal.”
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Using AfterShoot with Lightroom
She added that AfterShoot complements Lightroom’s rating system, so they chose to retain it. This approach saved them the trouble of having to track another rating system. Likewise, their method is something Lightroom users may want to incorporate in their workflow.
“We back that up with a color system to allow us to know the type of selection at a glance. Green and 3 stars go to the client, while yellow and 2 stars are duplicates. Those with eyes closed are purple while blurred images are red; these both get one star because chances are we won’t really consider them. However, it’s always worth a look since the nature of our work lends itself to beautiful photographs with eyes closed or a super shallow depth of field. We save our 4 stars rating for highlights and 5 stars for portfolio work.”
“It’s great to have blurred photos and ones with eyes closed separated from the selected and duplicates so we can glance through and see if there’s any we’d prefer to keep.”
On the AfterShoot experience
According to Jacklyn, AfterShoot reduced their cull time to 25% of what it used to be for portraits. “After 16 years of culling, it’s such a sense of freedom! Even though we cull quite quickly, we don’t have to pay as much attention to what we’re doing since we can trust that AfterShoot is selecting the correct photographs.”
In addition, scrolling through and seeing the selections by color means they no longer need to go into a compare mode, but simply scroll and deselect a few to get it down to the final gallery.
However, it’s also important to mention that what makes such a software effective are the brilliant minds behind it as well. When software creators listen to user feedback, they allow the software to become more intuitive to their needs. Jacklyn agreed, and actually considers the supportive AfterShoot creators to be the best part of the experience.
“But honestly, the best part of AfterShoot are the creators. Harshit and Justin have been incredibly communicative and listen to what their users need to be able to make their software even stronger.”
Don’t forget to check out JAGstudios’ website to learn more about them and see more of their photography.
Want to learn more about AfterShoot and how to use it to speed up your photography workflow? Make sure to check out our guides below to get started:
- How to cull faster with AfterShoot
- Tweaking AfterShoot to better fit your needs
- Syncing AfterShoot with Lightroom Classic
All photos courtesy of JAGstudios. Used with permission.
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