The photography industry is ultra competitive. This competition puts downward pressure on profit margins. In order to make a living in this industry,
an Orange County photographer needs to run a lean, effective organization. The following are a list of tips for improving the profitability of your photography business.
First, keep your post-shooting production system efficient. Time is money. If you are spending too much of your time editing photos then you will not have enough time to do the thing that brings in more revenue – photographing more clients. There are a number of things that can be done to make sure you are humming along at a good click in post production.
Don’t skimp on your computer. I would even propose that you skimp on your lenses before you skimp on a computer. Photo editing requires as much processing power, RAM and hard drive space as you can obtain.
Consider having two or more computers on your work desk. Photoshop and Lightroom will allow you to put one license of their software on two computers. With two computers, you can multi-task between. While running a batch process on one computer (which will tie up the software and most of the RAM), you can be editing on the other. Networking the computer together will allow you to share files so you are not spending time transferring files back and forth between computers.
Consider purchasing a MAC over a PC. A MAC comes with a more stable operating system and runs faster than most PCs. Typically the advantage to a PC is the greater variety of software available to it. However, in the case of a photo editing machine the software that would be available for a PC is also available for a MAC.
Whenever possible, write MACROS and create Photoshop actions. Start with the tasks that you run most frequently. For example, you may typically sharpen all of your images and put a darker vignette around all of the edges. This would be one of your most frequent tasks. Start with writing an action for this and similar tasks.
Making your post-production work is rewarding. Each time you implement something that saves you time, you are creating a raise for yourself. That’s something to get excited about.outsource photo editing