It all begins with an in-depth questionnaire we use to understand you and your work. The questionnaire covers information about yourself, your photography, what you shoot, how you shoot and what editing style you like.
We then create and share with you a PMC Client Folder. This client folder is used for you to upload your jobs to, and receive in progress and finished catalogs from us. We use Google Drive for this and it is free to use.
In addition to this questionnaire we ask for a sample catalog of a recent edit you have done that you love and feels representative of your style.
We then use the questionnaire and sample start an editing profile for you. From this initial profile we have enough information to work on your first editing job. We then spend time over the first few jobs to ask for feedback and expand on our editing profile to make sure we edit your photos exactly how you want.
The preparation and upload step is quite simple once you have familiarized yourself with Adobe Lightroom and Smart Previews. Smart Previews are small digitial negative files of your original RAW files, which enable us to make edits and see the results in Lightroom.
To prepare a catalog for us, simply make your image selection (or opt for us to cull for you). Create a new Lightroom Catalog and import the files you would like us to edit. Apply your editing preset and build the smart previews for all of the images within the catalog. Zip the Smart Previews with the Lightroom Catalog and upload the file into your ‘Upload’ folder in the PMC Client Folder we have shared with you.
Fill out the ‘New Edit Job’ form on our website and add any notes you have for the editing job.
Once we receive the new job form from you, we will edit a sample set of the entire catalog within 48 hours. This sample set will be 10% of the catalog (from the start of the shoot until the end). You can review and give feedback to us on these samples (written feedback or by tweaking the samples themselves).
Once we receive feedback we will complete the entire final edit within 10 business days.
When we have carefully edited and checked your catalog for quality, it will be marked completed and the finished catalog will be uploaded to your ‘Completed’ folder on the Google Drive.
We will email you the download link, as well as include any notes about the edit. During the edit we quite often may come across scenarios that require extra input from you, or we observe things which we flag to pass onto you. This may be anything from cropping issues (where by straightening the image we remove something important), to photobombs, facial expressions or unavoidable distractions. This flag is easy for you to filter and explore when preparing the catalog for final export.
When you receive a finished catalog from us, it is best to ‘Build’ the previews on your local machine again to ensure you see the latest edits we have completed.
If you like the sound of what we do and would like to get on board then please head to our editing questionnaire:
If you have any questions about our culling service or process then please view our Pricing page.
If you are still unsure or have any questions at all then please contact us here.
We encourage all types of feedback (good and bad) as it is important for us to understand your personal taste and make sure we are editing just the way you like. We are, after all, here to save you time and give you a good work/life balance back.
To help streamline this process we have setup a feedback form to make it easier for you to share your thoughts.
