Crashin'

I'm headed to find my pillow a little earlier than I wanted tonight, but I've been sitting in this chair almost all day. I'm sore, I'm tired and ready to get some sleep. I'm much closer to done with the proofing, but not quite finished yet. I've been dealing with some frustrating but well-meaning relatives (who are hoping I'll stop what I've promised to do for reasons I fail to understand and who aren't grasping that I'm actually busy and working hard as it is.)
Thanks to these people I did some analysis of exactly what it takes for me to proof a job like this.
First, please keep in mind that my camera is set to do no processing as I shoot so that I have full final control over every image. There's no in-camera sharpening applied, no contrast adjustments, brightness or color adjustments - nothing until it is done by me in post-processing. It can take a bit of time and effort, but I've always found it worthwhile. Cameras these days are smart, but a person's eyes & experience can make better judgement calls most of the time. Ask me about this after an easier session & I'll sound more convincing. :p K, with that in mind, I made notes today of what it takes to process images. On a properly exposed, beautifully sharp photo I made 16 adjustments on 12 different layers. This "easy photo" took 10 minutes to process. On a "less easy" shot that was slightly underexposed with a major touchup (Gogo peeking straps) there were 29 adjustments made on 18 layers. It took just over 20 minutes to process, and required the opening of a third program for one of the steps. Most images fall into the "easy" category, so let's say that on average I'm creating 1 proof every 10 minutes. That's 6 images per hour and I'm dealing with hundreds of pictures. :p So yeah, I'm going as fast as I can, frustrated with the vastly different color output of the 2 cameras & trying to make the photos from both cameras look nice side-by-side. It's been crazy, but I've been doing everything I can to speed the process up while controlling the output quality. Good thing I love a challenge. :)
Thankfully Lauren has been awesome. :)
(Now if only Denise would stop sending Grandpa Kent to my house asking for disks that'd be great.) She's expecting me to stop what I'm doing to backtrack & create print disks for a project she's working on?! This requires changing the format of all of the photos from both sessions from .tiffs to .jpegs. If I were done proofing I'd be working on that next anyway for Laurie & Ty, but I'm not. And when Lauren has her print disks she's more than welcome to share 'em with Denise. Or since Denise is in such a hurry she can order prints from me from the slideshows when I'm done which doesn't require the format change, but yeah. I'd really like to get done with these proofs before random people start expecting different stuff, ya know? I'm sure her project is important, but so is mine. :p I want Laurie to have her bridal slideshow when she gets home this weekend. And if I can speed up or sleep even less, she'll get print disks. I'm sure I'd be faster if it weren't pushing 100 degrees, or if I weren't pregnant, or didn't have cute kiddos needing me to be a mom at the same time but that's how it is. And if I get asked for anything for someone else one more time before I'm done with my current job I just might scream. Or cry. Or both. :p Rawr.
P.S. Isn't Lauren the cutest? :)