Inside My Editing Process: From Photoshop Beginnings to AI Workflows

I talk about my love for editing and how my workflow has grown over the years. I share my journey from learning Photoshop to embracing Lightroom and AI tools like Aftershoot, which save me time while still letting me maintain creative control. I talk about my evolution from a vibrant and moody style to a more true-to-life, editorial look, and why I believe editing should reflect the day as it really happened. I also share how I balance perfectionism with efficiency, breaking large galleries into manageable sections and using tools to handle tricky edits so I can deliver beautiful images without burning out.

Key takeaways:

• Editing shapes the story and emotion of a wedding photo, so every adjustment matters in how the image feels.
• Your editing style can and should evolve over time to reflect both your growth and the couple’s vision.
• AI tools like AfterShoot can dramatically speed up culling and basic edits while still maintaining your personal touch.
• Breaking large galleries into sections helps manage workflow, balance perfectionism, and avoid burnout.
• True-to-life editing that honors the actual colors, lighting, and atmosphere of the day creates images couples will truly love.

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Transcript

Hello, hello. I'm glad to have you all back here for another episode of The Wedding Frame. I was kind of excited about the last one with my husband because it was kind of a little experiment for me to see what it would be like to have someone on besides myself. And I also made him go into another room so that I could experiment on the feed and what that would look like and sound like with, you know, like someone being remote and hopping on to the podcast.

So today I'm going to be talking about editing, and I could talk all day about this. I have always been obsessed with editing. I know some photographers prefer just to shoot and the editing part is not that enjoyable to them, but both things have always been super fun to me.

From the very beginning, I started using Photoshop. That's how I learned to edit. I had, I don't know, I had no interest or I probably didn't know about Lightroom. All I know is that Photoshop was my thing and I would just Google anytime I had a question. I mean, obviously I watched tutorials and all that for the basics, and then after that I would just Google anytime I had a question.

So little by little, I started learning all of the techniques and tricks to Photoshop. And I feel like that's been very valuable with my weddings. I realized that not every photographer knows how to use Photoshop, and that would give me somewhat of an up with couples because I would tell them, like, hey, if there's any modifications you need that I didn't already include, it can be anything. Just let me know. I mean, I do charge for anything that's extensive, but I have gotten requests like, can you make my dress longer? Can you make me thinner? I don't love those requests, but I will subtly do that. And Photoshop actually is still the best tool for doing any kind of modification like that, like using the liquify tool for making things bigger or smaller.

So yeah, with Photoshop I learned how to fix tricky lighting, adjust skin tones, and just really take full control over an image. And I learned that editing isn't just about making something pretty. Every tweak, every adjustment can change the emotion and mood of a photograph. So I kind of internalized that lesson pretty early without even knowing it.

So fast forward to when I started photographing weddings. This is when obviously Lightroom became a big part of my workflow. And at the time, I think some or most photographers were still editing straight out of the camera. There were definitely Lightroom presets coming out at this time. Photographers were selling them online with their own unique styles, and suddenly you could apply an entire look to a gallery with one click.

Film-like tones have been very popular to this day even, but there were breakouts in photography styles, especially like the light and airy or the dark and moody. For a while, those were the main styles. And when I say light and airy, it was like white whites, minty greens, a Fuji film look — that Style Me Pretty really made popular. A lot of the higher end magazines and publications were publishing that style more.

So at one point I was more of what I call vibrant and moody. That was my editing style. And I slowly transformed into a more light and airy because I was starting to photograph higher end weddings and getting published in these publications, and I knew that's what they wanted.

I'm really happy that today things have shifted into a more true to life edit. And I think that's great because colors for bridesmaids dresses, flowers — they choose those colors for a reason. And some of the Lightroom presets were shifting colors a lot. Like the reds were orange, things like that. You need to respect the fact that the colors are as they are and as they were chosen by the couple.

Now when it comes to greens, I'm totally fine with that being modified in whatever way you want, except I don't know about you, but I can't do the greens that become brown. That's another thing. If the day was a bright sunny day and you change the greens — it's your preset, right? The preset is what's changing the greens into a brown tone. I mean, that's not conveying how the day was. And I think again that's important.

Now I will reduce — so to actually reduce the green color, you need to reduce your yellows in the color panel. And that way those neon greens on a high noon time of the day will not be as neon. Or sometimes having really colorful greens in your photo kind of detracts from the subject, which of course is your couple.

So something that has been such a game changer in the industry that I took on wholeheartedly, excitedly from the very start is AI culling and editing. Imagen was the first one that I know that came out with AI editing. And then AfterShoot came onto the scene and they offered AI culling and editing. So I jumped on it. I'm a founder, so the pricing is pretty good.

I think it's still better than Imagen pricing-wise, even if you were to buy it for the first time today, because you have the option of paying a yearly fee for as many edits as you want. If I'm correct, Imagen you have to pay per project or per shoot.

But I'll stop talking about Imagen because I only used them very briefly and I've been using AfterShoot for a couple years and I absolutely love it. Really, they should be sponsoring me right now because I'm probably going to talk about them for the next 30 minutes. There's just so much to go through that I think is just so helpful, especially if you're doing a high quantity of weddings and you are just running behind. This helps immensely.

So let me go back to before these AI options were a thing. I was using Photo Mechanic. And it's still around and it's still amazing for culling. It helps you go through the images a lot faster than what Lightroom allows. Although I think Lightroom addressed the issue a little while back and now it seems like you can skip through photos a lot faster. But I abandoned Photo Mechanic because AfterShoot is just the best at saving me time.

I don't know how significant that amount in time is because I haven't actually timed anything. But when I go to a shoot or to a wedding — mostly shoots, right, because it's usually on one SD card — I actually take my laptop with me and as soon as I'm done, I go to my car, I put the SD card in my laptop, and I let it do the culling while I'm driving. So by the time I get home, it does the first cull.

So what it does is it has parameters that you can choose, and I always choose the less strict because I want to go through the photos. So it will have duplicates grouped together for me, but it's in smaller groups. I usually don't have to look at the duplicates because the first photo it shows of this specific pose is a good one. And the AI culling in AfterShoot actually learns your culling behaviors, so it ends up being better and better at choosing the photos.

So once I'm done with that, I go through each photo and I press — for me it's D — to select the photo. So I'm just pressing D, D, D to the ones that I want and skipping the ones that I don't. And then you have it edit. And the way that the editing works is you have profiles. So it has profiles that you can purchase from other photographers that have already fed their pictures into it, but I like the profiles that are based on your images and your edits.

So you have to start with 2,500 photos that you feed into it so it can learn how you edit in different lighting situations, how you want your exposure, your white balance — it learns all of that. And so when you hit the edit button, it just literally in minutes — especially for a shoot that's a couple hours — it's like a couple minutes. A wedding might take like 10 minutes. But that is super fast.

And it edits — it doesn't just do all of the adjustments that it learned from your images that you fed into it, but it also does cropping and straightening for you. And, well, I definitely need the straightening tool because for some reason I tend to shoot a little crooked. Over the years I've gotten a lot better and I do have the grid showing on my screen or in my viewfinder on my camera, but it's very helpful. Sometimes I have to reset the cropping if I did a Dutch angle on purpose, but it's amazing.

In today's climate, people want their photos as soon as possible. So when I do high profile events, they usually want their photos by the next day. And I'm able to do that way more easily with AfterShoot. Now for weddings, I have a four to six week turnaround, but I do send them sneak peeks one to three days after the wedding. So again, it's very helpful for getting those initial photos out to my clients.

And I talked about Photoshop, but Lightroom is what I use mostly, exclusively now, that I'm shooting weddings. It's just amazing for batch editing. And before, I used to have to go into Photoshop from Lightroom to do more extensive retouching or removing objects.

Like for instance, one thing that I've had to do a lot over the years is remove the officiant from the background of the couple during their first kiss. It usually happens when the officiant is a friend or a family member and I haven't had time to go up to them and tell them, hey, I just want to make sure that you know that for the first kiss, can you please move to the side? So obviously now I always remember to say something. There are rare times that I'm not able to.

Anyway, so I would have to go into Photoshop to do that kind of retouching or removing objects. It was kind of tedious. And now Lightroom has the AI generative tool where it does that for you right inside Lightroom. And this is a newer thing. And I'm so happy that they came out with this because for me, time is of the essence. So if I can stay in the same program and do these special extra things, then thank you. Thank you so much Lightroom.

So that's another thing — I know photographers who have never used Photoshop and they would tell their clients, I don't do any retouching or modifications. And back when Lightroom didn't do the things that it does now, that was something that gave me a leg up. I never said no to any request. I was able to do it all.

And even though Lightroom can do more than it used to, it's still limited. And so I still feel that I can do more than photographers who started on Lightroom. I can do more for my couples.

So one thing I've noticed is that there are two ways of thinking with editing a wedding. One is putting your preset on it or doing your own manual edits and then batching and then calling it a day. There are others like me who are perfectionists and have to remove every little string light in the background of a ceremony or a trash can or a car that you can't avoid in your background. Don't get me started on beach engagement sessions. That's a lot of editing people out.

I don't think either one is wrong, as long as your couple knows what to expect. This is why some photographers take longer to turn around their photos, because they are putting so much care into their editing. I just wonder if sometimes it's not that necessary. It's not something that the couple would notice. Like I have been stuck on skin tones or white balance, and I've re-edited a photo a few times because I had to get it right. I really don't think that's something that the couple would notice, but I get it, especially if you're trying to curate like, let's say, an Instagram feed that looks consistent.

And that makes me think about something that has been debated. Some photographers, when it was the light and airy or dark and moody styles, would make an image look darker or lighter so that it would be consistent with their style. I love that today we’re leaning more toward true to life and editorial and just leaving things as they are.

If the ceremony was in a bright garden setting, you're not adding a vignette or doing something to make it darker to go with, let's say, your dark and moody style. And if your couple had their reception in a dark ballroom, lifting the shadows and exposure so that it looks like something else — I don't think it's the best thing to do. Simply put, I think that reflecting the way the day was in your editing is how it should be.

Okay, here's another thing I want to share with you, and that's what my process is so I don't burn out on editing a wedding. So once the AI does the culling and the editing, I go through each photo. I am a perfectionist, so I still want to make sure everything looks the way I want it to look. And AfterShoot doesn't get you there 100%. I would say 75%, which is way better than me having to go through and manually edit things and adjust things.

So I break up the wedding. So on my Lightroom I have the wedding already broken up into different sections of the day. So it just seems more manageable. Like if there are 200 images in the getting ready section, I can give myself a goal of, okay, I'm gonna do 100 images today. I'll do another 100 images tomorrow. And that's usually what I do in general. If it's a large gallery, I kind of time out how many days I need and what I can do each day. So I usually do 50. That seems like a good amount for me to go through.

And it's just a way to handle all of the editing without feeling overwhelmed.

Alright friends, that's it for today's episode. I hope I gave you some insights into workflow and editing tips and all that goodness. I'd love to hear from you, so you can DM me on Instagram at The Wedding Frame with Lisette, comment, answer some of the questions I've put on there. That would be amazing. Let's get a conversation going and give me ideas for new episodes.