kevy73
Senior Member
I swear I must live under a rock at times. Either that or I am so busy meeting people, shooting weddings, processing images, scanning contracts, emailing things, creating albums etc that I miss out on all this amazing stuff that I had no idea existed. Until last week. Well, some of it earlier than last week, but 2 massive things last week to top it all off. I just thought I would share with you some software I have found to make my life easier.
As you all probably know I am a wedding photographer - I do ok. Usually shoot around 45 - 50 weddings per year which has been more than enough to keep me seriously busy looking after the admin, meeting, photo taking and processing side of things...
About 6 months ago, I was introduced to Tave Studio CRM software. I could straight away see the benefits. The cost was a little inhibitive - US $29.95 / month which in todays exchange rate works out to about 1 newborn child's black market price each month. I managed to find an Australian upstart venture to develop something similar.
Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. The new Australian venture was released. It was a bag of arse, so I jumped ship and found Tave again. Started a 30 day trial. Was half way into the 30 day trial when over the weekend a 'black friday' sale price was released with pretty hefty savings, so I have purchased 2 years up front saving at least a few newborn babies!! Happy days. The time savings along from using Tave probably mean I can deal with more customers which is awesome.
Fast forward to last week. I was chatting with a fellow Perth photographer who mentioned that he uses Photo Mechanic to cull his images. I asked what it was etc etc - downloaded a trial and OMFG!!! the speed at which I can flick through images and star rate them is incredible. Lightroom for me takes at least 3-5 seconds - often longer to render an image, Photo Mechanic does it instantly. When you are flicking through 2000 images, that is a time saving of immense proportions. Once I have star rated them in Photo Mechanic I can then drag only the images I want to process into Lightroom. Amazeballs.
Next epiphany was last week too - talking to another Perth photographer, he mentioned some software called P*xellu - Smart Albums. Again we had a chat about what it did and again I downloaded a free trial. Historically I have avoided albums for clients - even though I know there can be some decent $$ to be made, the time to create an album is just painful. In the past to upload and create an album can take me over a week of evenings to get it done. Total pain in the a$$. I made an Artisan State album last night with P*xellu in just over an hour last night. The software is amazing. It renders quickly, I can easily switch between layouts with just the up and down arrow keys. It knows pretty much every album company I have ever heard of and them some!
I feel so incredibly happy that I have some tools to help me achieve what I want faster, more efficiently and easier... the only thing I wish was that I had known about it 5 years ago! Bring on 2016!
As you all probably know I am a wedding photographer - I do ok. Usually shoot around 45 - 50 weddings per year which has been more than enough to keep me seriously busy looking after the admin, meeting, photo taking and processing side of things...
About 6 months ago, I was introduced to Tave Studio CRM software. I could straight away see the benefits. The cost was a little inhibitive - US $29.95 / month which in todays exchange rate works out to about 1 newborn child's black market price each month. I managed to find an Australian upstart venture to develop something similar.
Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. The new Australian venture was released. It was a bag of arse, so I jumped ship and found Tave again. Started a 30 day trial. Was half way into the 30 day trial when over the weekend a 'black friday' sale price was released with pretty hefty savings, so I have purchased 2 years up front saving at least a few newborn babies!! Happy days. The time savings along from using Tave probably mean I can deal with more customers which is awesome.
Fast forward to last week. I was chatting with a fellow Perth photographer who mentioned that he uses Photo Mechanic to cull his images. I asked what it was etc etc - downloaded a trial and OMFG!!! the speed at which I can flick through images and star rate them is incredible. Lightroom for me takes at least 3-5 seconds - often longer to render an image, Photo Mechanic does it instantly. When you are flicking through 2000 images, that is a time saving of immense proportions. Once I have star rated them in Photo Mechanic I can then drag only the images I want to process into Lightroom. Amazeballs.
Next epiphany was last week too - talking to another Perth photographer, he mentioned some software called P*xellu - Smart Albums. Again we had a chat about what it did and again I downloaded a free trial. Historically I have avoided albums for clients - even though I know there can be some decent $$ to be made, the time to create an album is just painful. In the past to upload and create an album can take me over a week of evenings to get it done. Total pain in the a$$. I made an Artisan State album last night with P*xellu in just over an hour last night. The software is amazing. It renders quickly, I can easily switch between layouts with just the up and down arrow keys. It knows pretty much every album company I have ever heard of and them some!
I feel so incredibly happy that I have some tools to help me achieve what I want faster, more efficiently and easier... the only thing I wish was that I had known about it 5 years ago! Bring on 2016!