So many epiphanies

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!
 

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
@kevy73
That's what it's all about, Finding tools that will aid in your money making production. Now you won't know what to do with all of your spare time. Ha!

Well maybe counting all of the extra money will take care of that time. :rolleyes:
 
WE have all heard the old saying "You have to spend money to make money" What I always like to add to it is "Time is money"

Sometimes it helps to take the time to try/learn something new in order to save more time and make more money. I have a friend that was editing a architectural shoot and the quarters were tight so there were lots of walls to straighten. he was doing it all in Lightroom. He did a great job but it ws taking him hours. I told him about DxO Viewpoint and how it would fix his images in 1/10 the time. He told me he did not have time to learn it now even though I told him it would only take 5 minutes to download it and install it and another 5 minutes on the phone to teach him how to use it. BUT No. he had to get this project finished so he spent hours straightening all the photos out. I was over at his house a few days later and I sat down at his computer and downloaded and installed the trial version of Viewpoint. then told him to bring up one of those photos. He did and within a minute it was perfect. He just handed me his credit card and said "BUY IT" he said it would have been able to finish the project in 1/4 the time with it.

I really love telling him "I told you so"
 
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