There is a very good reason why photographers don’t want to give the unedited images to their clients.
People may think it’s just because you’re rude or you want to keep the best images to yourself (which doesn’t really make any sense). You need to remember they have only seen the very best and polished photos and they probably don’t even know what they looked like before you used some Photoshop magic on them. This is how you’ll make them understand.
You may be familiar with the terms RAW and JPEG, they are image file types. The basics of it are that JPEGs are what you upload to Facebook, Instagram, or get printed. RAW files contain much more information, including a significantly larger amount of color and texture details in the shadow and highlight areas, and software like Photoshop, Lightroom, or iPhoto is required to even be able to open them. If I sent them to you as they came out of the camera, you couldn’t do anything with them without running them through special software.
The way that I edit is a crucial component of my photography. My style and skill as a photographer encompass other things like framing, timing, and a whole host of other skills, but the photo is not the finished product that I’m proud to put my name on until I’m done the editing. If you’re baking Thanksgiving dinner, you don’t pull the turkey out half way through cooking and serve it!
These photos you never see are the outtakes, the blurry shots, the duplicates (my god, so many duplicates). For any given photo you do see, there may be dozens or hundreds that are slight variations on it that are all a little bit less good. Eyes closed, hair in face, maybe a dog ran in front of the camera (that actually has happened a lot). I’ve spent my time combing through all of them, doing side-by-side comparisons until I landed on the best ones. I will never have two different photos that are both great and only give you one of them.
How are you to trust that I chose the best photos and didn’t skip the better ones? Chalk it up to the thousands of hours I’ve spent looking at photos and paying attention to what makes them good or not. My ability to choose the best images for the assignment is one aspect of what I’m being hired for. Delivering 10,000 mediocre photos is not respectful of the recipient’s time, because they shouldn’t have to do my sorting work for me.
There’s always an agreed upon plan of action before going into a shoot, and part of that plan is what the expectations are in terms of number of photos that are needed (sometimes a specific amount, sometimes a range, depending on the project). This is the responsibility of a photographer to be clear about. The fact is, the photographer’s price has taken into account the final number of photos being delivered, both from a usage/licensing and a time-spent-editing standpoint. Because all the photos can’t be easily or quickly delivered, this means more time for the photographer beyond what you both had established was going to be happening.
Find a photographer whose work you like, who you trust, and trust their process.
Read the full article with before-and-after photo examples over at PetaPixel.
Source: PetaPixel
To each his own! In the film days, I have been giving the negatives to my clients and did not care what they do with the negatives. I let them go to any photo processing of their choice for additional prints. 100% of my clients come back to me for additional prints.
Knowing the additional work I do from the raw files, my clients appreciate my dedication to give them the best product to make them happy.
On the other hand, photography is my passion, not my source of livelihood.