5 Programs I Just Couldn’t do Without | Christa Rene Photography

I was a full-time college student, who also really enjoyed having somewhat of a social life, yet was shooting a lot of portrait sessions and even weddings while balancing a full course load! I had no choice but to learn efficiency early on, since when I didn’t… bring on the 2am nights. And yes, that happened WAYYY too often, but this past year I’ve been more efficient in my time and turn around than ever! This doesn’t just have to do with not being in school this year, but investing in programs that seriously help my business and me! This is just a very brief overview of each program, nothing in depth! Feel free to contact me for specific questions on each program!

1. Photo Mechanic. This program allows you to import and cull through weddings in no time at all. It doesn’t actually download the photos to this program, but is shows previews making culling (sorting through all the images and picking which ones to edit) super quick. Long gone are the days of importing all 3,000 images from a wedding into Lightroom then waiting for them to load before culling! Now I’m just importing to Lightroom the ones I’m going to edit!
2. Lightroom. My relationship with Lightroom is serious relationship goals!! I do ALL my editing with Lightroom, and only pull anything into Photoshop if it just can’t be fixed in Lightroom. I’ve editing entire weddings without any photo-shop thanks to knowing Lightroom well and doing my best to shoot correct in camera! With Lightroom, editing is quick and easy, and with a click, the edit you made on one image can be copied to all the ones after it that took place in the same lighting! It also let’s me organize images into categories to stay organized! If you’re a photographer without Lightroom, seriously stop and go get it right now!!
3. PASS. I use PASS for online galleries! Clients can easily download all the images at once, and even order prints right from this gallery. It also serves as a security for me knowing I have a full backup of the finished wedding on the cloud!
4. HoneyBook. This allows me to keep all my weddings organized and easily send invoices and contracts to my client. They have access to their own portal and I can easily send them their invoices, contracts, even vendor recommendations with just a click! Another great program is 17hats, but I recently switched to Honeybook and LOVE it!
5. BlogStomp. BlogStomp allows me to create the best sizing for when I post images on Facebook or my blog, and I can easily put images side by side for posting purposes! When you zoom in on my images on Facebook, they look really sharp thanks to this program! I also can rename the images, and easily create collages for blog headers! All the images I post on my blog and from my photography page have been dragged into Blogstomp and “stomped”, and you can tell from the little white border (it’s customizable) and the quality for Facebook! Note: I don’t use this program for the final gallery images. Just for blogging and social media. Here’s an example!

If you’d like to read more about each of these programs and have a more in-depth explanation, please let me know and I’ll be happy to share!! I hope this will help speed up your workflow and grow your business!!!