How To Catch Up On Editing Photos : 5 Habits That Make Editing Effortless

As the year came to an end last week, I shared that I was all caught up with my editing and that my total number of final images of my girls was 1,283 EDITED images.  As I rang in the New Year, I started my year off with a completely caught up Lightroom catalog and no image remained unedited.  (Insert sigh of relief!)  So many of you messaged me asking me how I managed to keep up with editing all year and I quickly learned that many were feeling the struggle to keep their photo catalogs up to date, editing wise.  To be completely honest, having unedited images makes me really anxious.  I am sure it makes you anxious too, but it really bothers me to know that my Lightroom catalog is full of unedited images.  I tend to photograph a lot, so allowing my images to build up and remain unedited can quickly create a problem and leave me really behind with editing.  In order to ensure that I am constantly caught up with editing, I have made a habit of continuously doing the following 5 things.  Should you need some help learning how to catch up on editing photos, here is what really works for me.  Note: this post is chatting about personal photography editing, as I edit and deliver client galleries within 3-5 business days.

For a complete guide on how I photograph my baby girl’s first year, be sure to read The First Twelve.  And to learn how I document our everyday moments between milestones, be sure to read The Everyday Photograph.

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How To Catch Up On Editing Photos : 5 Habits That Make Editing Effortless

1. Make Yearly Albums

While this may not seem to be an editing tip, it is the ultimate end goal.  Every year I make an album of photos for my girls of their year.  Each child gets an individual book of their first year and from then on we create family yearbooks for the whole family to cherish.  Knowing that this yearly album needs to be printed and added to our family collection each year honestly keeps me on top of my editing because…I desperately want the book.  At the end of the year, it’s so nice to open up a Lightroom catalog of completely edited images and quickly make a book to document our family’s year.  I only use Artifact Uprising for our family albums, as I find them to be classic, timeless and the quality is stunning.  You can read more about one of my daughter’s first year album here.

2. Edit Photo Series Completely

I love to do photo series with my girls, whether it is documenting a pancake breakfast or photographing them in Christmas pajamas.  Each of these storytelling series usually generates about 20+ images and I find it best to edit these series entirely in one sitting, or two.  Not only does this help with consistency, but it helps to ensure large blocks of photos get edited at a time.  Which leads me to the next point, blogging.

3. Blog Consistently

I find that blogging consistently helps me to keep up with my editing, giving me an incentive to get my images edited quickly to share.  Whether you blog or share on social media, the idea of sharing your images can be really encouraging when it comes to making time to edit.  It makes you feel like you are editing for more than just a peace of mind, but you are editing to complete images to share.

4. Create An Editing Schedule

Listen, there are definitely times when I get behind on editing.  When I am taking a lot of clients, my professional images always get editing priority over my personal images and…the number of personal images in need of editing adds up.  If I am feeling really behind on editing, I find it really successful to create an editing schedule.  This means setting a daily goal for editing.  I use Powersheets, which have been a gamechanger for me.  Powersheets help me to track my goals every month and I will write “edit” on my daily goal section, allowing me to daily edit and check the task box.  I don’t know about you, but I love to check a box or cross something off of my list.  Powersheets make me complete my goals in a very encouraging way.  When I am really behind on editing and wondering how to catch up on editing photos, this works time and time again.

When creating an editing schedule, I usually aim to edit 5 images per day.  It’s something that takes 20 minutes or less, which is very attainable each day.  And of course, editing can be addicting so some days I edit more than 5 images and that’s even better!

To read more about how I use Powersheets, be sure to check of my post Setting Goals: How It Makes You A Better Photographer.

5. Edit From Beginning To End

I think one of the quickest ways to slow down your editing process is to edit random photos in random order.  As I said previously, I like to edit photos in batches.  More than that, I like to edit my images in date order.  For example, I will edit all of my January images before I edit my February images.  While it may seem simple, it is really about saving time.  When you edit random images, you are wasting editing time deciding what images to edit at that time and spend more time looking through your images than editing.  When I open my Lightroom catalog, I am always editing from left to right and know exactly what image needs to be edited next.

Learning how to catch up on editing photos is a real struggle and I have been there!  As you begin a New Year, keep these editing tips in mind to help keep your editing up to date so that you can spend more time photographing and less time behind the computer.  Because to be honest, a little editing here and there is so much easier than editing hundreds of images after you’ve fallen behind.  And remember, there will be times when you are hundreds of images behind.  It happens!  With these 5 habits, knowing how to catch up on editing photos can seem like a much more attainable task.

To read more photography tips and tricks to further your journey with photography, be sure to check out what posts are trending below!