As wedding photographers, we often obsess about gear but when it comes to software we tend to try and skimp and get by with the bare minimum. There are a plethora of incredible options out there to improve processes and the outcome of our work that are often overlooked.
I’m here to highlight a few essential tools and software that made my life as a wedding photographer a whole lot easier and efficient.
The Most Useful Wedding Photography Software Stack
- Lightroom
- Flothemes
- JpegMini
- Narrative
- Pic-Time
- And Co
Lightroom
As wedding photographers, we spend the better part of our days (and nights) culling and editing our images. Photomechanic has been the photographers choice for speeding up culling times but with the latest improvements to Lightroom “Classic” paired with a speedy SSD, Lightroom does the job relatively well and leaves me with one less process of importing from one program to another. In terms of image processing, most of the magic happens in the develop module with everything from colour grading to fixing smaller details with only a few exceptions where photoshop needs to step in.
We went for the bundled Adobe photography package which includes Lightroom coupled together with Photoshop and it works out to a pretty great deal.
Flothemes
Ok, so this isn’t perhaps a piece of software but a helpful tool nonetheless. Working as an SEO consultant, I’ve come across multiple website building platforms and themes, from Squarespace, WordPress, HubSpot, Wix, and WebFlow – but none has set the bar quite as high as Flothemes for creative professionals.
The stunning templates, easy to use drag-and-drop building system, and constant innovations coupled with the best support team I’ve come across. The themes live on the SEO powerhouse that is WordPress – Flothemes has always been my first choice when recommending a website build.
JpegMini
JpegMini has paid itself back over and over again. If you didn’t gather from the name, it reduces the size of your jpegs without detracting from the quality. Coming back to SEO, fast websites are quintessential when wanting to improve your ranking opportunities and taking advantages of JpegMini to reduce loading times is great. We’ve been using this tool over the past couple of years and has saved us from buying a good few hard drives. It also plays nice with Lightroom with a neat integration plugin.
The great fellows over at JpegMini hooked us up with 20% off their JpegMini Pro Suite for our readers, make use of coupon code: MARCEL
Narrative
The newest kid on the block amongst all of the mentioned software is Narrative, a nifty drag and drop blog builder that makes crafting blog posts a breeze – goodbye making custom collages in photoshop and hello saving a bucket load of time.
Pic-Time
Pic-Time is one of our most essential tools as of late. The incredible design, customisable layouts and client delivery system has been a big win for us in both keeping the aesthetics of our images and vision for story intact. It’s also a great tool for keeping a collection of our delivered work as a safety backup for our clients.
And Co
Built by the team behind the popular on-demand freelance service Fiverr, And Co makes staying on top of your administrative invoicing and contracts a bit less tiresome. You have the ability to customise your branding and it prompts you when your invoice has been viewed which is pretty great too.
I’m always on the watch for software gems that improve workflow as a wedding photographer, so you’re welcome to comment below with your favourite suggestions.
