Client Expectations and the Delivery Race
Wedding clients expect photos quickly. Industry standards have shifted from six to eight weeks to two to three weeks as the competitive norm. Photographers who deliver faster earn better reviews, more referrals, and happier clients. Here is how to hit two-week turnarounds consistently.
Day One: Backup First, Everything Else Second
Import all cards on the night of the wedding or the morning after. Copy to your working drive and a backup drive simultaneously. Do not begin culling or editing until the backup is confirmed. A drive failure before backup means losing the job entirely.
Day One or Two: AI Culling With imagic
Run the entire shoot through imagic before beginning manual review. The AI Analyse step scores every image for sharpness, exposure, noise, composition, and detail. Burst sequences are grouped automatically and the best frame pre-selected from each group.
With imagic, a 3,000-frame wedding can be culled to 500 to 600 selects in 60 to 90 minutes of active review time. Without AI assistance, the same cull takes two to three hours. Install imagic with pip install imagic.
Days Two to Five: Focused Editing Sessions
Edit in two-hour focused sessions rather than marathon days. Colour perception fatigue after three hours degrades grading accuracy. Group images by lighting segment before editing: apply batch corrections to each group, then individually adjust the outliers.
Day Five or Six: Export
Configure your export settings once and queue the full batch: JPEG at 90 to 95 percent quality, sRGB colour space, full resolution, consistent sequential naming. Let the export run unattended. Review the output for colour, resolution, and naming before uploading to your gallery platform.
Day Six or Seven: Gallery Upload and Delivery
Upload to your delivery platform and send the client gallery link. Delivering in week one of the two-week window consistently generates the strongest client reviews and referrals.
The Timeline Summary
- Day 0 (wedding day): Import and backup
- Day 1: imagic culling, 90 minutes active time
- Days 2-5: Editing, four sessions of two hours each
- Day 5/6: Export and quality review
- Day 6/7: Delivery