Five Photography Programs I Can’t Live Without
Photo Mechanic
One of my favorite photography programs is Photo Mechanic. I use Photo Mechanic to quickly and easily view, cull, and organize my photos. Check out my blog post on using photo mechanic for faster culling. I talk about my complete culling process. This was a game changer for me and literally shaved off hours per wedding on my post-processing. The great thing is it is a one time fee, it’s about $150, and then you have it forever. For the time it saved me it was SO WORTH IT.
Check out my post on Culling with Photo Mechanic HERE.
Lightroom
Of course, every photographer needs Lightroom. It is my favorite editing program. When I first started, I was culling in Bridge and editing in Camera Raw and Photoshop. Lightroom was another game changer because it allows me to do all my editing at once instead of opening up single images in Photoshop. And actually, almost everything I was doing in Photoshop I can do here, it was just a matter of learning how to do it in Lightroom. Check out my Lightroom Tips & Tricks series on IGTV for more Lightroom videos. Lightroom is a monthly subscription – I pay only $10/mo for LR and PS.
My CRM
CRM stands for Customer or Client Relationship Management. It’s where I keep track of leads and file everything for my clients in one place. There are many options out there like Honeybook, Dubsado, 17hats, and even more. I use 17hats. With 17hats I can capture leads on my website, send emails and invoices automatically, create workflows for each type of client that I have so that I never miss a step, send questionnaires and keep client information, AND do bookpeeing. It is seriously amazing and using a CRM has saved me so much time because I can automate things and so many headaches because I know that I have everything in one place and won’t miss anything. CRMs vary in price from $15-40/mo or more.
BlogStomp
Blogstomp was another game changer for blogging. I use it to easily and QUICKLY create the images in my blog posts. You know how when you go to photographer’s blogs you’ll see they have 2 images side by side or collages with multiple pictures? Chances are they’re using BlogStomp or something similar. With blogstomp, I can input all my images for a blog post and quickly go through them and create my images. It can also connect directly to my blog so that I can post a blog straight from the app. It saves the images in smaller sizes also so it doesn’t take hours to upload the images to my blog. It’s definitely another game changer! They also have a program called AlbumStomp that can help you design albums quickly. This was also a program with a one time fee.
Later
I already mentioned later in my last post about productivity programs, but it deserves to be mentioned here too. It’s where I schedule all my social media posts. With a free verson of later you can schedule 30 posts per month for FREE and they’ll be automatically published. It’s definitely a major time saver! Plus, you can use the preview view to drag posts around and create a perfectly curated feed.
There you have it. 5 Programs for Photography that I can’t live without! Comment below if you use any of these programs OR if you have a favorite program I didn’t mention. If you have any questions, let me know!
