Basic Portrait Post Processing

[PnwGuy]

I have been taking some portrait shots for friends here and there and I'm not sure how to prepare and present them. Usually I'm emailing them. Do I send the original files or do I process them and send those, or do I send both? Should I send the edited and resized via email and burn originals to a cd and give them that?

How about basic steps on post processing? A quick how-to? Basically I download the photos to my PC and open them in PSE. I do the quick adjustments and then I'm unsure from there as for the cropping and resizing do's and don'ts.

Should I keep printing size/dimensions in mind as I'm cropping or does it not really matter? Any good basic tutorials someone can link me to? I do appreciate it! I can be sooo needy sometimes.

[wulf]

I think you'll find the answer to most of those is "it depends"! For example, if you are taking a portrait of someone's children for their desktop wallpaper, it will probably need to be cropped to a 4:3 ratio and, ideally, should be set at the size they use their desktop (1024x768, etc) allowing for whatever desktop widgets they normally have running (my desktops are virtually uncluttered - if your friend has icons across the left half of the screen, you probably want the kids clustered on the right).

Work out what your friends want the pictures for and how technically savvy they are and a lot of the other answers may fall into place.

Wulf

[AZ4Runner]

Without a doubt you should be backing up your images and do any post processing on a copy.

My post processing usually consists of straightening, unsharp mask, curves (color correction), and cropping. If I'm going to post to the web, I add an additional step for copyright.

When I shoot friends, I generally send them the edited images unless they ask for the originals.

[PnwGuy]

Thanks for the tips. It gives me a good starting point. Appreciate it!