I am a newbie to all this stock photography stuff... but I got a question for everyone...

How long do you spend on each image, processing it in Photoshop?

Assuming you are shooting in RAW at a low ISO and at the correct exposure AND you are not doing any isolation, cloning, special effects or anything... how much time are you spending with each image before you feel satisfied that it is ready to submit for stock?

Cricket

I tend to spend 1-2h, depending on the image.  Too much when it's just a single one, not too bad when it's a series because then I can save a lot in the following images.

Regards,
Adelaide

"I spend one to two hours on every picture."
I admire your acceptance rate, but my experience is that the acceptance rate is inversely proportional to the amount of processing, as processing seems to introduce artifacts, etc.  Is this time spent in making isolations? If not what do you do in that time?  Thanks.

Bloody good question, and one I ask myself constantly.....

Almost all of my work at the moment is done in my new studio, so I've got perfect lighting, exposure etc and no hint of noise, artifacts.  I expected/hoped that studio flash would allow me to increase my production rate; what it does do is give me perfect white backgrounds etc straight out of the camera but that is all.

My work is a lot of close-ups and a lot of girls.  Try as I may I simply cannot get rid of all the dust, fingermarks, marks, blemishes etc on 'products' prior to taking a picture of them; I zoom in to 200% and the whole thing is a bloody nightmare of dust and scratches; so most of my time is spent getting rid of those.  Also, although my flash units give me the isolation, I almost always add a clipping path, so I have to go through the process of drawing paths anyway.

For the girls, well even the most beautiful woman has blemishes at 200% (!) and I eliminate all of those; it takes time but I have good models and I want to present them in the best possible way I can.