Photo Editing in Under an Hour: A Batch Workflow for Busy Creatives

Spending two hours shooting photos and then three weeks avoiding the editing? We've all been there. Here's the uncomfortable truth: if our editing workflow takes longer than the actual shoot, something's broken. And we're not talking about cutting corners or sacrificing quality. We're talking about building systems that let us edit an entire session in under an hour without hating our lives.

This is the exact workflow that keeps creative work moving forward even when a full-time job tries to eat every spare minute we have. No fluff. No presets we'll never use. Just the actual process that works when time is the one thing we don't have.

Stay tuned until the end of the post where I'm sharing a free resource that will help you with speeding up your editing workflow.

The Real Problem With Photo Editing

Let's start with why editing feels so overwhelming. It's not because we're bad at it. It's because most tutorials teach us to edit like we have infinite time and zero other responsibilities. They show us spending fifteen minutes on a single image, tweaking every slider until it's gallery-ready perfection.

That approach works great if we're editing ten photos. But when we come back from a shoot with three hundred images and a full-time job waiting tomorrow, that math gets brutal real fast. Three hundred photos at fifteen minutes each? That's seventy-five hours. We'd need to quit our jobs just to finish editing last weekend's shoot.

The reality is that most creatives struggle with time management, and a massive chunk of that time isn't spent creating content. It's spent in post-production, editing, and workflow management. We're bleeding hours in the process, not the craft. And the deeper issue is that we're treating every image like it deserves equal attention, when the truth is most of them don't.

So the real question isn't how to edit faster. It's how to build a system that makes speed the default, not the exception. And that starts with understanding something most people get backwards: editing doesn't begin when we open Lightroom. It begins the moment we press the shutter.

Front-Load Our Decisions

Here's where most people lose time: decision fatigue during editing. We sit down, open a photo, and then spend three minutes just figuring out where to start. Should we fix exposure first? Crop? Color grade? Every image becomes a blank canvas with infinite possibilities, and our brains burn energy on decisions that should've been made before we ever imported the files.

The solution? Front-load our decisions before we shoot.

Before picking up the camera, we ask ourselves three questions: What's the intended mood? What's the color palette? What's the final output? If we're shooting for a warm, golden-hour vibe, we're already thinking about white balance settings in-camera. If we know these are going on Instagram, we're framing with a square crop in mind. These aren't creative limitations. They're guardrails that save us from wandering aimlessly in post.

And here's the part that actually saves hours: shooting with a consistent exposure strategy. We're not talking about nailing exposure perfectly in-camera every single time. That's unrealistic. But we are talking about keeping our images within a predictable range. If we know our exposures are consistently one stop under, we can batch correct that in ten seconds across a hundred photos. If every image is randomly exposed because we kept changing settings, we're stuck fixing them one by one.

Decision fatigue is real, and it compounds throughout the day. Every creative decision we push to the editing phase becomes harder to make when we're already mentally exhausted from work. The photographers and creators who move fastest aren't necessarily more talented at editing. They're just making fewer decisions during the editing phase because they already made them during the shoot. Make those calls early, and editing becomes execution, not exploration.

Cull Like Our Time Matters

Alright, we're back from the shoot. We've got our files. This is where most people make their first massive mistake: they import everything into Lightroom and start editing without culling.

Do not do this.

If we edit before we cull, we're spending energy on photos we're never going to use. And we're not talking about obvious rejects like the accidental floor shots. We're talking about the seventeen nearly identical frames where the subject blinked in one, the smile is slightly better in another, and we convince ourselves we need to edit all of them just to compare. We don't.

Here's the culling system that works: take two seconds per image, max, using our editing software's rating mode. First pass: flag anything that's obviously bad. Closed eyes, terrible focus, blown highlights that can't be saved. Delete or reject. Second pass: pick the single best frame from every burst or similar sequence. Not the top three. The top one. If we shot ten variations of the same pose, we're keeping one. Maybe two if they're genuinely different.

This feels harsh at first, but here's the reality: we're never going back to edit those runner-up shots. They're just clutter. And clutter creates paralysis.

After culling, we're usually left with about ten to fifteen percent of what we shot. That's normal. If we shot three hundred images and we're keeping thirty, we're doing it right. Those thirty are the ones worth our editing time.

Build a Batch-First Workflow

Now we edit, but not the way most people think. Most people open the first photo and start tweaking. Bad move. That's serial editing, and it's the slowest possible approach.

Instead, we're going batch-first. Here's how it works:

Step one: Pick a hero image. This is the single best photo from the shoot, or at least one that's representative of the overall look we're going for. Edit this one fully. Exposure, contrast, color grading, sharpening, noise reduction. The whole thing. Get it exactly where we want it. This is our template.

Step two: Sync settings across similar images. Lightroom lets us copy and paste develop settings, or sync adjustments across multiple photos at once. Take our hero edit and apply it to every image shot in the same lighting conditions. If we shot in three different locations with three different light setups, we'll have three hero edits. That's fine. But within each set, we're syncing aggressively.

Step three: Spot-fix only what's broken. After syncing, some images will need tweaks. Maybe one's slightly underexposed, or the subject's face needs a bit more brightening. Fine. But we're not re-editing from scratch. We're making micro-adjustments to an already ninety percent finished image.

This approach is based on the Pareto Principle, also known as the eighty-twenty rule. In editing terms, eighty percent of our final look comes from twenty percent of the adjustments. Our hero edit handles that eighty percent. The spot fixes are just polishing the last twenty. We're not spending equal time on every image because they don't need equal time.

The time savings here are massive. Editing thirty photos one-by-one can take about two and a half hours. Using a batch-first workflow? We're done in forty-five minutes. Same quality. Less than a third of the time.

Automate and Templatize Everything Else

Let's talk about the stuff we're doing manually that we absolutely shouldn't be. If we're applying the same lens correction to every image, stop. Create an import preset that does it automatically. If we're sharpening every export the same way, stop. Build an export preset with our sharpening settings baked in. If we're resizing for Instagram every single time, stop. Save the dimensions and resolution as a preset.

Modern editing software like DxO Photolab 9 and Lightroom lets us automate almost everything that's repetitive, and most people just don't use it. We should have import presets for every camera and lens combination we use regularly. Export presets for Instagram, client galleries, and print files. Develop presets for common lighting scenarios like overcast days, direct sun, and indoor window light. These aren't Instagram filter presets that turn everything teal and orange. These are functional starting points that handle the boring technical stuff so we can focus on the creative decisions.

And here's the thing: building these presets takes time upfront. Maybe an hour or two to dial them in and save them properly. But that hour pays for itself after three or four editing sessions. It's one of those investments that feels like procrastination but is actually high-leverage productivity.

There's a concept in software development called DRY: Don't Repeat Yourself. Every time we write the same code twice, we should turn it into a reusable function. The same logic applies to editing. Every time we make the same adjustment twice, we should turn it into a preset or template. Our future selves will thank us.

If we want to go even further, consider outsourcing the stuff that doesn't need our creative input. We're not talking about handing off our entire edit. But basic tasks like culling, applying initial corrections, or even exporting files? Those can be delegated or automated with tools like Imagen AI or even a virtual assistant trained on our workflow. The goal isn't to remove ourselves from the process. It's to remove ourselves from the repetitive parts so we can spend our limited time on what actually matters.

Bringing It All Together

If editing feels like a never-ending time sink, it's not because we're slow. It's because we're working without a system. Front-load our decisions before we shoot. Cull ruthlessly before we edit. Build a batch-first workflow that prioritizes the eighty percent over perfecting every pixel. And automate or templatize everything that's repetitive.

This is about cutting waste. The photos we actually care about will still get the attention they deserve. But the process around them won't bleed hours we don't have.

I've built a free resource to help you implement this faster: a Lightroom workflow checklist and a set of starter presets for common lighting scenarios. It's designed to get you editing in under an hour without the decision fatigue. You can grab it at the link in the description. No upsells, no email spam. Just the tools to make this workflow work for you immediately.

The photographers and creators who consistently produce work aren't magically more talented or blessed with extra hours in the day. They've just built systems that remove friction from the repetitive parts of their process. They've stopped treating every image like it needs bespoke attention and started recognizing that most images need the same handful of adjustments.

When we implement this workflow, something interesting happens. Editing stops feeling like this insurmountable mountain we're always avoiding. It becomes a predictable, manageable task that fits into the margins of a busy life. The backlog shrinks. The guilt fades. And suddenly, we're actually shipping creative work instead of just thinking about it.

This workflow isn't about compromise. It's about clarity. Clarity on which images matter. Clarity on which adjustments move the needle. Clarity on where our limited creative energy should actually go. And when we get that clarity, editing transforms from a bottleneck into a bridge between the work we capture and the work we share with the world.

Now go clear that editing backlog.