Digital Negatives VS. Edited Images

Even though we include the digital negatives and a limited copyright release in all of our packages people still have a lot of misconceptions about what a digital negative is and what you can do with them. I hope to explain the many questions I get on this and what the differences are between digital negatives and edited images.

What is a digital negative?

Lets compare digital to film for a second. Think of a film negative. They are unedited, extremely easy to store, and hold a ton of potential. Digital negatives are exactly the same. These files are straight out of the camera, not retouched or resized. Great things can be done with them, if you know how. However, digital negatives are NOT the images you see in our portfolio, in our albums, and on our blog. The photos in albums, prints, portfolios, or in our blog have had extensive editing.

Why would I want a copy of my digital negatives?

Most of my clients like to have these images because they want a digital copy of all of their wedding photos. They also like to make prints of the photos themselves, post them online in places like Facebook or MySpace. You can do what you please with your negatives, as long as you follow the limited copyright release. If you would like to see a limited copyright release, let me know and I will provide a voided online image for you to read.

Does that mean I own the copyright?

No! Per federal law, The company who took the photos retains the copyright to them, and copyright ownership is not something that can be sold. When you get your disc with the digital negatives you will also get the written copyright release that gives you permission to use the images for certain purposes, such as making prints. The release is made out to the person who purchased them (such as the Bride and Groom), and cannot be duplicated for other people to use.

What am I NOT ALLOWED do with the digital negatives?

You CANNOT give or sell your copyright release to anyone else. For example, you can’t e-mail the photos to your Cousin and tell her she can print as many images as she wants. you CAN Make prints with your release and mail the images to her. Only the bride and groom have permission to use the images. You also CANNOT make changes to the images (cropping and resizing are ok, but please leave the image editing to us – that’s what you pay us for!). You CANNOT duplicate the disc or put image on a new disc for your friends and relatives, wedding magazines, websites or other vendors (although we are happy to submit your images to wedding magazines or other vendors who would like to use them for advertising ~ as long as they give us due credit!. Stephanie Williams Photography is the only entity authorized to sell or distribute the images that they own. If you have a specific request, we are more than happy to work with you to accommodate your needs.

Why are your prints so much more expensive than local store prints?

Each image goes through major retouching before being printed which can take hours, not to mention very detailed/skilled work, so we charge accordingly for this service. This is the main reason why there is such a difference in price between taking a digital negative to your local neighborhood one-hour photo and getting a 4×6 for $.20 and purchasing one from us for $15. At the one-hour photo place, you are paying for the low-quality paper it is printed on, the antiquated equipment that prints it, and the two seconds it takes them to run the image through. When you purchase from the photographer directly, you are get an image that has been printed by a professional photo lab on super high-quality photographic paper and the time it takes us to carefully retouch the image as well as calibrate it to the specific printer that our lab will be using. This requires expensive computer software and hardware, as well as lots and lots of time (roughly 30 or more minutes per image). For larger prints, we also have a special process that allows us to enlarge the image to virtually any size without any loss of quality. This is something that you just can’t get at one-hour photo shops.

What do you do to “edit” a photo? 

This is an extremely hard question to answer with in writing. Depending on the specific image, the process is different. It could mean increasing contrast, adjusting the white balance, color correcting, removing blemishes, slimming down unattractive body parts (only to an extent - we can't make you look 2 sizes smaller or anything...), opening closed eyes, erasing debris or distracting backgrounds, adding special effects like vignettes or sepia, etc. The possibilities are truly endless, and every single image requires something different.

Also, each image goes through two different bouts of editing. The first round of editing is where we make minor tweaks to the image to make it presentable for proofing. Mostly this is color correcting and contrast.

I would much prefer to answer this question visually. In the following examples, the “unedited” photo is the image straight out of the camera, the “proof” photo is the photo after the first round of editing (this is the image that you will see in your proofing galleries, as well as the image you will receive with your digital negatives), and the “edited” photo is the image after extensive retouching work that we will use for prints, albums, canvases, etc.

I like the edited photos and would like them as digital negatives. Can I pay extra for you to retouch all of them?

For an average wedding with 600 proofs, it would take us about 300 hours to do this, which would take six weeks of working non-stop 40 hour weeks, and the cost would run about $10,000. Although we would love that money, we cannot sacrifice that much of our time or we would be forced to neglect our other clients. We can do retouching on individual files for $35 an hour (typically two images per hour).

If you have any other questions about editing, digital negatives, or anything else, please e-mail me and I will be happy to help!