Volume Photo Sessions Pace Analyzer II
A Smart Workflow Tool for High-Volume Photographers
Reduce the friction of highly effective volume photo projects. Optimize your volume photo sessions. Understand your timing. Work smarter. Get Faster.
When shooting high-volume headshot sessions, the Volume Photo Session Pace Analyzer II helps you gain insight into how efficiently you're working. You can’t improve a process until you have measured it and this Adobe Bridge script tool gives you great insight to your high-volume projects. No more guessing. No more assumptions.
With just a few clicks inside Adobe Bridge, this tool extracts precise image timing data directly from your camera's EXIF metadata to give you a detailed breakdown of your session flow so you can work on getting those parts of your workflow that will make your projects faster. The analysis does not write any data to your images or make any changes to your folders — it is a safe, read-only tool for learning how quickly you execute your sessions.
What It Does
Analyzes EXIF metadata from selected project image files in Adobe Bridge.
Calculates average time duration individual’s photo “sessions”.
Calculates average time gap between session based on a customizable time threshold (default: 30 minutes).
Calculates total photo sessions (includes retakes, clothing changes, etc).
Calculates average images per session.
Estimates sessions per hour with this average session duration and gap.
Tailor it to your workflow
Long gaps like lunch breaks and conference schedule conflicts can throw off seat-of-the pants calculations about speed and efficiency for volume sessions. The tool lets you drill into your your throughput to determine if you need more photo stations, more helper staff, or a more polished workflow with each subject.
Running the Adobe Bridge tool
Open the folder that contains all of the images from the day. The assumption is that each “session’ for a specific subject is identifiable by filenames containing some unique identifier for each person/session (e.g Price_Mike-999-DSC1234.jpg, 219043141_DSC1234.jpg, etc.). For Headshot Tools users, just point Adobe Bridge at the folder where tethered images are dropped as they come in from the camera with the subject’s name and unique numbers prepended onto the filename. For other users, just make sure each group of images for a subject contains their name, an order number, or a session number.
Click on “Tools” in the Adobe Bridge menu, then “Photographer’s Toolbox”, then “Volume Photo Sessions Pace Analyzer II”.
Indicate the maximum gap to exclude from time calculations (default is 30 minutes).
Select whether to use JPG or raw images for EXIF timestamp information. This prevents raw+JPG workflows from double counting images in the folder.
Click “OK”.
Even with thousands of images, the results should display within seconds.
A few notes:
For Headshot Tools users, do not analyze files in the Headshot Tools upload folder. These files get written from the tethering software and may not include files such as blinks or lighting misfires that were removed before the upload process. When images have been culled or otherwise removed from the folder, the photo session time results will less than accurate. The best results come from using the original folder that gets the subject’s name prepended before review, selection, and upload to the Headshot Tools.
If you are a Headshot Tools user shooting in “Pool Mode”, filter your photos in Bridge by camera and generate the results individually for each person on the team. Volume Photo Session Pace Analyzer II will not calculate results correctly for more than one camera/photographer at a time because of the time stamp overlaps.
Results
Even with several thousand images, this should complete within seconds. Each run will display:
Number of sessions photographed. If the same person comes twice, they count as two sessions.
Average time duration of each individual’s headshot photo “session.” On average, how long does it take to photograph a subject from first image to last image.
Average time gap between sessions based the session gap threshold parameter. On average, how much elapsed time between the last image of one session and the first image of the next session.
Average images per session. On average, how many photographs do I take in each subject’s session?
Sessions per hour with based on this flow of getting customer into and out of the photo station area. On average, how many people per hour can I photograph with this workflow?
So What?
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. If your goal is put more subjects through your station per hour, you have two things you can improve - how long it takes to photograph each person (session) and how long the gap is between sessions. Overshooting and difficulties from inconsistent or inefficient posing, lighting, or image capture will show up as longer session times. Long time gaps between sessions could mean spending too much time talking between subjects, an inefficient sign up process, not having a good assistant to prepare a subject, or not using good tools for organizing large volume sessions.
As you make improvements to your shooting and time between subjects, you can measure those results with hard data that ensures you’re either on the right path or where to keep looking to squeeze wasted time out of your flow.
Installation
Custom Adobe Bridge tool scripts like this go in the “Startup Scripts” folder for Adobe Bridge. The fastest way to access this folder is to access the Adobe Bridge “Preferences” under the main “Edit” menu (for Windows) or “Settings” under the main “File” menu (MacOS). Select “Startup Scripts” preference option and click the “Reveal Scripts in Explorer” (Windows) or “Reveal Scripts in Finder” (Mac). Copy the file “Volume Photo Session Pace Analyzer II.jsxbin” to the folder and restart Bridge. If the “Startup Scripts” folder doesn’t exist, create it, then copy the .jsxbin file into that folder.
The first time Bridge is run with the script installed, Bridge will display a message confirming the script has been install in Bridge and is now available.
FAQ
Q: How much does this handy tool cost?
A: There is no charge for this tool. You may not disassemble it or modify it. You may not re-sell it. Use it to make yourself a more efficient volume photographer.
Q: The plug-in tool does not run.
A: Contact support at hello@PhotographgersToolbox.com for assistance with resolving the issue.
Q: The tool isn’t including all of the photos in the folder or the number of photos being included is increasing each time I run the tool.
A: Adobe Bridge needs to generate thumbnails and capture basic EXIF information when it first opens a new folder. For larger folders, this could take several minutes. This is only necessary the first time a folder is opened in Bridge and the time the images are cached is controlled by the “Cache” preferences in Adobe Bridge.