All wedding photographers will know what i’m talking about with regards, the post processing work flow.
Simply put When the glam and excitement of the wedding day is over and day one of the happily married couple start their journey, and all the guests the have gone home, the Photographer will also start a journey, of a different kind. Thinking that a photographer will take lots of snaps pop down to the chemist and have them developed and collect them in the next 24hours..those days a far gone and if only that where true, The photographer or editor will start a journey into..
Post processing this in most cases but not all can take longer than the wedding venue itself and where the photographer or editor comes into their own.
As a wedding photographer you are faced with the following agenda, several probably full up CF or SD memory cards capturing the whole day, which now have to be downloaded in some cases this can take 30 minutes to an hour depending on how many images are taking, in a lot of cases upto or just over 1000 images.

Once they have been downloaded they will be backed up at least twice on separate Computer hard drives in case the only backed up set is damaged or deleted.
Now the images would be In most cases taken in RAW format meaning that this is the largest file the camera will be able to capture of a single image most of you will know of Jpegs however Jpegs differ from Raw files in the following way a jpeg image is approx.: 1-2 megabytes in size where by a raw image is approx: depending on your mega pixel camera 20 megapixels in size so something to consider if you have a Gmail account they will only allow you to send something like 20Mb of data in short one raw photo as jpegs are 1-2 Mbs so you can obviously send more. However that’s not always a good thing.
Raw files hold three times as much data/detail than a jpeg will so if your planning on having that enlargement photo of yourself holding that special can of lager in your favourite pub watching your football team no names mentioned then the raw file can be blow up to a much larger scale without any image quality lost, unlike a jpeg it will compress the image data for you, the upsides and downsides shooting jpegs all day is fine as you can have plenty of images captured on your memory card where is Raw as they are much larger files will eat up more room of your memory card thus less images.
Raws are mainly used for people wanting full control over their image in order to change or process it how they would like to see it, using many, different techniques, from colour change, exposure and so on.
So we have backed up our images twice we have now two sets of Raws safely downloaded, the next step is to upload one set to a photo editing software in most cases again this would normally be Photoshop or lightroom, however which one to use and why, I have found that Lightroom is the only choice for speeding up the workflow process, by simple matter of organising the images, adding meta data which is the hidden details created within the images data saying that who owns the image when it was taken and camera details of settings etc.
In lightroom many alterations will be changed as described above, exposure, colour correction softness, detail the list is quite endless.
Most editors would have several if not several dozen pre-set, filters as they may have done editing before, or being a professional editor etc. These are clickable filters that will instantly change the chosen or several chosen images to a pacific look hence this speeds up the post processing time frame.

Once some hours have passed in a lot of cases if processing approx: 1000 images can take an entire day or several days, final touches we be made and then within lightroom you can add a watermarked proofing copyright as well as keeping an original set for the clients once the proofing has been viewed, by the clients.
Again all these images can and should be backed up again in case of technical issues, as we would not want to spend another day re-doing them all again!!.
Photoshop can be used for special effects and other filter effects or as a stand-alone for just simple editing, but does not have a great ability of the workflow as the lightroom software has, however I still use it for several reasons.
Once the proofing has been completed in most cases the couple can view upto 500 of the images taken, the couple will choose their final image they require whether it be full wedding albums, frames usb, Dvds etc. & that would normally be the end of the process in my case I would keep the images for one year of the venue date in case other images would be requested.
So I hope this was a small insight into the general post processing of a standard wedding photography venue, if you may of thought it is a one day job please think again there is far more to the process, to say nothing about the issues of lost images which can and does happen weddings are normally one shot deals we have to get them right as there is No second chance, I think this is some reasons why a lot of photographers steer clear of them due to a stress factor or high demand and expectations , but if you love taking photographers it is an experience not to forget.

I hope this was a useful insight in to what’s involved within a wedding photography day and after.

Simon.