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As you probably know by now, I sell most of my photos through iStockphoto. Each sale generates only a small royalty for me, so it's all about volume; selling as many photos as possible. I've already talked about the best uploading technique (hint: a little at a time), but when it comes to processing the photos, there's another thing to think about: Time.

You don't want to spend a lot of time processing each photo, before you upload them to your microstock portfolio, simply because the more time you spend, the less your income per hour will be. Of course, this is only important if you think of your microstock portfolio as a business, but bear with me for a sec.

Start by putting a value to your time. Let's say you put it at $50/hour, which is not exactly high but not exactly minimum wage either. If you spend an average of 30 minutes processing each photo, that puts your invested value at $25 per photo. If we then assume that you make an average royalty of $1 per sale, you are suddenly needing to get 25 sales, just to break even. And that's not even counting the time you spent preparing, shooting, selecting what to upload or making back what you spent on your gear (plus wear and tear on said gear).

At a place like iStockphoto, there are thousands of new images being added every day. It's just not realistic for most photographers to expect 25 sales of every image uploaded. Granted, over time you can make your investment back, but it will most likely take too long to make it worth your while.

So, you may want to get your images processed as quickly as possible. Here's what I do:

First and foremost, I try to get my exposure as perfect as possible during the actual shoot, and I always shoot in RAW, so I can do most of my processing in Lightroom. Fairly often, I don't even need to open the photos in Photoshop at all. If several shots are similar, I'll process one and copy the settings to all the other ones. That way, I just have to tweak them a little and do things like spot removal. Editing similar images in a batch is a huge time-saver, even if you are working in Photoshop. If you spent three minutes getting a color-tone just right, why try to recreate it in your other photos, when you can just drag and drop the adjustment layer, you've already made.

Secondly, I don't get too artistic with my stock photos. It's easy to spend countless hours turning a photo into a piece of unique art, but in all likelihood, you are actually lessening the overall usefulness of your image by doing so (art and stock are two very different things after all).

I try to spend an average of 5-10 minutes per photo, if I am processing for stock. I can do this, because I have practiced and found a style and some tools that work with my subject material. There is some trial and error involved here. And every now and then, I will allow myself to get carried away, such as with the photo shown with this post. I do that for my own sanity. That's important, too.

Rasmus Rasmussen is on loan from iStockphoto, where he is part of the image inspection team.