[Les Meehan]

How long is the inevitable piece of digital string? When you say 'average processing' do you simply mean getting it from RAW into PS ready for action or do you mean 'diddling wiv'it?'.

One factor in this is what your 'acceptable' level of quality is for your images. For example, I would happily spend an hour just perfecting a complex selection (usually drawing it by hand either as a layer mask or using Quick Mask) if the technique/image demanded it because I want my images/post-processing to be the best I can produce.

For a 'simple' (whatever that is in this digital minefield) RAW to PSD takes only a couple of minutes but the image inevitably then needs far more time to make it express something.